Using new media to celebrate old ads

There are close to 150 hand painted, fading ads on the sides of buildings in downtown Winnipeg and each one tells an amazing story about the products, services and brands that called this city home. Over the past few years, I’ve devoted most of my free time to researching our collection in the Exchange District and this summer, I organized an event called Painted in Light to bring them back to life.

My project partner was Craig Winslow, an experiential designer from Portland, Oregon. Craig uses projection mapping to recreate ghost signs. His process involves taking pictures of the fading ads, vectorizing the letterforms in Illustrator, creating animations in After Effects and then projecting the images back onto the original wall with a program called MadMapper. 

I reached out to him at the tail end of his year-long Adobe Creative Residency to pitch him on bringing his work to Winnipeg. Even though Craig had spent the past year travelling across the US and UK to illuminate dozens of signs, he had never done multiple ones at the same time on the same night. That’s how, on the last night of the Winnipeg Fringe Festival and first Saturday of the Canada Summer Games, five ghost signs were revived to their former glory.

Researching the sites

The first two signs I chose are called palimpsests, a technical term used to describe a location where multiple signs are painted overtop of each other. As the years and elements weather down a sign, the original layers begin to ghost through. Archival research helps to peel back the layers of time to help see what the signs look like freshly painted.

Contrary to what you might think, most of my research isn’t done poring over old books in a dusty archive. It’s done with a browser and an internet connection. I search for photos by names, streets and events. But rather than looking at the subject, I scan the buildings in the background for traces of signs that have long since disappeared and use these pictures to help transcribe the layers.

Thanks to sites like eBay and Etsy, research doesn’t have to end with pictures. I’ve been able to track down the actual retail products advertised on the sides of buildings. In the case of the third sign, it’s a scale reproduction of a can of SX ham. I bought the product a few years ago and Craig was able to use high resolution pictures of the can to create an interactive 3D model.

The new tools of the trade

Once the sites were selected, the logistical challenges started. Knowing the size of each sign helps to determine what kind of projectors and lenses are needed. Thankfully, our city’s heritage conservation department has full building histories online, including architectural specifications. To figure out the projector setup, resources like Google Earth allow you to scan the city’s skyline to get a 3D perspective shot of each location without having to access a roof. In fact, I was able to gather all of the info I needed without climbing a single staircase.

Overseeing five site setups and coordinating a volunteer team of 15 people made this event particularly challenging. Google Drive became my best friend over the two months putting the night together. Sheets with ongoing to-do lists, volunteer schedules and important phone numbers were continually updated to ensure that the night would go off without a hitch. Stored in the cloud, these list were easily accessible from my phone at any time.

Real Life Connections in a Digital world

Almost every aspect of the project was researched and executed digitally. Craig arrived in Winnipeg on July 27 and less than 70 hours later, he was on a plane back to Portland, Oregon. Through email, phone and Google Hangouts, we planned the entire event without ever being in the same physical space.

Even something as simple as a website had far reaching consequences. Within a few days of launching paintedinlight.ca, the son of one of the sign painters reached out by email and put me in contact with his father. 89 years old and living in British Columbia, he shared his experiences as a high school summer intern at Universal Signs. 

A few days after that call, former employees and owners from Robinson and Webber (signs four and five from the projection night) reached out to say they were coming in from location across the country to see the event in person. From start to finish, the projections only lasted two hours. But these moments made this one of the most rewarding experiences that I’ve ever been a part of.

If you’re interested in watching the event come together, Handcraft Creative’s 30-minute documentary Writing on the Wall be be viewed here.