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Last year I hosted a BLAG Chat with Liane Barker (@barker_signs) in Brisbane, Australia. With the news that she's recently launched her new online course, I thought it would be a good time to share the recording, which is posted below.

This year is also the 60th anniversary of Barker Signs, founded by Liane's dad Maurie in June 1964. To mark the ocassion, the story of those 60 years is told below the video, along with dozens of photos from across this time, including Liane's apprenticeship in the early 1980s.

40 Years a Sign Painter

  

40 Years a Sign Painter: Liane Barker in Conversation was a BLAG Chat held online on 18 June 2023.

The Barker Signs Story

Maurie Barker was originally from Birmingham in the UK where he did his draftsman's apprenticeship with the Austin motor company. There he got to know the head draftsman who designed the buildings and the accompanying signage for the dealerships. This sparked his interest in sign lettering, and he sought out several signwriting and lettering books, including Paul N. Hasluck's How to Write Signs, Tickets and Posters (1895), which has now been passed on to Liane.

Coming to Australia

It wasn't until Maurie moved to Australia in 1951 that he actually got to do any signwriting. He'd come with his girlfriend Jo's family and they settled Cairns, Queensland, where he worked as a pattern maker for a large manufacturing firm. Maurie and Jo married in 1952, and then moved 1,700 km (1,050 miles) south to Toowoomba with their first child in 1958.

Maurie again found work as a pattern maker with the Toowoomba Foundry, and it was there that he was asked to paint the company signs for their new office and subsequent promotional displays. Their second child, Liane, was born in 1960, and Jo was then working part-time with the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) and later in the offices of The Queensland Graingrowers Association.

Large shed-like structure with big open front and various pieces of shelving and work materials inside.
The back yard sign shop in the 1970s.

It was in 1964, with Liane just four years old, that Maurie decided he wanted to start his own signwriting business. He'd spent years teaching himself the craft, and built his own sign shop in the back yard—very typical in Australia—from materials acquired from a demolition yard. He then lettered his first kombi van with the logo that remains the same to this day, and set about finding customers to work for.

Maurie Barker lettering his vehicle in 1964, and the original Barker logotype still in use 60 years later.

  

The only time that Maurie was filmed in the early days.

The Early Years

Maurie tells the story of starting out, and some of the first customers he got.

"When I first started out, I walked the full length of the town centre knocking on doors and offering my services. It was through this door to door canvassing that I received my first job."
Large industrial retail space with flags flying above the flat roof which has a hand-painted awning that reads "Southern Cross Machinery".
One of Barker Signs' first major commissions for Southern Cross Machinery in 1964.
"There were quite a few established signwriting companies in Toowoomba and they were not welcome to the idea of a self-taught signwriter starting up. In fact I received my first huge signwriting contract because the client had been told NOT to use my services because I was just a ‘back yarder without any training’. I was lucky that Pixie Ice Cream gave me a chance to prove I wasn’t by signwriting all their ice-cream trucks and promotional signage on corner stores around the town."

Work from the 1970s on a Courts van, and a sign board for Mercer & Luck.

"As my business grew, I received work from the Royal Airforce base in Toowoomba as well as the Oakey Army Base doing signage on vehicles, screen printed directional signs; in those day the screens were all hand cut. I then secured a contract with Coca-Cola signwriting their logo on the sides of corner stores, football fields and the like, and after that we received the contract for Peter Jackson cigarettes and Elders Realty."

Maurie on the brush, Christmas window for Mighty Meats, a wall for Coca-Cola, and another Courts vehicle, all hand-painted in the 1980s.

"I needed an apprentice to help me out. That’s when I took on Shirley Lloyd in 1969 who also happened to be the first woman signwriting apprentice in Queensland. Shirley was from a small country town outside of Toowoomba and was fantastic at lettering and pictorials. I was shunned again by the signwritiers of the town who were furious that I had given the job to a girl when there were so many boys looking for apprenticeships."

Formative Years

Liane grew up around all the work that Maurie was doing, and thanks him for introducing her to the trade and "instilling my passion for this amazing craft”. Maurie also recalls her early involvement.

"I continued to work from the shed out the back of the house and when my daughter Liane was older, she would spend hours after school in the shed watching me paint signs and helping me to clean up the paint shelves. When she was in high school she would accompany me on jobs over the Christmas holidays painting Coca-Cola logos and Christmas specials on butcher shop windows. I’d paint the outlines and she would do the fill of the letters; we worked so well as a team.
"Another contract I picked up was for Snow Richards who owned Union Air and I would signwrite his planes when they were based at the Toowoomba Airport. He would also fly me out to Brisbane to do work on his fleet or to his nearby resort, Orchid Beach on Fraser Island, to do signwriting around the resort. Liane accompanied me on a few of these trips whilst she was still in school."

