Lockie: An Irish sign painter and lettering artist keeping craft alive in London
“I want to be part of a movement that maintains a craft”
London-based Irish signwriter and lettering artist Loughlin “Lockie” Brady Smith is renewing an old craft, keeping hand-painted lettering alive in his work across Ireland and the United Kingdom.
Trained as a designer but instinctively drawn to making with his hands, Lockie has built a practice rooted in typography. From gilded windows and shopfronts to murals and decorative lettering, his work pushes back against the assumption that design must be digital to be modern.
Lockie speaks about the culture of craft in Ireland, the quiet revival of traditional signwriting, and why analogue techniques matter more than ever. For him, the brush is not nostalgia, it is expression, identity and a way of keeping creativity grounded in the human hand.
