The Indian Ghost Sign Project
A facsimile of Hand Painted Signboards
Experiencing the work of signboard painters from a bygone era in Darjeeling, a small town in West Bengal, India.
The Indian Ghost Sign Project is a recreation of hand painted signboards from the 1900s still in existence. My goal with this project is to draw attention to the last few traces of human involvement in this domain of lettering and art.
The process involves preserving the signboards by photographing and vectorising them, pinning their locations on Google Maps for people interested in visiting and discovering them in person and finally masking them on an augmented reality surface. It is a long term project and I plan to start small.
The inspiration for this project came from Craig Winslow’s Series of ghost signs projections. I went on a lookout for some typical ghost signs in and around the old localities of Darjeeling and couldn’t locate any. But I did stumble upon a few distinctively recognisable hand painted signboards, which were corroded and washed out over time. The beauty of the painted letterforms made me want to document them.
As I walked around Darjeeling looking for these signs, I discovered an array of letterforms ranging from simple calligraphic strokes to geometric three dimensional display type simulations which reminded me of old Hindi movie posters.
The Process
The first phase of this project began with a small area and focused on sign boards that were completely faded and unreadable.
Knowing the script: The scripts on the signboards are Latin and Devanagari. Being able to understand and speak Nepali and English made it easier for me to comprehend the messages on the signboards.
Photographing everything : Walking in the old market area gave me enough subjects to capture. I photographed every possible sign I came across. Shopkeepers easily get offended if you point the camera at their stores, so I often ended up giving them a short explanation of the project.
Sorting the pictures: I managed to get a good 118 pictures by the end of the second day which I sorted into groups. There were a few that needed cropping and colour corrections and the remaining that were faded had to be reproduced digitally.
Recognising characters: Some of the boards fade to an extent that it becomes difficult to identify letters. If you the know the language, you can understand and fill the missing gaps. If nothing works you can ask the locals for help. With subtle visible letterforms I proceeded to trace a letter at a time to discover words and then sentences.
Vectorising: Handwriting varies from person to person with variations in forms and style. Because imperfections are an evidence of human involvement, I vectorised the letterforms precisely how they were drawn. This gives an insight into the conventional letterforms of a different era. However, I fixed some alignment issues to maintain a visual hierarchy.
Sign board #1
A dental clinic sign.
Sign board #2
Bilingual sign for a Ration Store.
Sign board #3
A restaurant sign
“Artists have an amazing power to make old things interesting again.” -Craig Winslow
The surviving signboards around Darjeeling continue to be an epitome of precision, practice and craftsmanship. There is a lot to learn from these artists and the buried forms of art that are now considered outdated.
The Indian Ghost Sign project intends to preserve as many traditional hand painted signboards as possible.
