We looked at various printing options at first: cast vinyl with aggressive adhesive was an obvious candidate. The problem is that such solutions would probably not be able to withstand the extreme environment swirling around a 30m silo.

So we decided on a novel solution—paint by numbers. Paint by numbers was a past time, popular in the ’70s and ’80s, that allowed anyone with a modest artistic ability to produce a painted masterpiece (ok, not really, but you get the picture).

We produced an outline of a painting template, cut out the tracing lines on a Summa cutter, and then applied the Drytac adhesive to the silo. From there we spray painted the dotted lines on to the silo, and when we peeled off the adhesive, we had an outline for the painter to work to.

The chocolate pip was 3.5 metres wide and 2.5 metres deep. The glass-and-a-half was already painted on the silo so we had to make sure that the size and spacing of our pip was correct so that the milk would drain into the Cadbury logo of the chocolate.

The painter only had a palette of a 4 browns and a white to choose but the results speak for themselves.