By James Dobson
Posted on Saturday, January 31st, 2026
I’ve had the usual bulky overhead projectors over the years, but their size has always annoyed me, particularly when I travelled a lot around Australia, signwriting years ago. They are a great tool for both production and, what many don’t realize, they can be a great learning tool in the early stages of traditional signwriting.
Projectors have long been used by signwriters, but artists actually started using optical aids widely around the 16th century as the “lens makers” and the “artists” were both in the same guild. Leonardo da Vinci was an avid user of the “Camera Obscura” prior to that. Interestingly, it was around this time that a strange kind of “realism” started to show up in the commercial art of that period—go figure!
Today I use a mini projector that lets me project any file that I pull up on my laptop’s screen onto a sign, wall or vehicle. Mine is a ViewSonic M1 Mini, and you can see the size of it in the photos. They typically range in price between $300 to $400 online.
Here you see it set up on the small adjustable plastic stand on a small piece of ACM. I find this easier as it provides a solid base. It also allows you to move the projector around freely so that you can position the image you’re projecting optimally on the format.
I connect the projector to my small laptop as I find it easier to manipulate images I grab off the internet. I can also add text and place it on panels to quickly show a client their requests. Hopefully my portfolio has convinced them to leave the designing up to me but we all know that’s not always the case!
Many times I either don’t have the projector with me or I can’t be bothered setting it up. So I’ll just draw a quick thumbnail on the spot then freehand the design onto the format, adjusting and correcting as I go. I notice that when done completely freehand like that, the signs seem to have a different rhythm. I think it helps to maintain your pure hand-eye co-ordination.
But for complex or repetitive design elements, particularly multiples of the same thing, the projector helps greatly in terms of accuracy and time. Keep in mind here, particularly for those that assume the projector is somehow “cheating”, is that all you’ll get from a projector is an accurate proportional outline, that’s it! The projector won’t “do” the sign for you; it’s simply a sensible time-saving tool in much the same way a builder uses power tools over traditional ones.
James Dobson currently lives and works in Albury, New South Wales, Australia.
