When was letraset invented

Bear in mind this is happening in Australia, mid-summer, before car air-conditioning. The courier transported the artwork on the back parcel-shelf of his vehicle, in direct sunlight, across town in peak-hour traffic, to meet a VERY tight deadline. By the time it arrived at the other end, when the parcel was opened, a confetti shower of greasy curled-up correction patches fell out of the bag.

This eccentric genius would come in on a weekly basis with his latest version. The art department staff were like dope-fiends waiting for our dealer to deliver hashish. All good. It used lead type set upside-down and backwards one letter at a time, which was then pressed onto colored illustration board using a thin film of colored pigment mylar in between that transfered the heated letters onto the art board.

I burnt my fingers many a time picking up still-hot type, but the effects were as good as one could get and still create the type in all kinds of mostly primary colors.

I well remember several of these sheets. What a nice find… My Dad died two years ago — he was a graphic artist he preferred to call himself a commercial artist who trained in the late s and worked right up until the early 80s in New Zealand. Have pulled out some sheets and his burnishers as keepsakes.

My Tutor told me about this designer that made wedding invitations that where produced with hand rendered typefaces. As technology advanced he used it to his advantage, he still created a unique typeface for his clients invitations but scanned the type into a software programme to mass produce, then hand rendering the names to give it the personal touch. This was a good example of how he used technology to be more beneficial and save time, do you have any similar experiences?

I was also in charge of running the stat machine which allowed logo makers and graphic designers to get a crisp photo image of the logos they created using the LetraSet kits. I loved it because I developed true skill for running images. Oh the wonderful nostalgia! I was gutted. Great Post… Nice share for me, maybe nice for all reader of your post.. After 40 years as an artist and still is I tell my juniors everyday they missed the good days of commercial art, now they call it graphic art with a computer but the skill was in the past.

I was an employee of their Paramus, NJ office from as a tech support rep. I worked the helpdesk and got yelled at a lot over the phone by disgruntled users. I googled letraset rub on letters for fun and found this forum, this is a blast from my past. I started a graphic design typography firm in and built it into a 10 plus full time operation with stat cameras, lots of drafting tables and went heavy into photo typesetting ending up with the top of the line Compugraphic machines.

And we paid a fortune farming it out and revisions ment several trips to pick them up. By we were swirling in a black hole and I was down to one FT and one PT employee and everything was done on the Mac….

Not even the company that used to service them. I even offered to give it all away for parts…. No surprise. Then I cut up the old type machines with a sawzall and slowly put them in my trash.

It was a great adventure starting from nothing…. I wish I saved my zillion sheets of run ons so my Grand kids could play with them….. I too lived through the era of Letraset, Zipatone, and Haberules. One of the most wistful moments of my career came a few years into the digital revolution.

I walked into the local art supply store and their entire stock of thousands of Letraset sheets was on sale for pennies a sheet. ColorStudio handled bitmaps and vectors and would allow the editing of Encapsulated PostScript files created in other programs.

ColorStudio could be used to set pages, though not its forte. And what task could Ventura Desktop perform at which Indesign fails see previous comment near the top? I worked at Letraset at the first place to produce it. It was next to Foyels book shop near Fleet Street and the inventor was very hands on then. I knew the inventor and was around at home when he discussed with my father his idea for the product that became Letraset.

Nice article! I used to use Letraset to produce neat data capture forms in the late 70s. All the headings and text were then added with Letraset. This formed an original from which we had the blank sheets printed for use in the field.

Letraset was the king of graphic art. I started doing hand-comps and photo-comps in , and was a master with a rapidiograph pen -drawing on pounced denril. Press type, ruling tapes, crop marks, exacto knives, wax machines, INT transfers, stat-cameras, film work, Koh-i-nor, Chartpak, Zipotone, spraymount, stripping, goldenrod, rubylith, amberlith, mechanicals, typesetting, character counting, non-repro blue pencils, french curves, electric erasers, airbrush and friskets!!! Wow, it has been quite a graphic ride.

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Advanced Search. Forgot Password? Join today. Not a member? How-tos, tips and tricks and more. Join for free today! Recommended For You. Gene Gable has spent a lifetime in publishing, editing and the graphic arts and is currently a technology consultant and writer. Gene's interest in graphic design history and letterpress printing resulted in his popular columns "Heavy Metal Madness" and "Scanning Around with Gene" here on CreativePro.

