| Issue #0314/8/26 - Cal Gillespie - 3 minute read |
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| Hola, compañeros!
I’m sending this one a little early, as you won’t hear much from me over the next 3 months.
Let me explain…
True to form, I booked myself a winter holiday to attend the Amsterdam Letterheads & visit Alba’s family in Barcelona. Then, after some stars aligned, the trip blew out by an extra 2 months in South America. Vamos!
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| So, we’re bringing some new energy to the studio. |
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| Let me introduce you to our first star, Ruby.
Ruby Laxton (Rosy Sign Co.) Ruby is a gun designer, signpainter and gold leaf guilder from Newcastle, originally from Sydney. Ruby is super keen to try out Melbourne life. |
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| Rosy Sign Co, Coogee Pavilion |
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| After doing a 2 week handover with us, Ruby will be taking care of our signwriting duties while I’m away.
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| Rosy Sign Co, Greenberg’s |
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| The second star that we’re bringing to the team is… Brooke Muckle is coming onboard casually to help with our events & activations work, and is a keen signwriting student. In her spare time, she’s an avid painter and recently took out the People’s Choice award at the 50 Squared Art Prize at the Brunswick Street Gallery. She can’t wait to get her teeth stuck into the hand-painted murals we so often do. |
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| Brooke Muckle, 50 Squared Exhibition, Brunswick Street Gallery |
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| If you’ve been following along, you’ll know there’s never a dull moment here at Bala Graphics. |
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| We recently made the trip (okay, more than one) out to wine country to update the signage at the Yarra Valley Grand Hotel. This included a wonderful 3D bevelled hanging sign shown below, made completely in-house with the help of our 3D Printer. |
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| Yarra Valley Grand Hotel - Yarra Valley, June 2026 |
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| Painting in Melbourne winter can be a
real pain in the behind. |
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| This job for Rosalia out in Gisborne was no exception. Frosty 3c mornings with daytime highs of 12c and howling winds; the top of an extension ladder was not where you wanted to be. Alas, we got this abstract art up in time for the opening of the display suite for this ever sprawling city. |
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| Rosalia - Gisborne, July 2026 |
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| We’re stoked to be a part of the Corner Hotel’s 30th Birthday celebrations. Ruby had the chance to get on the brushes and paint & install her first batch of the Coming Up boards. The yellow highlights indicate their birthday celebrations with a secret act to be announced soon. |
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| Corner Hotel - Richmond, August 2026 |
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| As always, more pubs, more chalkboards, more traditional signwriting. These ones here are for the Ball Court Hotel in Sunbury, done on our way back from Gisborne. |
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| Ball Court Hotel - Sunbury, August 2026 |
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| To be fair, it hasn’t all been brushwork as of late. |
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| We recently stepped into the Gaming Hub of RMIT to install this mesmerising mirror wall. We can’t take all the credit for this, as the job came through the wonderful Lu at Stickup Industries. This is one of those cases where the photos don’t do the job justice. The wall spans more than 12m long and is double sided, with these playful abstract gradients. |
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| RMIT Gaming Hub, July 2026 |
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| The entire wall was clad with mirror ACP, before wet applying printed 3M Ultra Clear vinyl. We finished the install off by capping the edges and console cut-outs with black aluminium trim.
Check it out; our first national roll-out!
Our favourites over at Storepro landed a national roll-out of the new Lad Collective range. This meant building 48 flatpacks to be sent out nationally. For us, this was over 230 lineal metres of print and 50 sheets, our biggest print run yet! |
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| Lad Collective, August 2026 |
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| On the horizon, we’re delving into more events & activations work. Prepping for a big summer, most notably a number of pub activations for the NFL match at the G. |
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| | We’re eagerly waiting to see how our Expression of Interest has been received for Glen Eira Council’s Elsternwick Plaza Creative Lighting project. Our multi-faceted pitch included a number of lighting & mural elements in order to brighten up the Plaza and activate the gathering spaces at night. Fingers crossed! |
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| Mockup of Elsternwick Plaza by night, August 2026 |
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| Remember how I mentioned the Japanese Anime themed bar in the city, back in Issue 2?
Since then, we’ve delivered a number of gaming booth wraps to suit their cutting edge fit-out. Designed in-house, built by our clients builder, and wrapped by us. These 6 private booths will be full table service, bookable gaming booths. We can’t wait to share the final product in the coming months. |
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| Akiba - Melbourne, June 2026 |
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| That’s all for now folks. You can expect the next Bala Times to land in your inbox in November, until then… Nos vemos en tres mesas. Hasta luego! |
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| RMIT Gaming Hub, July 2026 |
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