In the sixties - and no, it is not true that if you can remember them then you weren't there - I studied graphics and typography, first in Wales but then in Liverpool; arguably the world's cultural capital long before the European Union rubber stamped the matter. In such dynamic surroundings, there was an unmistakable buzz about what the future would hold. During my academic studies there I was being steered towards a career as a lettering artist which was then a lucrative occupation, but the introduction of Letraset shifted my focus as it seemed futile entering a profession which was destined to join the dinosaur. As they say: the writing was on the wall. Since my passion lay with typographic design, I changed my focus to this direction; all the while funding my studies by producing brush lettering for posters and signs.
As part of a contract to supply signage and point of sale equipment to a ladies' hairdresser in Liverpool, I encountered acrylics and plastics - Formica - for the first time. Then, as now, creating one-off point of sale displays and stands presented unique challenges. Work of this nature is often referred to as "bespoke" but this description is far more accurately allied to that of a craft rather than merely an industrial process. In this case, a blue perspex sheet was obtained and the text applied to it using Letraset which was then sealed with a clear varnish.The only two options for this task was to either hand-letter the perspex - a far from easy job when dealing with one inch (25mm) high capital lettering - or utilise silk-screen printing which would have been both problematic and costly.
These issues lead me to seek a simpler and easier-to-apply method than those I had previously used, and I was therefore drawn towards vinyl - the old Blue Peter classic, sticky-backed plastic. Having prepared a panel on my 1950s Austin car, I cut some letters in vinyl using a scalpel, removed the unwanted areas - a process known as "weeding" - and Cow-gummed the front of the letters to a sheet of paper whilst the vinyl lettering was still attached to its backing. The lettering backing was then removed, the vinyl applied to the vehicle and the carrier paper taken away before the surplus Cow-gum rubbed away using a specialist Cow-gum eraser. What I didn't realise was that I had stumbled upon a process that used what is now referred to as "application paper". In practice, however, the experiment failed. After a few weeks the vinyl became unstable and shrunk to about an eighth of an inch (3mm) on all edges which left a gluey residue on the car. I had, by this time, costed cutting formes for creating an alphabet of two inch (50mm) capital height with both lower case and numeral characters which I had intended to cut out on an old Thompson press. However, the project was dropped as the cutters proved to be too expensive for just one size of text and because of the instability of the vinyl available to me. Fortunately, though, Letraset produced vinyl lettering for signing purposes and Point of Sale around five years afterwards; albeit in limited font styles and sizes.
Silk screen printing for branding was then, and still is, an important method for the branding of Point of Sale displays and stands but the process is not financially viable for small quantities; moreover, the inks used could mark acrylic since they were quite aggresive and would "key into" the material.
From the seventies and through to the nineties, vinyls improved greatly and became a convenient solution to branding acrylic and plastic stands as the letterforms could be directly cut on the material by hand and the wastage weeded without damaging the substrate surface. The process of hand-cutting letterforms is a fairly lengthy process and involves either drawing the letters directly onto the vinyl as a guide before cutting, or drawing the letterforms on tracing paper or similar before transferring these to the vinyl by a process known as "tracing down". This involves covering the sheet on which the letters appear with chalk; the sheet is then placed onto the vinyl, which has already been stuck to the acrylic or plastic sheet, in the desired position and then the letters are labouriously over-traced to transfer the image, by pressure, onto the vinyl. Finally, the tracing sheet is removed and the chalked image is traced again but this time with a scalpel to cut the letterforms into the vinyl. Once cut, the unwanted areas are weeded away and the chalk wiped off to leave the completed vinyl letters. Using this method, I produced a whole font as a template in aluminum sheet for a client who required variable content of text on Point of Sale acrylic lightboxes and laminate stands; cutting out one letter at a time as the words were compiled. Naturally, the style of the font was a crucial aspect in the speed of cutting.
In the early nineties I began taking a calligraphy course exhibition I had devised to craft fairs, using display panels and acrylic light boxes that carried calligraphic text and logos. These were produced by applying the vinyl to the laminate and acrylic sheets and taking twin points - pencils taped together - and lettering the vinyl with the joined pencils, thus leaving a calligraphic form which can then be cut by scalpel and weeded to remove the waste. By spacing the pencils further apart with an eraser, or similar spacer, varying sized letterforms can be achieved.
My sister, who runs a successful signing company, initially considered my experiments using vinyl for Point of Sale and display panels a little odd and preferred to stick with her signwriting brushes until computers and vinyl where brought together to create the vinyl cutters that we know today. Her signwriting brushes, and mine, now only leave their well-oiled boxes when taking a nostalgic journey across substrates.
As for the vinyl cutters....? That's another story.
Applied Lettering by George Evans
An Introduction to Calligraphy by George Evans
www.tradewindstudio.co.uk
www.willowsigns.co.uk
