What was Letraset?

Letraset may be unfamiliar to folks who didn’t live in the age of pre-digital typesetting, so here are the basics.

Letraset was an English company which invented an ingenious way of rapidly applying letterforms to paper. From its introduction in 1961, until the rise of digital desktop publishing in the mid to late 1980s, Letraset’s “instant lettering” system was a way for designers to create professional-looking headline text, without paying and waiting for traditional typesetting. It was a key piece in DIY publishing at the time.

How did Letraset work?

Letraset produced semi-transparent sheets of flexible plastic with individual letters and numbers printed on them. These carrier sheets were backed with a thin layer of pressure-sensitive glue. You’d take a sheet, pick up a suitable tool such as a rounded stick or a ballpoint pen, and rub a chosen symbol down onto the page. The letter would detach from the carrier, and stick to the page instantly.

They were thus called dry transfers, since unlike waterslide decals (a tech that Letraset initially used in 1959 before hitting on the dry idea two years later) they required no liquids to apply. Or rub-down transfers, since you physically had to burnish the letters one by one. Instant lettering was another name, one actually trademarked by Letraset, since they did not have to dry or harden once transferred. The letters could adhere easily to a variety of substrates, from paper to sheets of film to space pods.

As for Letraset’s internal process used to create the sheets, it was very labour-intensive and complex. The masters for the fonts were all cut freehand into sheets of red “rubylith” film with sharp knives. The skill that was needed to hand-cut these stencils – both in terms of manual dexterity and artistic vision – is incredible. The oversized stencils were then sent to the factory for photoreduction and printing. The transfers themselves were surprisingly complex to manufacture, since they involved several layers of material, from the carrier sheet to the printed image (which may include many colours), the glue, the temporary wax carrier layer, etc. 

Letraset sold a vast range of transfers in different sizes, styles, and colours from 1961 through to the 1990s.

What was the point of Letraset?

Applying dry transfers was a laborious and time-consuming process, since each letter had to be rubbed down one by one. This also meant the tech was totally unsuited for body text – you couldn’t realistically rub individual letters down to typeset a novel or even a magazine article.

But in the age before high-quality desktop computer printers, Letraset meant that you could produce a decent-looking set of headlines or whatever without paying to have it typeset or hand-drawn by an artist. The transfers weren’t super cheap, but compared to other means available at the time were relatively affordable and accessible. You didn’t have to wait for your text to come back from a typesetter – you could apply the letters right at your desk. You also could experiment with placement, alignment, kerning and letterspacing at ease. (or, if you messed up, the letters wouldn’t align properly or would have torn sections!) If you ran out, any art supply store would carry the range.

The difficulties in application aside, this was all a huge deal at the time. Letraset contributed as much to the explosion in counter-culture guerilla media from the 60s to 80s as it did to the tedium of corporate reports. Letraset plus a typewriter plus a photocopier meant that low-volume low-cost print material could be produced quite easily.

The fonts available ranged from classic typefaces licensed from well-known and established font foundries to somewhat cheesy and goofy display fonts made by their own designers or by contest winners. Letragraphica favourites Shatter, Baby Teeth, Sinaloa, Stack, and Frankfurter, anyone?

Dry transfers were also used for stock pictures (effectively clip art), pictograms, textures such as cross-hatching and halftone dots, and lines, sold under the Letratone and Letraline brand names. Architects could make building plans with dry transfers showing the position of furniture or other items.

Letraset sold to a pretty diverse audience during their heyday. Their main market was graphics professionals, but they also sold “Action Transfers,” which were little rub-down transfer pictures sold to children.

What happened to Letraset?

Desktop publishing happened, and killed dry transfers. Apple’s Macintosh and LaserWriter, along with Adobe PostScript and Aldus PageMaker software, brought about the desktop publishing revolution of the mid to late 1980s, precipitating the demise of Letraset and its competitors (Chartpak and Formatt of the US, Mecanorma of France, etc).

The Linotronic typesetting machine, which could accommodate a Postscript-language raster image processor, was the beginning of the end for high-end analogue typesetting. You could now design stuff on a computer, print out 300 dpi (dot per inch) drafts on a desktop printer, and then have professional-quality material printed up at 2540 dpi on an imagesetter.

Letraset was sold to Swedish office supply company Esselte in 1985, but sales continued to fall as desktop printers became cheaper and cheaper. The company attempted to diversify into software (ImageStudio and ColorStudio were interesting early competitors to Adobe Photoshop), and also licensed digital versions of its fonts. But by the early 2000s Letraset as a business was essentially gone.

Dry transfers today

Dry transfers are still produced by various small companies, but in a different market context. They’re now specialized and bespoke one-off sheets rather than a mass-market product, and commonly used for things like industrial prototyping, movie/TV props, and wall signage in museums or art galleries.

In other words, instead of sheets of separate letters for individual application, dry transfers tend to be custom-made as whole graphics or blocks of text for specific, usually one-off, purposes. This niche use reflects the fact that transfers can be applied to most clean and smooth surfaces, from sheets of paper to window glass to plastic bottles.

Just as Letraset was used for the lettering in productions like 2001: a Space Odyssey, Thunderbirds, and Space: 1999, custom transfers are ideal for one-off items like movie/TV props such as futuristic car dashboards or manufactured devices. Dry transfer graphics look like they’re painted or silkscreened right on the surface. By comparison waterslide decals, commonly included in plastic model kits, are slightly raised and have a visible transparent carrier film around them.

The recent streaming TV series Severance use a lot of custom dry transfers, for example, in order to make the corporate-branded “Lumon” props.

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