Profile No. 2: Photo-Lettering

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A casual Didot/Bodoni style from Lettering Inc., ca.1940. Photo-lettering artists created ‘loose’ versions of classic typefaces for use in advertising headlines, many of those styles had alternate characters.

 

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PART ONE

Photo-lettering, the Early Years

When tracing the history of typefaces, we typically begin with metal type, including the punches, matrices, and casting machines used to produce it. The story then moves to phototypesetting, which replaced metal in the mid-twentieth century. However, photolettering, a process developed in parallel with phototypesetting, is usually missing from this narrative.

The spacing conventions that we take for granted, the ways we manipulate letters on screen, and even many of the aesthetic expectations we bring to type design owe much to this often overlooked technology.

Photo-lettering dominated advertising typography from the late 1930s to the mid-1980s. It helped shape the visual language of an entire era. Then, in less than ten years, from approximately 1985 to 1995, it vanished so completely that few designers under the age of fifty have even heard of it.

While a few traditional typesetting shops lasted into the 1990s, most were gone within five years after the arrival of digital systems, then labelled ‘desktop publishing’.^¹

In Toronto so many type shops closed that some were told to discard their equipment in alleys; machines, fonts, catalogues, everything, because there was no place in the city to store ‘obsolete’ technology.

Photo-lettering was one of the technologies so casually discarded. Outside the trade, librarians and archivists were among the first to realise how little from this era would survive. But even they could not grasp the full extent of the loss.

Photo-lettering was the technology that freed letters from the physical constraints of metal, introduced optical manipulation as a design tool, and contributed to the production practices digital systems inherited.

What follows is one account of this history. Others who also worked at this time will have different material and memories that belong in this record. We urge them to come forward and share their stories.^² 

 

Above, an assortment of Lettering Inc. brush scripts, ca.1940. These popular styles had many alternate characters. Style number 3115 (second and third lines) is the same script, but 3115 C is a photographically condensed version, indicated by the ‘C’ following the number.

 

 

The Emergence of Photo-lettering

By the 1930s, ad agencies and typesetters faced a practical dilemma: the advertising industry was expanding faster than existing production methods could handle.

Hand-set metal type, though reliable, was limited to a fixed range of sizes and formats. The alternative, hand lettering, was adaptable and expressive, but also costly and prone to inconsistency, growing concerns as major national campaigns were becoming more common.

Photo-lettering offered a third path. Fast, scalable, and flexible, it was comparatively cost-effective. It was also easier to learn than hand lettering and required less specialised training. Headlines that looked hand-lettered could be set in a fraction of the time.

For art directors, photo-lettering was an unprecedented development. It bypassed both the rigidity of metal type and the high cost of hand lettering while offering much greater creative control.

Print ads gained the consistency required for large national campaigns, along with the more polished appearance agencies were beginning to seek.

The brevity of advertising headlines made them ideally suited to photo-lettering and to its three basic methods:

• Process-lettering (paper-setting method)
• Projection-setting (film-setting machine)
• Glass-setting (film-setting method)

Although projection- and glass-setting both employed film for their alphabets, they used it in very different ways.

Glass-setting remains the least known of the three, largely because it was limited to one company, Lettering Inc., in Chicago.

In some respects, glass-setting is the more interesting of the three.

 

 

 

 

Photo-lettering and Phototypesetting

Before examining the three primary methods of setting photo-lettering, it would be helpful to clarify a longstanding source of confusion: the difference between photo-lettering and phototypesetting.

Photo-lettering predated phototypesetting by at least fifteen years. And though both used light and paper (or film), they served quite different purposes.

Photo-lettering grew out of hand lettering and display composition. It was used primarily to set short text, most often headlines for advertising. It was a custom process, largely manual, and grounded in craft skills. It relied on the hand and eye of the lettering artist and was typically charged on a per word basis.

Phototypesetting evolved from metal typesetting (some early phototypesetters were adapted from hot-metal machines). It was used principally for long-form text. The work was guided by the knowledge and skill of trained typesetters and typographers, and charges were usually calculated at an hourly rate.

Most fully equipped typesetting shops employed both systems. Although the two processes occasionally overlapped, their aims and cultures remained separate.

Photo-lettering was rarely used outside advertising and was, in turn, heavily influenced by it.

Traditional typesetting (including photo-typesetting) was used for a vast range of printed material: books, periodicals, instruction manuals, technical documentation, etc., much of it not connected to advertising. For the most part, this was material intended to document, educate, or inform rather than persuade.

