I was going to send this directly to Adrienne but then it occurred to me
that the info might benefit others, especially in smaller museums.

Dry transfer type, also known as press type or rub-down lettering, is a way
of transfering printed letters one at a time to a substrate. The best known
brands are Letraset, Chartpak, and Mechanorma. I'd recommend Chartpak
myself; Letraset comes in more styles, but for signage that's rarely an
issue, and it's more expensive and harder to apply. I've also seen small
packets of it in college book stores. Check an art supply store for the
real thing.

Draw *light* guidelines to work along, and don't sit the letter right on
the line; use the little guides on the letter sheet. This way the type all
sits level and you can erase the line without mucking up the type. Rub just
hard enough that the letter transfers off the backing plastic; rubbing too
hard will stretch and crack the ink. After you have a line of type done,
but the non-stick paper that comes with it over the type and rub hard to
firmly affix it to the substrate. You can take mistakes off with masking
tape if you're careful.

Practice a little till you get the letter spacing right. Whe you buy it,
look carefully at the sheets; some of the larger sizes only have caps (or
lower case) but not both, or may not have numbers. You can also get sheets
with just numbers.

Chartpak also makes it in a few colors, for poster kinds of applications.
Mostly, though, it just comes in black and white. For permanence you can
try spraying over it with fixative or Krylon, but test a sample first.

Most people have now gone over to using a laser writer and printing on
colored stock, then glueing it to matte board or fome-cor, but the press
type still works well for some things. I have tons of this stuff left from
my graphic arts days.


Ivy Fleck Strickler                     Phone 215-895-1637
Drexel University                       Fax 215-895-4917
Nesbitt College of Design Arts          [log in to unmask]
Philadelphia, PA 19104

"Never forget that life is like a Fellini movie, and you're getting to see
it for free=8A"