A generation before home computers, Letraset’s dry transfer lettering made desktop typography possible – and gave a small group of type designers new insights into letterform construction through the art of stencil-cutting.
When the London-based company Letraset launched its first dry-transfer typefaces in 1961, its advertisements proclaimed this new letter method ‘revolutionary’. And in its way it was: those sheets of rubdown Letraset fonts allowed graphic designers, commercial artists, admen, art students, anyone really, to set their own display type, without having to spend time and money sending out lettering to be metal typeset or drawn by hand by specialist artists, as had been the case until then. ‘For “roughs”, finished art, wherever the printed word is to appear, you will find Letraset a natural expedient,’ promised one early ad. This was, it should be remembered, half a century ago.
Letraset was the interregnum between hot and cold type, and between photo and digital composition. Yet, it is by and large overlooked in design histories. Many thought it wasn’t ‘real’ typesetting, and feared that letting anyone and everyone get their hands on it would lower standards.
By the 1990s, computers and desktop publishing heralded ‘the death of dry transfer’. Google ‘Letraset’ today, and it brings up marker pens. But once, in the glory days, ‘You walked down Carnaby Street and every shopfront fascia had a Letraset font. There was the glamour of it all … the glamour of the 1960s.’
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