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For someone whose writing appears all over the city, Joseph Pilapil’s penmanship isn’t the best.

You’ve probably seen his meticulously formed letters above store entrances, on shop windows and decorating sandwich boards all across the city.

But when it comes to writing on paper, well, the less said the better.

“My handwriting is terrible. When I am writing out my day-to-day stuff, it’s absolutely really bad,” he says, with a laugh.

“But it’s a different application when working with brush. When you’re working with brush you have to be precise, you have to make the letters as legible as possible. When you paint a letter, it has to be as exact and as precise as possible,” he says.

As The Travelling Sign Painters, Pilapil makes traditional handcrafted signs for private homes and businesses.

“If I can do it I will take it on. I get requests for a whole bunch of different things — I try not to say no if it is in my capabilities to do it,” he says.

Pilapil uses a mix of letter styles he’s learned, as well as fonts he’s designed himself for his signs.

The bulk of what he makes is for others and he works closely with his clients to bring their ideas to life.

It leaves little time to make his own art but he’s not one to be precious about his work; Pilapil is a commercial artist above everything else.

“I am not someone who makes something because I feel I need to make something. Yes, I have the creativity and artistry and craftsmanship to create signs, but at the end of the day I paint stuff for consumption.

“My art is to be consumed, to be viewed, to be functional. It’s got something on it that needs to be read, it has a message that has to come across to somebody,” he says.

No two days are the same with this job, which is part of its appeal. It also allows him to avoid being stuck in an office all day.

“Every day is something different, it’s a new challenge. One day I paint on a car, another day it’s a sign, the next day it’s a mural. That’s what I love the most about doing what I do. It’s the reason why I am a full-time artist and not working a day job.”

He’s come a long way from when he first started teaching himself 10 years ago.

“I realized there was a lot more to learn, that there were obvious knowledge gaps I couldn’t fill myself, so I reached out to Rick Wagner who owns a sign shop in the city called Signmeister Inc.,” he says.

Wagner took him on, and every Wednesday, for a year, Pilapil learned, among other things, how to wield brushes and structure letters.

“He is the one who taught me; he is truly a master at what he does. He was very generous with his time. I think he was just excited there were folks who still wanted to learn the craft of sign painting,” he says.

Making art to order comes with conditions and constraints. Not that Pilapil minds. He is at his best when he has a problem to tackle. Parameters help to hone his focus.

Each commission is a puzzle to be solved.

“I have to think, ‘How do I make this cool and be legible and what people might like?’ I have to find the solutions to make that and also have the balance of creating something I like and something other people might like too,” he says.

When he does find time to work on his own designs, Pilapil finds himself gravitating towards similar territory.

“You have so many options and you just don’t know where to start, which is the toughest part for me. Left to my own devices I develop this kind of option anxiety where I can’t decide on where to start or what to make and nothing gets done.

“I definitely need parameters to create. It’s good to just have some parameters and build within that, so I can come to a solution, even if it is just for myself,” he says.

av.kitching@freepress.mb.ca