Letraset

Letraset: The DIY Typography Revolution is the first comprehensive history of Letraset, the rubdown lettering system that revolutionised typographic expression. The book tells the Letraset story from its early days as a difficult-to-use wet system, to its glory years as the first truly democratic alternative to professional typesetting. The book also looks at Letraset's present-day revival amongst a new set of admirers who recognise the typographic excellence of the system's typefaces. The book comes with a gatefold Letraset timeline. It has an introduction by Malcolm Garrett, and features in-depth interviews with Mr Bingo, Erik Brandt, Aaron Marcus, David Quay, Dan Rhatigan, Freda Sack, Andy Stevens and Jon Wozencroft. Essays by Colin Brignall, Dave Farey and Mike Daines - all key members of the Letraset team - provide expert insight into the rise of Letraset as a typographic and commercial powerhouse. A central essay by Adrian Shaughnessy examines the typographic and cultural impact of the system. The book's design is by the Spin team of Tony Brook and Claudia Klat. It uses many rare specimens from Letraset's past - catalogues, press ads, mailers, storage units, and of course, sheets of classic Letraset typefaces.

Providing an essential grounding for both students and professionals, this text takes readers through every aspect of typography, from the history of language and writing systems to the invention of moveable type and the evolution of the digital systems of today.

Just My Type is not just a font book, but a book of stories. About how Helvetica and Comic Sans took over the world. About why Barack Obama opted for Gotham, while Amy Winehouse found her soul in 30s Art Deco. About the great originators of type, from Baskerville to Zapf, or people like Neville Brody who threw out the rulebook, or Margaret Calvert, who invented the motorway signs that are used from Watford Gap to Abu Dhabi. About the pivotal moment when fonts left the world of Letraset and were loaded onto computers ... and typefaces became something we realised we all have an opinion about. As the Sunday Times review put it, the book is 'a kind of Eats, Shoots and Leaves for letters, revealing the extent to which fonts are not only shaped by but also define the world in which we live.' This edition is available with both black and silver covers.

Using a combination of explanatory text, step-by-step photographs and classic and contemporary examples, this unique survey brings together over 80 processes involved in creating lettering and applying it to surfaces. Included are hand-drawn lettering techniques (from sign writing to tattooing); dimensional lettering (hand engraving to laser cutting); typesetting (from letterpress to lettering in food); printing (Letraset to printing on bank notes); lettering on textiles (embroidery to flag-making); and illuminated type (neon signage to holography). Lettering is an essential and exhaustive reference guide for any designer wishing either to create lettering themselves or to commission work from external sources.

Billie the unicorn learns from her cousins that she must be herself to release her true gifts.

With the rise of digital technology as a design tool and its acceptance as simply part of the tool chest for today's design studios, there has been a re-evaluation and return to exploring pre-digital typography. Design studios no longer flaunt their digital hardware, in fact quite the opposite. This attitudinal change toward digital technology has coincided with a growing fascination and re-evaluation of those pre-digital skills and processes that had been considered in recent years to be irrelevant. Mapping the rise of digital technology and examining the infinite possibilities it offers and the profound cultural and technical influence it has had in all aspects of visual communication. This text also focuses on our current post-digital age, in which the technology itself has become sufficiently common-place for us to fully recognize what it excels at and what it does less well. Reinventing Print focuses on those skills and processes which have been re-appropriated and irreverently liberated by a new generation of typographers, designers, and artists, raised with digital technology in their pockets and forever at their fingertips. In this post-digital age, traditional typographic craft is new, different and therefore exciting, potent and culturally subversive.