How about comments from a musician-turned-critic?

Anything would help!!
I haven’t managed to find anything much about letraset, more about the typefaces, which is cool, but I would really like some opinions, memories, thoughts etc.

Cheers!

OK... So did you check the link in my previous comment? :-)

...I have now! Thats great, thank you very much!

Letraset used to publish a magazine with background material on typefaces and designers. I know I have some of these, but they are in storage and I wont be able to look for them in the near future. Maybe some fellow-Typophile can shed light here?

. . .
Bert Vanderveen BNO

Jo —I was on license with Letraset for many years. What would like to know?

Rub-down type was the low end of the display type market. It was mainly popular with students, freelancers and do-it-yourselfers (which included me). Letraset was at the high end of this low-end market. It was more expensive than other brands (around $10 per sheet/font), but it also was the highest quality and had the best selection of typefaces. They also sought out and published original typefaces by independent designers (see Robert above). Most, if not all, of Letraset’s original type designs were published in mainstream font formats (phototype, digital type) later on, though not always with authorization.

Letraset’s marketing rivaled any other type manufacturer of the time. They published an annual catalog with quarterly supplements as well as a (I think) quarterly publication about type called Baseline(which still exists, but is not published by Letraset anymore). Their promotional materials were often designed by prominent designers. They were sort of the Veer of the 1970s. :-)

Robert - any information you think is valuable about letraset, but mostly personal experiences and thoughts, why you liked it and why you didn’t!?

Thanks Mark, very useful :-)