Glasgow’s Merchant City Festival brought a touch of 70s glam rock to the city ahead of the opening of this year's event.

Jill O'Sullivan, Drew Taylor and Urara Tsuchiya from Oh! You Pretty Things will be celebrating the music of David Bowie and Roxy Music at an event at Old Fruitmarket.

It runs from Saturday to August 7 and presents some of the best of Scottish and international art and entertainment.

The festival will be joining the country in celebrating the Year of Innovation, Architecture and Design 2016 through a range of creative events.

The festival, which kicks off this weekend, will be inviting people to try their hand at the forgotten art of lettering, learn more about the best of Glasgow’s architecture and look closer at the designs of city pubs.

Glasgow Institute of Architects will be holding a week-long pop-up exhibition focusing on the Architecture Design Awards given to Glasgow buildings or Glaswegian architects, with a modern treasure map on hand to help point out exactly where they can be found.

Also in focus will be Glasgow's much loved pubs.

An exhibit by Architects Dress for the Weather will bring together a number of drawings illustrating how pub design has developed in the city over the years. To get the full experience, a tailormade guided tour is offered.

Alongside a whole host of design talks, activities and exhibitions will be Merchant City Letterheads and Better Letters who will be offering demonstrations on everything there is to know about lettering.

Frank Carty from Artisan Artworks, which creates hand crafted signs, will be running a Merchant City Letterheads live demonstration on Saturday 30 and Sunday 31 June.

Frank, joined by five other Scottish signwriters and a visiting artists from Bristol, will be painting signs for the festival events in full view of the public.

He said: “The idea is for people to see what goes into the traditional art and craft of hand painting signs. We'll be working 11am until 4pm Saturday and Sunday in a makeshift sign studio in the middle of Merchant Square”

Better Letters, who organise creative hand-lettering workshops, will also be hosting an event for creatives with renowned American sign writer Mike Meyers.

Participants will be able to try their hand at creating their very own piece of lettering under the watchful eye of the experts.

Sam Roberts, who runs Better Letters and Ghostsigns, has been researching the life and times of hand painted advertising from around the world for over ten years.

He said: “We’re running a two day introductory workshop with Mike Myer which will teach the skills of sign writing, painting and lettering with brush.

“We do the workshop all over the world and it tends to be artistic people or those who are interested in design and typography that come along.

“These days, because a lot of stuff is done on the computer, people really enjoy going back to the original skills of painting with hand.”

In the evening, Sam will be presenting “Ghostsigns: An Illustrated Talk” in Glasgow City Halls where audience members can learn about historic painted signs.

One particular sign of interest is on Glasgow’s Otago Street, advertising Red Hackle whiskey.

“The sign is huge and is all cracking and peeling and old looking so that's what I refer to as Ghostsigns”, Sam said.

“Some of them are from the Victorian times - I research them all and give a general talk with loads of pictures showing examples from all over the world.”

Following the workshops will be “A conversation with Mike Meyer”, along with three short films focused on signwriting and lettering from three different continents.