In digital technology, these two previously separate forms of typography were merged, obscuring the subtle differences between display (headlines) and more subdued text.

Knowing the fundamental differences between these two processes deepens our understanding of how to use both and can also serve to remind us that persuasion and communication are not the same.

 

 

Above, an example of process-lettering set by the typographer Carl Dair for the First proof of Cartier, roman & italic, 1967. (Actual size.) The fonts were in production; but the promotional material had to be completed before they would be ready. With little alternative, Dair set the text using 36 point paper proofs of the alphabet, which was then photographically reduced to 14 point. Courtesy of The Carl Dair papers at the Robertson Davies Library, Massey College,University of Toronto.

 

Process-lettering (paper-setting)

Crude as it sounds, using paper alphabets was the earliest photographic method for setting headlines. It remained in use when there wasn’t time to prepare a master film strip or a complete set of film characters. It was also used by type designers to create test words.^³

Starting with a printed alphabet, often reproduced from a book,^⁴ the setter would make five or six photographic paper prints. The required letters were cut out with a razor blade and assembled into words on a white card covered with ‘one-coat’ rubber cement. Using a T-square for alignment, the setter held and positioned the characters with philatelic tweezers. The process could be messy, but with a little experience that ceased to be an issue.

Process-lettering, as it came to be known, was easy to set. ‘One-coat’ rubber cement was clear and did not photograph (though, as shown here, it did yellow over time). Like film strips, paper alphabets could be stored in folders for reuse.

 

Projection-setting

Machines that projected film alphabets onto photographic paper marked the beginning of the photo-lettering era. The machines were basic and, like all photo-lettering processes, relied on the skill and speed of the operator.

 

Photo-lettering Inc. (New York)

In 1936, typographer Ed Rondthaler and lettering artist Harold Horman opened the first commercial photo-lettering studio, aptly if somewhat confusingly named Photo-Lettering Inc. Their process used a film-negative alphabet ‘sandwiched’ between two pieces of glass (28 × 5 inches). Using proprietary machines, the operator slid a glass alphabet plate through an exposure gate, projecting one character at a time onto photographic paper. Once the line (or lines) had been set, the photographic paper would be developed, and the print assembled into the final art for the advertisement.

Struggling to gain acceptance, their big break came in 1944 when Tommy Thompson, a highly respected New York lettering artist, was asked by The Saturday Evening Post to supply weekly hand-lettered headlines in a Didot style he designed for them. Thompson realised that he couldn’t possibly handle The Post’s increased workload, maintain consistency over months, or perhaps even years, and still serve his other clients. In a meeting with Rondthaler and Horman in a Midtown coffee shop, Thompson agreed to let them make a photographic alphabet of his design. In return, he would receive a royalty of one dollar for every word they set, a substantial sum at the time.

Sealed with a handshake, that simple agreement legitimised royalty-based alphabet design and established Photo-Lettering Inc. as the go-to lettering studio for Madison Avenue art directors. It also marked the beginning of a new business model: alphabets designed by artists, licensed through studios, for broad use in commercial advertising.

Photo-Lettering Inc. never licensed their process, which remained proprietary until 1997, when the company finally had to close its doors.^⁵

 

 

Small spot ad, Print, 1956. Selling words in galley form, with customers responsible for making their own headlines, was common. Words were now selling for the same sum Tommy Thompson had received in royalties from Photo-Lettering Inc. twelve years earlier. Rapid Typographers would soon become involved in the development of the Photo-Typositor. The heading is set in Adonis, an old Filmotype alphabet.

 

 

The Glass-setting Method, Lettering Inc. (Chicago)

In 1939, a few years after Photo-Lettering Inc. launched its process in New York, a completely different solution emerged in Chicago. Lettering Inc., a company founded by Edwin W. Krauter, with a staff of top lettering artists, developed a straightforward, highly practical way of setting headlines that became known as the ‘glass-setting’ method.^⁶

In glass-setting, each letter was a black photographic character (about 72 point) on a narrow strip of clear film. The words were hand-set in lines, much like metal type, but on glass plates (approximately 24 × 4 inches), guided by a ruled alignment card taped to the plate. After the words were set, the glass plate was photographed in a large backlit process camera, and the resulting lines were then hand-assembled to make up the finished headline.

