Shereen Ali

You see them as you dri­ve by: ex­u­ber­ant pop-up road­side par­ty signs, ad­ver­tis­ing all man­ner of fetes in colour­ful, hand-paint­ed script or all-caps fonts. Though many signs are all about the par­ties, some signs al­so tell you about oth­er mat­ters: the lo­cal church ser­vice, the up­com­ing bar­be­cue, an arts event, the par­lour down the road sell­ing ice cream, or the lat­est best place to buy your corn soup or jerk chick­en treats.

The man be­hind many of these signs is Bruce Cay­onne, based at his home stu­dio in Ques­nel Street, Ari­ma. He's been so pro­lif­ic and dis­ci­plined about his self-taught sign paint­ing work that some de­sign­ers have been tak­ing no­tice, see­ing in his care­ful­ly craft­ed let­ters and signs a live­ly and unique ex­pres­sion of T&T's fete sign cul­ture.

In­deed, one graph­ic de­sign­er, Kris­ton Chen, ear­li­er this year de­signed a play­ful all-caps Fete Font in­spired by Bruce and his signs. And Chen's col­league Agyei Archer has de­signed a full font called Cay­onne Sans which in­cludes the low­er case char­ac­ters.

"In Bruce's signs I see a suc­cinct com­pres­sion of TT ex­pres­sions in­to an in­stant­ly recog­nis­able graph­ic com­mu­ni­ca­tion. I asked my­self: how can you push the signs and let­ters in an­oth­er way? The Fete Font takes the signs and brings them in­to the dig­i­tal realm," said Chen in a re­cent Guardian vis­it to Cay­onne's stu­dio.

Chen isn't the on­ly per­son who has tak­en an in­ter­est. De­sign­er Deb­bie Es­t­wick, orig­i­nal­ly from Bar­ba­dos but now based in Mara­cas Val­ley, St Joseph, is cur­rent­ly an ad­junct in­struc­tor with the UWI's De­part­ment of Cre­ative and Fes­ti­val Arts. She is do­ing her own project in­spired by the signs–re­cy­cling them in­to stur­dy, unique note­books.

"I'm us­ing the whole de­sign process to try to cre­ate so­lu­tions, and to cre­ate new prod­ucts that are very Caribbean-cen­tred. This is my first col­lab­o­ra­tion with Bruce. I ap­pre­ci­ate his at­ten­tion to de­tail and ty­pog­ra­phy, which is quite cen­tral to de­sign," she said.

Es­t­wick stud­ied for her BFA in Graph­ic De­sign at the Bar­ba­dos Com­mu­ni­ty Col­lege and did her Mas­ters in De­sign and Brand­ing Strat­e­gy at Brunel Uni­ver­si­ty in Eng­land. She runs her own busi­ness in de­sign con­sult­ing called Col­lab­o­ra­tive Lab­o­ra­to­ry or Co­Lab, which aims to con­nect de­sign prac­tice with every­day peo­ple and com­mu­ni­ties through small projects and ex­per­i­ments. The note­book project is the first Co­Lab project. Her first book was made as a present for Chen, who col­lects and blogs about lo­cal hand-let­tered signs.

"I am try­ing to show how de­sign strat­e­gy can help dri­ve in­no­va­tion and pro­vide sus­tain­able so­cial, cul­tur­al and en­vi­ron­men­tal ben­e­fits in Trinidad," she said.

At first she went around Trinidad hunt­ing with friends for old fete signs by Cay­onne, which they'd pull down for re-use. It was fun, but not very ef­fi­cient. Now she's worked out a bet­ter sys­tem where oth­ers in the pro­mo­tions busi­ness col­lect and re­turn out­dat­ed signs when they put up new ones.

"This way, we can get the signs down be­fore they can fall off and block drains or clut­ter the side­walks or be con­fis­cat­ed by au­thor­i­ties. So the signs can be val­ued and en­joyed when they're up, and find new life, up-cy­cled as some­thing else, when they're past their date," said Es­t­wick.

Back at Cay­onne's work­shop, she has the out­dat­ed hard­board signs cut up in­to small­er sizes to make the note­book cov­ers. They show de­tails of Cay­onne's punchy, graph­ic hand-paint­ed ty­pog­ra­phy, with pieces se­lect­ed for a pleas­ing ab­stract com­po­si­tion. She wash­es and ster­ilis­es all the sign bits first, be­fore as­sem­bling the books.

Her first book was all hand-sewn in black linen thread through eye­lets for the bind­ing; a very time-con­sum­ing process–one ear­ly book took six hours to make. Now, she hole-punch­es the cov­ers and us­es ring-binders to hold the pa­per. Some have clo­sures made of string and crushed bot­tle­caps.

Es­t­wick has al­so been ex­per­i­ment­ing with print­ing Caribbean proverbs and say­ings in some of the pro­to­type note­books, us­ing the Fete Font. Her first batch of re­cy­cled note­books will be avail­able for sale at Pa­per Based Book­shop lat­er this month.

"This ex­per­i­ment was about try­ing to help peo­ple un­der­stand what de­sign strat­e­gy can do, and what de­sign can mean – how it can fu­el in­no­va­tion and help find so­lu­tions to prob­lems," said Es­t­wick.

"Peo­ple have this idea that graph­ic de­sign is just there to make things pret­ty, to have things sell faster, and that's all it does. But that isn't the case at all. The note­book project is an ex­am­ple of how you can solve a prob­lem–the vi­su­al and phys­i­cal clut­ter of old fete signs, which can fall down and can clog up drains–while at the same time, re­cy­cle the ma­te­r­i­al in­to a new prod­uct."

MORE IN­FO

Deb­bie Es­t­wick:

Web­site: http://deb­bieestwick.com/co-lab/

Bruce Cay­onne:

Email: ras­bruce2002@ya­hoo.com

Tele­phone: 772-2661

Web­site: https://www.face­book.com/bruce.cay­onne.9

Kris­ton Chen:

Web­site: www.not­sirk.com/blog