One small note: Some email providers may clip this issue because it’s packed full. Click the subject line anytime to read the full version on the Substack website or app.
I’ve been going down a Letraset rabbit hole this week. Letraset is basically the Kleenex of dry transfers (also called rub-down transfers). Other popular brands included Mecanorma, Chartpak, and Zip-A-Tone. They all made sheets of letters, illustrations, and patterns used for graphic design and layout before desktop publishing (aka the computer). This week’s five links are all about Letraset and its overlap with the zine scene.
In making the zine [Pointless Suffering] I set up a couple of rules for myself: 1. All type (with the exception of the body copy) would be set by hand, meaning it would be cut and pasted, and 2. The tools used would be analogue (with the exception of a concession I made enabling me to use digital cameras when needed), 3. No rulers or other measuring devices would be allowed, everything had to be eyeballed, 4. Fonts would be used to one’s heart’s content and combined without too much thought or prejudice, and finally 5. Everything would be in black and white, because, well, punk is black and white!
Although it was used by professional graphic designers, publications with small print runs and budgets were particularly enthusiastic adopters of Letraset. Pamphlets and flyers, such as those produced by the CCANZ, often incorporated it, as did fanzines and other counter culture material like posters.
The delightfully titled 1980s science fiction fanzine, Fission Chips, is one of many in such fanzines in the collection making use of Letraset fonts for its titles and cover pages.
And it wasn’t just the designers who got inspired. Thanks to Letraset’s hyper availability, non-designers were given license to function as professional designers. The fanzine world was quick to adopt Letraset as one of the typographical vehicles of choice, along with the typewriter, the IBM golf ball and hand lettering.
While learning about heat press transfers, we discovered a whole category of printers designed specifically for making T-shirt transfers. To make it possible to transfer designs on to dark fabrics, the printers can lay down an undercoat of white.
Which means, my friends, there is an entire subcategory of white-toner printers that wasn’t even on my radar until now. 🤯
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.