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Letraset: The DIY Typography Revolution
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.
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.
[Description from Unit Editions' Website.]
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.
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.
[Description from Unit Editions' Website.]
- GenresDesign
312 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2018
31 people want to read
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March 14, 2018
This book is another cool addition to the Unit Editions library and my own. While I didn't grow up as a designer with Letraset, I was very aware of it and its cultural implications and aspirations.
The book is bold and beautiful, serving as something of a museum of Letraset objects and ephemera, as well as many gorgeous type specimen sheets. I applaud the choice of varied uncoated stocks and the design is the usual Spin goodness, though maybe a little slip in quality. Everything is reproduced well, but there were some head-scratching choices of running some key photos nearly the size of postage stamps. These seemed like momentary views behind the curtain of a design approach inappropriately driving content decisions, but it's a small quibble.
While it undoubtedly is the most extensive history of Letraset published, I was left wanting more. This is definitely a book for designers and typographers, by designers--but I would have preferred more historical context that would have fleshed out the stories more. It felt like the team was a little too close to the subject matter to give it full breafth.
Finally, the interviews are billed as "in-depth," but I did not find them to be so. Generally the questions were broad, without much follow up to get at the meat of deeper answers. Some interview subjects had their quotes repeated multiple times in the book, which made the written content feel thinly spread across the book. For so many interviews, the questions felt a bit formulaic, the same basic themes and questions repeated with different subjects, growing tired right at the moments when more humanity was needed to breathe life into the stories. Some of them felt stilted and conducted via email, without the hand of an interviewer to dig deeper--there was a storytelling aspect that I found lacking. The info was serviceable and some of the stories intriguing, but I was hoping for a little more.
These are relatively minor criticisms, but noteworthy because other Unit Editions books I own seem to rise to a higher standard, and my expectations for this definitive history of Letraset were already elevated.
Overall, I'd recommend the book to serious students of design history, and anyone looking for less-traveled analog typography inspiration.
The book is bold and beautiful, serving as something of a museum of Letraset objects and ephemera, as well as many gorgeous type specimen sheets. I applaud the choice of varied uncoated stocks and the design is the usual Spin goodness, though maybe a little slip in quality. Everything is reproduced well, but there were some head-scratching choices of running some key photos nearly the size of postage stamps. These seemed like momentary views behind the curtain of a design approach inappropriately driving content decisions, but it's a small quibble.
While it undoubtedly is the most extensive history of Letraset published, I was left wanting more. This is definitely a book for designers and typographers, by designers--but I would have preferred more historical context that would have fleshed out the stories more. It felt like the team was a little too close to the subject matter to give it full breafth.
Finally, the interviews are billed as "in-depth," but I did not find them to be so. Generally the questions were broad, without much follow up to get at the meat of deeper answers. Some interview subjects had their quotes repeated multiple times in the book, which made the written content feel thinly spread across the book. For so many interviews, the questions felt a bit formulaic, the same basic themes and questions repeated with different subjects, growing tired right at the moments when more humanity was needed to breathe life into the stories. Some of them felt stilted and conducted via email, without the hand of an interviewer to dig deeper--there was a storytelling aspect that I found lacking. The info was serviceable and some of the stories intriguing, but I was hoping for a little more.
These are relatively minor criticisms, but noteworthy because other Unit Editions books I own seem to rise to a higher standard, and my expectations for this definitive history of Letraset were already elevated.
Overall, I'd recommend the book to serious students of design history, and anyone looking for less-traveled analog typography inspiration.
Displaying 1 of 1 review