Letraset
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Letraset is a company based in the Kingsnorth Industrial Estate in Ashford, Kent, UK.[1] It is known mainly for manufacturing sheets of artwork elements which can be transferred to artwork being prepared. The name Letraset was often used to refer generically to sheets of dry transferrable lettering of any brand. This technique was very widespread for lettering and other elements before the advent of the computer techniques of word processing and desktop publishing.
When artwork was prepared by hand, Letraset sheets were available with letters in a large range of typefaces, styles, sizes, symbols, and other graphic elements. The letters could be transferred one by one to artwork being prepared. This was always a tedious job, but the alternative, to do the lettering by hand, was even more tedious and required graphic artist skills.
The name Letraset comes from the lettering application, once ubiquitous but now rarely used, although still available. Currently, Letraset's line of print patterns and textures are more commonly used than its lettering.
For a brief period in the 1960s, Letraset also applied the dry transferable technique to create a children's game called Action Transfers, which would later develop into Kalkitos (marketed by Gillette) and other series of transferable fantasy figures that were very popular in the 1970s and early 1980s.
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History [edit]
Letraset saw a decline in the sales of their materials in the early 1990s so moved into the desktop publishing industry, releasing software packages for the Macintosh such as ImageStudio and ColorStudio. These never saw widespread success. However, as Letraset held the rights to their fonts that had been popular on the dry transfer sheets, it made sense to enter the digital font market (see, for example, Charlotte Sans). Letraset thus began releasing many fonts in formats such as PostScript.
Fonts from designers such as Alan Meeks, Martin Wait, Tim Donaldson and David Quay were released, and many can be found on online retailers such as Fontshop. Some fonts retain 'Letraset' in their title whereas others have been renamed by their new vendors such as ITC.
A selection of fonts is still sold from their web site, separated into fonts from Fontek and Red Rooster.
As for software, the only products listed are Manga Studio EX and Envelopes, a plug-in for Adobe Illustrator.
Letraset is the maker of the Tria Markers (which formerly had the Pantone prefix) as well as other design products.
In June 2012, Letraset was acquired by the ColArt group. [2]
Lorem Ipsum [edit]
The Lorem Ipsum filler text has been featured on Letraset advertisements for many years. There are some indications that this text has origins prior to Letraset, but the majority of evidence proves that, if not the originators of this text, Letraset was definitely the company that publicized it.[3]
See also [edit]
References [edit]
- ^ "About Us". Rocksalt International Pty Ltd. Retrieved April 7, 2011. "Registered Office: Letraset Limited, Kingsnorth Industrial Estate, Wotton Road, Ashford, Kent, TN23 6FL, United Kingdom. The Letraset business was founded in London in 1959, introducing innovative media for commercial artists and designers."
- ^ Monk, Zoe. "ColArt Group Acquires Letraset". Craft Business. Retrieved 11 July 2012.
- ^ Adams, Cecil (February 2001), What does the filler text "lorem ipsum" mean?, The Straight Dope
External links [edit]
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