If you’ve ever paid even the slightest bit of attention while walking around the Northern Quarter, you’ll have seen some of Gregg Johnson’s work.
Destined to be a traditional sign painter since he fell in love with the craft as a school kid, Gregg – aka Cactus Signpainting – is responsible for how a lot of your favourite independent Manchester spots look.
From the smart serif of The Pearl up in Prestwich, to the classic caff look of Woodys Cafe in Altrincham, via loads of spots in the city centre like Band on the Wall, Trof and The Smithfield Tavern, Gregg’s iconic lettering sprawls the Greater Manchester map.
There’s more. Altrincham Market, Reserve Wines, Auteur Store in Chorlton, Peste in Ancoats, Bruk, Stockroom and Tawny Stores in Stockport. Pretty much everywhere you can think of in his hometown of Macclesfield. For the last three decades and more, he’s been quietly shaping the look of the city, one letter at a time.
His favourite Macc haunt, The Depot (run by the folk behind Honest Crust), is absolutely covered in pieces of his work. They make a mean mortadella sandwich and serve loads of local craft beer. Understandably, if the job is small enough ‘not a lot of money changes hands’.
There’s a few different approaches, but his favourite is what some people term ‘quick shit’ – lettering that takes no more than four strokes per letter. It’s what achieves that old-school look you’ll know from markets and butchers and the like. ‘Quick’ is very much the operative word here – it’s amazing how quickly the words appear, just taking a few seconds per letter.
The sign painter’s toolkit – Gregg says – is pretty simple. You need ‘your stick, your brushes and your box’. This is obviously self-deprecating, you need years of practice to make it look this easy, and a healthy dose of artistry too, but in terms of actual kit it’s all pretty lo-fi. He mostly gets from job to job on the train.
Despite the prolificness of his work, sign painting is not a skill that is readily accessible anymore. The year after he studied it at college, the course was discontinued.
Simply put, it had fallen out of fashion. Instead of the skill and labour needed to create hand painted signs, people were often opting for vinyl lettering instead. ‘People wouldn’t wait a week for you to paint a van’, as Gregg puts it.
Luckily, like other analogue activities from making bread to collecting records having made a resurgence – in no small part due to the pandemic – lots of people suddenly had the opportunity to get into some of the slower things in life. Traditional sign painting, it seems, is among them.
Next time you’re out and about in town, or in the suburbs, keep an eye out for some old-school signage. There’s a good chance it’s one of Gregg’s.
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