Glass-setting relied on familiar hand-setting skills, making it easy for lettering artists to adopt the method. Lettering Inc. also had high-quality alphabets, especially their brush scripts, which were popular at the time. In Life with Letters, Ed Rondthaler remarked that because of the number and calibre of the artists at Lettering Inc., they were the only competitor he truly worried about.^⁷

The artists at Lettering Inc. anticipated much of what would later be formalised in digital type. Their alphabets included many alternate characters, complex ligatures, and separate elements such as floating ‘t’ crossbars, each carefully numbered so that setters could reproduce the fluidity of hand lettering. These codes were, in essence, analogue versions of what digital type designers would later build into OpenType—contextual alternates, discretionary ligatures, and stylistic sets. What began as a manual system of cues and substitutions is today digital code—the same creative intent, but in a new medium.

While the resemblances between photo-lettering and OpenType features are striking, the most likely explanation is that they arose from similarities in problem-solving rather than any direct influence. An instance of how different systems evolve along the same lines when called upon to solve similar technical and creative problems.

 

 

An artist setting a film alphabet on a glass plate. The two horizontal lines above and below the lettering indicate the strips of double-sided tape that held the characters in place. To guide the setter an alignment card (not shown) was affixed to the glass between the two strips of tape.

 

 

At the heart of the Lettering Inc. process were detailed setting guides explaining which characters to use to achieve specific effects. This one is for the formal script 3205 (later named Venetian). Each letter was numbered: #1 connects to round letters (a, c, d), #2 connects to stick letters (b, h, i), #3 for ‘r’, and so on.

Most characters had many alternates including beginning and ending letters and unusual ligatures (ss, ff, ox), all coded in these index cards so setters could reproduce the fluidity, and inconsistency, of hand lettering. Both brush and formal scripts, popular at the time, benefited most from having many alternate characters.

 

 

A glass plate showing two words set in a casual Lettering Inc. script (this example is x3656). The heavy horizontal bars are the double-sided tape that holds the films in place. Large process cameras could not capture the edges of the film, though they were clearly visible to the naked eye. The back of the print would be covered with ‘one-coat’ rubber cement. The lines of lettering were then cut out (usually with scissors) and assembled onto thin card to make up the headline.^⁸

 

 

The Photo-Typositor
(Visual Graphics Corporation)

No photo-lettering machine was as popular as the Photo-Typositor. Invented in 1959 by Murray Friedel, it was a stand-alone projection device that became the most widely used system of its kind in North America.

It was brought to market in the mid-1960s by the newly formed Visual Graphics Corporation (VGC). Initially based in New York City, the company later relocated its headquarters to Florida. VGC maintained sales and service offices in select cities, including Toronto.

 

 

An early Photo-Typositor, 1963. The letters were projected individually from a two-inch reel of negative film onto a long roll of two-inch photographic paper stored in a light-proof cassette box. The three numbered bottles contained developer (1), fix (2), and water (3).

 

 

The Photo-Typositor projected letters onto photographic paper (or film) using two-inch reels of negative film alphabets, similar to the one shown on the right.

A hand-operated machine (a skilled operator could set up to 400 words per hour), it was an ingenious adaptation of the Filmotype process developed in Chicago in 1952. The decision to retain the old Filmotype two-inch font format meant potential Photo-Typositor customers would not have to replace fonts already in their libraries. It also helped establish the two-inch film reel as the industry standard.^⁹

While still in development at Rapid Typographers in New York, the machine came to the attention of Aaron Burns, one of the city’s leading advertising typographers.^¹⁰

Burns instantly recognised its potential and by the early 1960s, well before it became commercially available, was promoting its capabilities to Madison Avenue. He knew that if the Photo-Typositor were to succeed, agency art directors would first need to see its full potential.

To help achieve that recognition, in 1964 Burns organised VGC’s first typeface competition. The event helped establish a type library for the company and greatly increased its credibility within both the advertising and typographic communities.

Developed for rapid headline production, the Photo-Typositor remained in constant use until the digital era.

 

 

The reels were wrapped around spools that were laid flat. The film strip ran through an open gate, when the required letter appeared, the operator would project it onto the two-inch photographic paper that ran in a trough below. The paper was continuously bathed in developer, fix, and water.

 

 

Graded Families in Photo-lettering

Perhaps the most consequential, and overlooked, development of the photo-lettering era was the emergence of carefully graded weights of individual styles that together formed large type families.

