Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/07/25/the-graphic-design-revolution.html
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man, i learned Letraset back in the day. and amber/rubylith. that takes me back…
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I love LetraSet! Haven’t used it in years. My friends mom was a graphic designer and gave us a bunch of sheets to collage with when I was in my teens. I’m not great at hand lettering so this makes text look sharp. Need to get some of these for my art kit! It’s nice to make designs outside of the computer these days.
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Loved this stuff as a kid, and the half-tone paper for shading sections. Suddenly comics were achievable!
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I used these extensively while working at a left-wing screen printing shop in the summer of 1993. It was my summer of Letraset and darkroom. It felt very “real.”
My favorite typeface to work with was Folio Bold.
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Welcome to the Boingz, comrade.
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Commie!
Only Pinko’s use Folio Bold.
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oh yes - used tons of that - still have some stuck to a tooth
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Used it for years. I’ll never forget the desperate Sunday night (job due Monday) with the art store closed and my last sheet of Letraset short one “G.” I had to assemble one from pieces of other letters. I’m sure I’m not the only one who had that experience.
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I’m all out of T’s!!!
And now…exclamation marks.
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My high school art teacher was throwing out their old Letraset catalog and I asked if I could have it. Letraset was mostly out of my price range in those days, but I could still use the alphabets as examples for hand lettering. At the time, my favorite was Arnold Bocklin, a very swoopy art nouveau style.
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One of my professors once told us a (possibly exaggerated) horror story about a finicky project she had labored over for days being left in a hot car and everything she had meticulously positioned melting out of alignment, to the tune of kids these days with their InDesigns and their Quarks don’t know how good they have it, etc.
But then another professor spent a semester teaching us how to hand-set and kern moveable type on an actual press before he would let us touch the type tool in any kind of software, so I figure it was a wash for us on digital vs. physical type skills.
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Thank you. Long time lurker, glad to finally post!
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You placed the sheet over the paper and used a pencil to rub over the letter, which detached from the carrier sheet and stuck to the paper. Sometimes.
I used worked with these too, before switching to Aldus Pagemaker in 1988. The ‘sometimes’ part is so true.
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Does anyone still use Quark XPress?
Back when I primarily worked in print, it was the power program, despite Quark’s attitude toward their customers.
The bulk of my work is in web design now, but I occasionally have to do a bit of print work. I often find myself trying to use the old XPress keyboard shortcuts in InDesign…
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Letraset also made miniature aircraft markings on dry transfer sheets for plastic modeling, much better looking than regular wet applied decals.
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Oh, I went through a lot of those.
Mind you, I usually used the knock-offs ‘Made in GDR’. Quality-wise not quite as good as the original stuff, but cheap enough that it didn’t matter. Anyway, something useful to spend your moolah from the compulsory currency exchange on which you were allowed to export.
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I used the children’s stuff, with soldiers and the like on a landscape. When I became an architecture student, the done thing was to get a copy of the Letraset Catalogue! The actual Letraset was MUCH too expensive - especially as we were only using special typefaces for titles and the like. We would just copy the styles, and they looked fine! Thanks, Letraset! One of my colleagues told a story about a sign-painter he knew, who did exactly the same thing for a living. He painted mainly shop-front fascias, but his essential tool was the catalogue. Customers chose from that, and were delighted with the results. Thanks again, Letraset!
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I never got a lot of use out of Letraset, but, ah, Letratone, that I slapped on everything.
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