Letraset dry transfer lettering in 1974
I still treasure a Letraset catalogue from 1974. I’m not sure why, as I never really got on with Letraset. If you don’t remember it, I had better explain that in those days it was a form of instant “dry transfer” “rub-down” lettering. And I never could get it lined up straight.
Those were the days long before QuarkXPress (launched in 1987) and Adobe PhotoShop (launched in February 1990).
The catalogue begins:
For designers, graphic artists, draughtsmen, typographers, in fact anyone connected with graphic art, the name Letraset is synonymous with high quality graphic art materials.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times… Can you believe it? We worked on paper! Where did we ever find the time to apply headlines to artwork letter by letter, rubbed from the back of a transparent plastic sheet?
Letraset vehicles for architectural drawings - 1974 style
There were foreign alphabets, too. And it wasn’t just lettering. There were borders, lines, electronics symbols and even art illustrations such as cars and people for use on architectural drawings.
Image from a Letraset art sheet of 1974 - when smoking was clearly fashionable...
I was at university at the time and I have to admit I mostly used the catalogue as a source book for drawing my own fonts in pen and ink – badly, no doubt, as I am not a natural artist.
Two of my favourite typefaces for pen work in 1974
By the time I became a newspaper reporter, then sub-editor/designer in the late 1970s, hot metal was on the way out in the industry and we used a computer typesetting system that spewed out headlines and text on strips of “bromide” paper, to be cut with a scalpel by a compositor and stuck with wax on to a paper sheet with the columns, gutters and horizontal guide lines printed in non-reproducing blue.
The comps had to get whole blocks straight, but at least they weren’t fiddling with individual letters. Actually, I lie. I remember once when I was “stone sub” I made a comp cut up the letters of a word and rearrange them, as the spelling was wrong. Then I went to check and found it had been right the first time, so he kindly rearranged it again.
The word was “sacrilege”. It was in 7-point type (that’s VERY small). The little bits of bromide stuck to his fingertips but he got there in the end and put a piece of Sellotape over it to hold it in place. I won’t spell that wrongly ever again…
But back to the Letraset. Around this time I volunteered to help out with a community newsletter using the dry transfer technology and this was where I found I really could NOT line up the headline type using Letraset.
The instructions make it sound so easy ( ! ):
Remove the siliconised backing paper and position required letter on pre-drawn guide line.
Press the letter on to the art surface with your finger and then shade lightly over the whole letter with a ballpoint pen, soft pencil or other blunt instrument.
Carefully pull away the sheet, making sure the transfer has been completed.
Repeat until your word is complete. Then place the backing paper over the lettering and burnish moderately hard for firm adhesion with a smooth instrument, such as the cap of a ballpoint pen.
The system even has “Spacematic – an automatic spacing system which gives optically correct letter spacing…”
Anyway, as I say, I never did quite get it right.
I still love looking at the typefaces, remembering my favourites (for drawing myself) from those days. It was the 1970s.
It was a time of space travel and science fiction and very early computers…
Space age fonts from the Letraset 1974 catalogue
It was a time of psychedelia and flower power…
Flower power fonts from Letraset in 1974
It was also a time when most font designers were men with beards…
These were the world’s top type designers in 1974 and they selected Letraset’s special Letragraphica series of typefaces. “And their choice reflects the very latest thinking in typography and type design”.
Derek Birdsall, Roger Excoffon, Colin Forbes, Armin Hofmann, Herb Lubalin, Marcello Minale and Lou Dorfsman - top design gurus in 1974
Just a few of the special Letragraphica fonts from Letraset in 1974
I intended to label this blog post as “Things of the past: Letraset” – until I googled Letraset and found they are still flourishing. And they still do transfer lettering!
According to Wikipedia, Letraset naturally saw a decline in sales of these materials in the 1990s so moved into the desktop publishing industry with software packages for Mac such as ImageStudio and ColorStudio.
These weren’t very successful, but as Letraset held the rights to their fonts, it made sense to enter the digital font market. They began releasing many fonts in formats such as postscript.
Letraset has also continued to produce marker pens for artwork – in 1974 they emphasised their use of the Pantone colour matching system.
Pantone marker pens from Letraset in 1974
It is fascinating to see that Letraset are now big in the Manga market and hold very successful monthly manga art competitions online, for art drawn using their colouring pens and materials.
Manga art by Francesca di Dedda and Emiko Lester from the Letraset competition pages online
The Squirrelbasket 
Ah Letraset, I remember well how beautiful it could look – in anyone’s hands but mine. My career as an editor would have been doomed had the PC/Apple had not been invented.
