Is there room for tradition when it comes to attracting passing custom with an impressive shop front? Reporter Liam Geraghty spoke to local tradespeople and customers who are fighting to preserve traditional signage and shop exteriors in the face of modernisation for The Business.
Graphic Designer Trevor Finnegan told Liam he is trying to photograph as many old shop fronts as possible.
“Literally every single time I drive through a town, I kind of try to take the back roads or try to stay off the motorway as much as possible just to see if I can find any random shops.”
He showed Liam The Railway Bar in Banagher, Co. Offaly and told him what he likes about traditional Irish shop fronts.
“There’s like a really interesting colour palate used. But also the fact that they’ve hand-painted on a tile effect on the actual wall to make it look like a 3D tile is like, really, really different and unique. We have a very kind of unique style of shop front in Ireland. Like, even towards Britain, it’s completely different. We tend to use a lot of bold colours. A lot of the typography is very unique to Ireland as well.”
Listen back to the whole segment on The Business here.