BLAG Has Moved (Downstairs)

Timestamping the first iteration of BLAG’s new HQ and its freshly mounted panels.

Better Letters

• 4 min read
Desk in a corner of a room with the white walls filled with a variety of hand-painted signs of all sizes and types.
Where the magic now happens.

My family and I moved to Catalonia, Spain, on 22 August 2019 and, after a couple of long-term rentals, we were finally able to buy a place in our adopted home of Sant Pere de Ribes last year. While that was all very exciting (and stressful), I had to adapt to working in a tiny corner of our bedroom, and the loss of my sit-stand desk.

The desk is one of the measures I use to mitigate my chronic back pain, which was exacerbated in 2021 by a double hernia. Since the move I’ve had a series of quite bad inflammations, along with the resulting mental health impacts, which brought home just how important that desk is. So, on Friday last week, I took affirmative action and started to investigate whether our garage could work as an office.

Well, two days and a lot of drilling later, I present BLAG’s new headquarters.

Detail of the desk and the signs on the portions of wall in front and to the right of the desk.
This is the desk in the sitting position, which I do on this exercise/yoga ball to improve my posture. The little grey panel on the left can then be used to move it upwards into the standing position.

The space at large really needs renovating, but I got completely absorbed in making this corner of it somewhere that I want to work. A massive part of that was finally hanging a host of panels that I’ve been given over the years. (Some of these were still packaged up from the move in 2019.) It already feels wonderful to be able to look up and see work that inspires me and reminds me of the people that produced it.

View of the desk and all the signs on the walls. The same image is repeated below with a fade on it to make a numerical annotation visible, which corresponds to the numbered list below.
That the 26 pieces equals the number of letters in the Latin alphabet is just a nice coincidence that I only noticed when annotating this picture for the list below. Now to work towards 36 so that the numerals are accounted for too.
  1. After hosting the London screenings of Sign Painters in 2014 (see 17 below), Mike Meyer and I returned to The Roxy (RIP) for the 2015 London Design Festival. We paired the film with Adrian Harrison’s 21st Century Victorian and Mike painted this panel to display at our public workshop in the heart of Borough Market.
  2. This is one of five hand-painted signs that I brought back from Cambodia with me. It is the same on the reverse and features in my first ever book, Hand-Painted Signs of Kratie (see 9 below).
  3. Not hand-painted, this framed print of Charles Bukowski’s poem, Roll the Dice, is a constant source of courage and inspiration for me. (I’ve never heard Bukowski reading it, but this reading is quite good.)
  4. Probably my favourite of the signs I brought back from Cambodia, and notable because the reverse side has a completely different portrait.
  5. Faux neon (2022) by Dapper Signs (RIP).
  6. BLAG (2024) by Daniel Esteve Carbonell, as featured in BLAG 06.
  7. BLAG (2022) by Oscar Nomen, as featured in BLAG 02.
  8. Ghana Adventory Store, painted by Leonardo (RIP) for the poster insert in BLAG 04. Leonardo was one of the Deadly Prey artists profiled in one of the main features from that issue.
  9. Original cover art for Hand-Painted Signs of Kratie, painted by Sai Sokheang in 2012.
  10. Tokyo 2019 by Skiltmaler Gundersen, won in the Tokyo Letterheads auction.
  11. Nihil Plus Quam Signum by David Kynaston. (That’s IOAFS in Latin, as featured in BLAG 07.)
  12. Mr Ghost Signs (2023) by Francois Tusseki.
  13. B (2022) by Sunny Sign Co., as featured in BLAG 02. This early colour scheme for the Issue 01 logotype/masthead was eventually replaced with the green that linked to the final cover photo selection.
  14. 福 (2017) by Charmaine Chen for the Tactile show. Charmaine writes: “Growing up in a Chinese family, Mom would often hang this Mandarin character up on our front door during Chinese New Year: 福 (Fú), meaning fortune or luck. Here it is upside down and the reasoning for this is based on a wordplay: the words for ‘upside-down’ (倒, dào) and ‘to arrive’ (到, dào) are homophonous. Therefore, the phrase an ‘Upside-down Fú’ sounds nearly identical to the phrase ‘Good luck arrives’. Displaying the character upside-down on a door therefore invites prosperity to descend upon a dwelling.”
  15. Thanks Mate (2017) by Barbara Enright.
  16. S by Daniel Esteve Carbonell.
  17. Sign Painters (2014) by Mark Josling and Brilliant Signs. This is one of two identical panels that slotted into an A-Board for the screenings. Along with 18 (below) on the reverse, it was also used on a small postcard printed for the events.
  18. As above.
  19. Lockdown Roberts (2020) by Mark Oatis.
  20. BCN Letterheads (2021) by Nico Barrios, painted at the Barcelona Letterheads.
  21. Fileteado Porteño panel (2016) by Gustavo Ferrari.
  22. Letterheads (2018) by Noel B. Weber from the original artwork by John Frazier. See BLAG 07 for more on this piece and BLAG 03 for more about John Frazier.
  23. Mazeppa Mardi Gras (2014) by Mark Josling, won in the auction at my first ever Letterheads meet.
  24. Fileteado Porteño panel (2019) by Gustavo Ferrari.
  25. BTRLTRS Minnesota licence plate given to me by Mike Meyer.
  26. BLAG (2026) by yours truly, painted during the Carga Máxima workshop in Barcelona with Azucena Cabezas.

PS. You’ve Got Mail

As a little house warming present my local sign painter, Daniel Esteve Carbonell, decorated our post (mail) box. Can you guess the inspiration/theme?

It’s always nice to get ‘snail’ mail, and this is a great place for it to land.

So, there you have BLAG HQ 1.0. It will be fun to compare it to future iterations, but for the time being I’m excited that this is where I’ll be coming ‘back to school’ after Letterheads 2026: Sea Level in Amsterdam.

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