Wayne Reuben is working his way through the 99-cent specials, a to-do list of all manner of dirt-cheap grocery items — cartons of chocolate milk, tins of sardines in oil, cans of drained tomatoes.

In his cramped art studio on the second floor of Toronto’s celebrated department store, his slit of a window looking onto the Pharmacy section, Reuben dips a lettering quill into yellow tempera paint.

He’s already written the sale items in blue, all-caps lettering, and carefully painted the huge, red 99s (“Prices can be in any colour,” the store’s namesake, Ed Mirvish, used to say, “so long as it’s red”). With a few deft swipes of the brush, he finishes off sign after sign with a perfectly straight, bright border.

On a given day, he will paint between 70 and 80 signs just like these — and just like the flashy, hand-painted posters that have been a trademark of Honest Ed’s since it opened in 1948.

“It’s just something they’ve always done,” says Reuben, 64, who began painting for the store in 1967. “Everybody knows these signs.”

In spite of the digitization of advertising and the retail industry’s constant attempts to cut costs, Honest Ed’s still employs two in-house sign painters. The one-of-a-kind advertisements are too much a part of the store’s identity to lose, said Russell Lazar, Honest Ed’s general manager.

“Many, many times over the years we’ve thought about the cost of it,” he said. “But Ed loved these signs — the flow of them, the warmth — and you can’t capture that by machine.”

Reuben, 64, put his first coat of paint on an Honest Ed’s sign fresh out of a commercial art class. He left after a few years, plying his trade at other stores before returning to Honest Ed’s to paint full-time in 1994.

“It’s like I tell my kids, if you find a job you love, you’ll never work a day in your life,” Reuben said.

The ubiquitous signs have become equal parts advertising and art — something that’s made Reuben and his co-painter, Doug Kerr, anonymous yet well-known. Reuben’s gig as the sign guy, for instance, has prompted encounters with celebrities and athletes; photos of him with stars such as Pinball Clemons and Owen Hart adorn Reuben’s desk.

Like so much art produced out of the everyday, the signs’ esthetic is mostly born of utility.

Take Slash, the in-house, tilted script that’s both stylish and old-timey. When coupled with the signs’ usual flare — Exclamation marks! Emphatic underlines! Unnecessary quotation marks! — even the “Shoplifters will be prosecuted” signs seem fun and friendly.

The font, however, is chosen because it’s the fastest to do. There are hundreds of signs to make each week, after all.

“You don’t have time to do things like block letters,” Reuben said.

The observant aficionado will also have noticed blue stars that often add flourish. Those came about, Reuben said, when he was getting the hang of lettering. If there was too much white space when he finished, he’d add the little star for balance.

“It’s become my signature, I guess,” said Reuben.

Mistakes are yet another idiosyncrasy; a large poster in the Housewares department loudly announces a wall of “Gadjets,” for instance.

“Ed would say ‘That’s Honest Ed’s,’ ” Reuben said, chuckling.

Sarah Lazarovic, a 33-year-old Toronto artist, recently teamed up with Reuben to create an art project that fuses old and new technologies.

She put out a call on Twitter, asking for funny, Toronto-specific mottos or jokes, and got a range of responses including “Been there, Dundas” and “Toronto. Where the Dees are Sneaky and the Eds are Honest.”

She then had Reuben paint the musings on signs in Honest Ed’s style, lending permanence to fleeting thoughts and resulting in art that’s distinctly Toronto.

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For a limited time only, the signs will be hanging in Honest Ed’s’ housewares department, adding humour — and perhaps confusion — to the shopping experience.

The exhibit is part of a Koffler Gallery project called Summer Special. It includes a temporary gallery, set up in the men’s department, showcasing historic Honest Ed’s signs — signs Lazarovic says she has always been inspired by.

“How can you not appreciate them? Especially when you realize that they’re not printed — that every morning, Wayne gets his list of sale items and he actually paints them out. It’s pretty novel.”