The Non-Vanity Van4

A short but true story for Fathers Day.

I was going through some old photos the other week when I came across a snap of my very first design job: At the age of 14 I was commissioned by my dad to signwrite his van.

Mum and Dad have an upholstery business and at the time Dad was driving between Leeds and Bradford every day, up to Sunderland on a regular basis and made local house calls most evenings. A lot of people saw him driving around.

My original memories of the job were…

I started the sign and got bored.

Dad nagged me to do it, the sod.

It took me ages to get it perfect.

I look back with pride that my awesome work was driving around the country.

At the instant of seeing the old photo and with the perspective of now being a dad myself, my jaw dropped as reality quickly rewrote…

I started the sign and got bored

Dad encouraged me to finish the job

It took me ages to get all the paint on so the words were actually readable.

The end result was not quite as good as it was in my head…

My Masterpiece.

I especially like how the G flows into the red/pink wave :-/

I was astounded at how different the photo was to my memory of a masterpiece. I thought at the time it was a more professional job than on any other vehicle in the land.

Now you might say “That’s not bad for a 14 year old”, but would you drive around with these 4 bits of plywood bolted to your company vehicle?

I look back with pride though still, but now of how my awesome dad was driving around the country with a sign that – to put it mildly – in no way reflected the quality of his business. But if you knew the story, it did show his quality of person.

So thank you for the faith, encouragement and this particular selfless act that fueled me to pursue my creative dreams with confidence.

Thank you for this inspirational lesson in fatherhood I only came to understand twenty years later.

Thank you for asking me to do your van again last year.