Until I read your blog, I’d completely forgotten the night terrors associated with handling artwork. I can’t draw a straight line with a ruler, so my efforts with Letraset, where you had not just to get it in a straight line but also worry about the letter spacing, reduced tough Glaswegian production staff to tears – and not of laughter. Even when they removed that task from me, I was left with proofs to mark up. Astonished by my liberal use of Tipp-ex, a colleague suggested I would be better making a career as an interior decorator. Oddly, my grandfather was a house painter.
On the subject of nostalgia, I’m about to celebrate yet another birthday with wine served in glasses a kind Letraset-addict (not that I knew that at the time) gave me for my 21st. Cheers!
Thanks for keeping up with my blog – never knew so many people had the same memories! Thanks for sharing yours…
Coincidentally, I bought some Letraset a few days before you wrote this post, and had the same nostalgia trip. The stationary shop in town had a very small selection. I opted for the rather bland Helvetica bold. I’d have loved a retro space-age font instead!
There must be a market for this kind of thing now. Hmm.
Great post. 🙂
Thanks for taking the trouble to comment! I was reminded of Letraset a few weeks ago when I decided to get some sticky white letters to put on my keyboard keys as the original letters had worn off. Reasonably successful – although no way straight.
And now that I have recalled those retro space-age fonts, I seem to be noticing them everywhere on the livery of the vans of small businesses…
Hi, Pat – I LOVE your blog!!! Found it when searching for Letraset to see if I could find any colour strips for the Color Tag system, which I still have!! Your blog of February re Letraset brought back the bad/good old days of graphic design the hard way. Thanks!
Aw, thanks ever so much for commenting! That sort of rub-down Letraset was such a part of so many people’s lives, even though it was so difficult to get right. I work in newspaper design now, among other things, and PhotoShop etc makes things so easy. Work is like play!
All the best to you…
It was all about Letraset at my art college in the mid ’80s! And in 1985 we bought a Mac Plus… so we all kind of juggled the two (the printouts from our Mac had very jagged text, which in itself was quite exciting and I used it for some projects). In my job as a graphic designer it was interesting to see us move from the big drawing boards to the Macs – slowly! Around 1987 it was 50/50, and by 1989 we had chucked all but one drawing board. I kind of miss those days, but the job took so much longer then, and I always seemed to run out of the letter ‘R’! I still own a massive bag of Letraset sheets.
Thanks for stopping by to comment. I was more a journalist than a designer in those days, so never could get Letraset straight.
And I cringe at my first attempts with a Mac at work, putting together a supplement where at least it wasn’t crooked like Letraset but the spacing was totally haywire…
Best wishes:)
Thanks for the delightful trip down memory lane! Ahh … the days of X-acto knives, Rubylith and rolls of 1-point tape. Somewhere in my desk are a dusty pica pole, proportion wheel and dried out non-repro pen.
Thanks for the comment.
My memories of 1-point tape are from my “stone sub” days at a time when the compositors used professional paste-up methods. Often I returned to my desk to find a skinny roll of 1-point stuck to the bottom of my shoe (or even inside my jumper, on one occasion)!
I remember Letragraphica vey well. I drew the font ‘Fino’ at Graphic Concept in 1972 which was the third Australian typeface to be accepted into the Letragraphica collection!
Gosh, fascinating! I have now looked in my old Letraset catalogue and there it is – Fino. Hopefully you can see it if you click on that link.
Nice one, very elegant and slim…
Best wishes from the northern hemisphere 🙂
I’m still hunting for Letraset’s “Cardinal” in a TrueType version [or OpenType–I’m not picky]. I loved that type face in the 80s and I’ve loved it ever since. Mostly I’ve used it in glass engraving–photocopying the page from the 1980 catalog, cutting out the paper letters, photocopying again and finally transferring to a rubber stencil to cut out with an Xacto. Definitely not as precise as typesetting could be…but in glass work, it’s pretty impressive. Would love to be able to type with it! [MyFonts has a knockoff, which isn’t too bad but the lines are not as “clean.”]
That shows great dedication! It is a lovely font, rather gothic, or am I meaning faerie?
I had a look on Word and there is nothing like it for “typing with” either – although Vivaldi is quite elegant, but without the curls.
For anyone who doesn’t know what Cardinal is like (and I didn’t myself), there’s a version here.
Good luck with your hunt, Virginia 🙂
Btw–your blog here stirred up my late and latent hankering for Arnold Boecklin, Countdown, and Davida. Just bought from fonts.com [and started a “wish list” 🙂 ]. Thanks!
I went to art college from 1977 to 1981 and still have a Letraset catalogue dated 1979. I work as a teaching assistant in a junior school and I still use the catalogue as reference for different typefaces when making headings for displays etc. I wouldn’t be without it! 🙂
Excellent! I’m all for hand-drawn type.
Keep up the good work…
Best wishes 🙂
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