Anonymous says:. September 17, at pm. Log in to Reply. David Jahntz says:. May 17, at pm. September 18, at am. When starting in the studio we had to practise cutting circles freehand, and then to begin with just drawing missing characters. We were schooled in the principles of analysis — understanding how to break down a structure, and then build it back up again. I think the entire collection of Letraset stencil masters was given to St Bride as part of the permanent collection of contemporary history of type.

You may be aware that in ITC and St Bride created a publication celebrating the high standard of craftsmanship of the Letraset stencil cutters. It is about the quest for extraordinary quality through craft that aimed to free typeface design from the shackles of previous technologies and to promote innovation in typeface design and to essentially transform typography. AS: Can you describe the process of designing a Letraset typeface — from commission to delivery?

We worked at between four and six inches cap height for the benefit of younger readers to mm. Although with more intricate designs — we worked at much larger sizes. Previously, I believe, they were artworking at ten inches. They held an international typeface competition where new designs were chosen by a panel for the Letragraphica subscription range. Or, we might be at a stage where we would be allowed to design typefaces in-house. Most of the submitted typefaces were supplied to Letraset as quite rough smaller scale drawings, sometimes just as marker sketches, and all had to be drawn up, and in most cases a fuller range of letters designed.

One of these was Masquerade, that designer Martin Wait sent in as an idea for a typeface. They were complicated swash characters and so the artwork had to be larger than usual — quite a task to manipulate the cuts and very time-consuming. Each swash letter took two days to cut. No skill was required, and the result is comparable with the best quality printing and typesetting available at the time.

In , an entirely new process to achieve the same results was conceived whereby no water or frame was necessary. The transfer was made merely by pressure applied to each letter with a pencil or ballpoint pen.

The new product was named Instant Transfer Lettering and, being suited for the North American market, was first introduced there. All Letraset sheets were expendable — letters could only be used once — and were supplied from a library range of over items. The rapid rise of Letraset Limited in the s and s is one example of how a company carefully evolved its new technology into a profitable manufacturing and worldwide export trade business.

This began a DIY typography revolution that made it easy for anyone to display typefaces. Their product was a new type of pre-printed sheets of rub-down letters based on a sticky adhesive that was applied with pressure and without the need of water or any intermediate silkscreen. The world of advertising and marketing was transformed entirely once it was introduced onto the scene in It all started in in London when Dai Davies thought of using transfers to replace letterpress, which was the primary form of impressing letters at that time, according to John A.

What they set out to create started out as waterslide decals that have been used since the s but as lettering. Soon it evolved into the more established dry transfers. A further advantage we gained from self-reliance was a greater knowledge and control of our production processes.

In order to launch their sheets of rub-down letters, Mackenzie and Davies borrowed money in from John Chudley, the third partner to the company.

In a very short time, the company went public in Mackenzie sold his shares and left the company. In the same year, the company also acquired Kippax Pneuminor Silkscreen Press. They kept building their business, got into more printing sheets of transfer letters, but this time with color.

The team soon set up their operation in Ashford after purchasing a rotogravure press. When the business kept growing, the company bought a factory in Italy. The factory gave them more freedom by using litho presses for printing transfers. However, the company was looking for more ways to stay relevant in the business with new ideas for its rub-ons.

And though it may not have invented it, the company definitely had a hand at making it popular. By , the company migrated to making Action Transfer sets, a collection of printed rub-down transfers, according to Action-Transfers.

For strategic reasons, the company did not want to be mixed up with Polaroid. In addition to the fashionable abundance of its typefaces, Letraset had another edge — quite literally — over the competition. Stencil masters of typefaces would be cut freehand from ultra-thin red Rubylith masking film manufactured by Ulano in the US using what was essentially a razor blade fixed with sticky tape to a piece of wood. The stencil-cutting was a matter of more than mere technique: trainee stencil-cutters were required to understand letterform construction — its stresses and proportions and curves — and to cut and recut and recut again until they had the perfect letter.

When we started to do stencil cutting we understood the width of characters, the balance of characters… why the bow of a good letter P is wider than the R. In some cases they were almost like football players, getting a transfer — they would get a call offering to double their money.

In the previous decade, the company had expanded and diversified and not particularly wisely , acquiring a toy-and-games manufacturer and, most oddly, the stamp company Stanley Gibbons in There was the glamour of it all … the glamour of the s. Typefaces on Letraset and Letragraphica sheets. Compacta, , designed by Fred Lambert for Letraset.