Although these families would become identified with photo-lettering, their roots lay firmly in the traditions of hand lettering. Adjusting the weight, width, contrast, and proportion of letters to suit the needs of a layout was second nature to lettering artists. Bold or condensed variants were simply drawn as required. Photo-lettering made it easy to formalise these intuitive variations and reproduce them consistently.

Photo reproduction allowed artists to turn the fluid nature of hand lettering into a reproducible typographic product. The expansive, finely graded ranges we take for granted today, and are most fully embodied in variable fonts, trace their lineage to this period.

Alphabet designers could now create large families with unprecedented internal logic: multiple weights, widths, and optical sizes, all designed to work together. A headline, subhead, caption, even price points, could all be set in unified letterforms that produced different levels of emphasis. For art directors managing complex national campaigns, this was transformative.

Photo-lettering introduced another conceptual shift that remains important today. In metal, type foundries traditionally treated each variant, whether light, bold, condensed, or extended as a separate design, or ‘voice’. ^¹¹

In photo-lettering these differences tended to be treated as levels within a single voice, allowing designers to adjust emphasis without having to alter the underlying character of the design.

Both approaches forever shaped the practice of typography. The first gives designers a family of related but distinct voices; the second offers more nuanced control over how a single voice may speak. Variable fonts, with their continuous ranges of weight and width, use the same concept in digital form.

Multi-weight ranges are now considered the standard in typography.

 

 

Graded weights from Lettering Inc., ca.1940. In time, similarities in design would be carried more rigorously through all weights. A large selection of weights within a single design was especially important in advertising as it allowed for multiple levels of typographic persuasion.

 

 

Headliners one-liner specimen booklet, 1962. Photo-lettering made the design and production of custom fonts relatively easy. Companies and organisations could now afford to have their own typographic voices.

 

 

The Aesthetic Impact of Photo-lettering

Although the three methods differed in how photo-lettering was set, it was almost impossible to tell which method had produced a finished headline, and they all looked as if they had been hand-lettered. In many ways that illusion was the essence of photo-lettering. It reproduced the individuality of the lettering artist while quietly replacing the artist’s hand with the camera.

What had begun as a practical shortcut became, for better or worse, a defining aesthetic of mid-century typography, one that would later blur the boundary between type and lettering, setting the stage for similar tensions in digital design.

By the mid-1960s, photo-lettering had matured into an organised and profitable industry. Its influence, in large part because of the Photo-Typositor, now extended far beyond production technique and was reshaping how art directors and designers thought about type itself.

Enlarged x-heights became common; ascenders and descenders were shortened to create compact, tightly knit headlines that felt immediate and modern. These adjustments not only suited the exciting layouts of mid-century advertising; they also influenced legibility strategies later formalised in digital type design.

The tighter letter and word-fitting that had become the standard in photo-lettering now challenged art directors to create dense headlines that were, to paraphrase Marshall McLuhan, designed to be absorbed rather than read.¹² The pursuit of optical rather than mechanical spacing also led, indirectly, to an exacting focus on kerning that would one day become a self-referential parody within graphic design practice.

What had once been labour-intensive hand work became, through the camera, routine studio practice. Art directors began to experiment with distortion; condensing, expanding, and sloping letters to create a new kind of visual energy. Many of these effects would appear in phototypesetting and, eventually, in digital type tools.

Photo-lettering marked a turning point from hand lettering to system-based composition. Alphabets were still drawn by artists, but they were now stored, catalogued, and reproduced mechanically. This shift, from limited individual expression to large-scale reproducible design, reflected broader postwar industrial trends and laid the conceptual groundwork for the digital type foundries that followed.

These changes were not only aesthetic. By the late 1960s, they were beginning to alter what a typeface was, how it circulated, and who could profit from it.

 

The International Typeface Corporation (ITC)

One of the last chapters in the story of photolettering began one morning in early 1969, when Ed Rondthaler received a phone call from Aaron Burns. He had an idea, characteristically ambitious, and believed Photo-Lettering Inc. could play a key role in bringing it to life. Burns outlined a problem he had been watching since his involvement with VGC and the Photo-Typositor: photo-reproduction had made typefaces astonishingly easy to copy.