The Apprentice

Liane's transition to apprentice wasn't something that happened straight away.

"She [Liane] spent a few years doing her own thing, very travel focused. It was towards the end of two years of travelling that she ran out of money and called me for help. I paid her way back home and suggested she came to work with me as an apprentice. At first she wasn’t that keen on finishing up all that travelling to be ‘stuck’ in our country town again, miles from anywhere (according to her).
"I said ‘you know, if you do an apprenticeship, you would still be able to travel and work as you go!’  This was the hook that changed her mind, and ‘training that takes you places’ has been Liane’s mantra ever since and infers that the skill of signwriting can take you all over the country, even the world if you like. There are opportunities for businesses that need signs painted up and down the coast, honour boards that can be updated across the country, or just find the work on the road."

Liane Barker on the brush during her apprenticeship years in the early 1980s.

"Liane worked with me until 1984 (after winning Top Apprentice of the Year in 1982) when she finished her apprenticeship and branched out on her own, moving to Armidale, New South Wales, where she ran her own signwriting business which was all hand painted signage, no computers."

Hand-painted vehicles and signs by Liane Barker spanning 1984–89.

Getting Technical

Barker Signs, run jointly by Maurie and his wife Jo, continued to be based in Toowoomba, and expanded their services with the purchase of a vinyl cutter to open up further opportunities for large contract work. Meanwhile, in 1986, Liane took up a Production Manager role for a large signwriting firm in Brisbane, where she honed her business skills: quoting, working with large corporate clients, and understanding the new role of computers in the sign industry. Two years later she returned to Barker Signs, becoming a partner in the business with her parents.

Curtainside for Hile Carrying Co., and a massive fascia sign for Video Ezy, painted in the 1990s.

During this period, Barker Signs produced and manufactured large illuminated signage and graphics for companies including Rip Curl, Elders Realty, Video Ezy and Toowoomba City Council, while still offering custom signage for local businesses.

Hand-painted by Liane Barker in 1992.

Flying Solo

Liane married in 1996 and left Barker Signs to have her first child in 1997. She set up her own business working from home, giving her greater flexibility with her young family, and took on jobs for hand-painted and hand-drawn chalkboards, in addition to computer graphics work.

In the early 2000s, Liane left her husband and became a single mum to her four-year-old daughter. She opened her own signwriting business, ArtiSigns & Designs, on the main street of Toowoomba in 2006, offering digital printed signage and canvas art. The business employed four staff, offering a wide range of services, including large format digital printing to various small businesses and corporate clients like the University of Southern Queensland and the Empire Theatre Toowoomba.

The years immediately after the global financial crises in 2008 were tough, and Liane took on different kinds of work, including general graphic design, which helped the business stay afloat. This design work was always informed by her training as a signwriter, working as if with a brush in her hand to ensure the sign would be legible with good layout and colour choices. Another sideline was an online business producing stick- and iron-on labels for children's lunch boxes and school clothing all over the world. "It is important to remain flexible in this industry and go with the flow especially when you have a family to feed!" says Liane.

Back to Basics

Liane and her daughter moved to Brisbane after the devastating floods of 2010–11. She set up her digital signwriting and label business in her new home, and continued to offer graphic design solutions to small- and medium-sized businesses until early 2016. It was then that she decided to get back to her roots and focus once again on traditional hand-painted signage and gold leaf.

Liane Barker back on the brush.

Not long afterwards, Maurie decided to retire from Barker Signs, and so in late 2019 Liane took over the Barker Signs name. Now located in Brisbane, the business continues to work on all things hand-crafted for a variety of local and regional clients.

Keeping the Craft Alive

Liane has also been active in sharing her skills through in-person workshops and, during the pandemic, a series of live online classes that were enjoyed by students from around the world. These online sessions inspired her to develop a more in-depth online course, Mastering the Art of Signwriting, which is now open to all.

Beveled lettering in gold with a purple outline that reads "Mastering the Art of Brush Skills", and with an outline hand and brush adding some paint to the final letter S.
Mastering the Art of Brush Skills is the first part of Liane's wider Mastering the Art of Signwriting course.

She also continues to teach in-person workshops in both signwriting and gilding, and was joined on one of these by Maurie in 2022.

Liane with students after a gilding workshop in Amsterdam, and a sign painting class in Brisbane, and Maurie Barker coming out of retirement to demonstrate some of his skills to students in Brisbane.

Thank you to the Barker family for their collaboration and generosity sharing this story and pictures with BLAG. Visit the Barker Signs website and follow @barker_signs to keep up-to-date with the next 60 years on the brush.

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