For decades, proposals to protect type designs had been ineffective. Burns believed the answer was not restrictive legislation but a new economic model: create high-quality, professional alphabets at reasonable royalty rates, shared equally among manufacturers worldwide. If all machine manufacturers were allowed to license the same designs, and if the royalties were fair, piracy would cease to be worth the risk.^¹³

Burns had already discussed the idea with the graphic designer Herb Lubalin, who said his studio had forty-five new alphabets they would contribute. The missing link was production. For years, Photo-Lettering Inc. had been producing fonts, both for its own typesetting service and for outside clients who lacked technical expertise. He believed that Photo-Lettering Inc.’s technicians had the skill to produce the film alphabet masters with the consistency and precision the industry demanded.

The result was the International Typeface Corporation (ITC), a partnership between Aaron Burns, Herb Lubalin and Ed Rondthaler. Launched in New York in 1970, it offered a radical new model for how typefaces were created, manufactured, and marketed. ITC would commission and produce the designs, license them internationally, and promote them through a new publication, U&lc (Upper and lowercase), designed by Lubalin and quickly embraced by art directors worldwide. Within a few short years ITC typefaces were recognised throughout the world and their designers were earning steady royalties. Piracy did not disappear but, at least for ITC designs, it was sharply reduced.

ITC also played a large role in shaping the transition from photo-lettering to digital type. In addition to commissioning new designs, the company transformed traditional typefaces into rational families, typically four weights plus italics. They also helped moderate the increasingly large x-heights and tight letter-fitting that emerged during the 1970s. Drawing from both traditions, ITC offered typefaces from such classically trained type designers as Matthew Carter and Hermann Zapf, as well as from talented photo-lettering artists like Tony Stan and Ed Benguiat.

It is hard to grasp the effect ITC had on the type world at the time. Almost every typographer, art director and designer read U&lc. It was one of the most important publications in both the design and advertising worlds. Many ITC typefaces, such as ITC Avant Garde Gothic, trend-setting and controversial designs when released, are now considered classics. For a few years Aaron Burns had also been Steve Jobs typographic ‘guide’. As a result the early Apple computers shipped with four ITC typefaces. Apple’s new corporate face, Apple Garamond, was a slightly modified version of the popular ITC Garamond.

ITC was the bridge through which the worlds of typefounding, typesetting, and photo-lettering converged, and in less than fifteen years that bridge led directly into the digital era.^¹⁴

 

 

ITC was one of the pioneers in combining the craft of photo-lettering with traditional type design. It created a range of photofaces that, while historically rooted, reflected the design aesthetic of the late twentieth century.

 

 

Lettering Inc., ca.1940. Lettering artists created numerous versions of these very popular brush scripts. Their multi-character sets were ideal for glass-setting, producing headlines that looked hand lettered.

 

 

Lost Traditions

Taken together, these developments help explain both the importance of photo-lettering and the ease with which it would later be forgotten. The photo-lettering process was neither a marginal experiment nor a crude precursor to digital type. It was a mature, highly adaptable system that reshaped how letters were designed, stored, combined, and reproduced. In freeing letters from the fixed constraints of metal, photo-lettering introduced optical manipulation, graded families, and system-based thinking decades before these ideas became commonplace. Many of the tools and conventions that now feel native to digital typography were first explored, informally but rigorously, in photo-lettering studios.

Its disappearance was swift. When digital systems arrived, they absorbed the visible outcomes of photo-lettering while severing them from their material and economic con- text. Previously distinct traditions of hand lettering, photo-lettering, and phototypesetting were all reduced to a single digital workflow, flattening differences that once were fundamental.

What was lost was not simply technique, but the understanding of why certain typographic practices exist at all.

 

Footnotes, Part One

 

PART TWO

Photo-lettering in Canada

We don’t know exactly when commercial photo-lettering first appeared in Canada but it most likely was during, or shortly after The Second World War (1939–1945). The first reliably dated mention of the process in Canada that we know of appears in a full-page advertisement for Lettering Inc. It lists the four cities in which the company was then operating: Chicago, New York, Toronto, and Philadelphia.

The ad, prepared by their Chicago office, was first published in the New York Art Directors Annual of Advertising and Editorial Art, 1948. It appeared again in the First Annual of Advertising and Editorial Art, issued by the newly-formed Toronto Art Directors Club in 1949. Based on those dates, we can safely assume that Lettering Inc. had an office in Toronto as early as 1948.^¹⁵

Especially noteworthy is that the term photo-lettering does not appear anywhere in the ad. Instead, in the copy it simply states, “This is lettering produced photographically by artists.” That phrasing reflects a decision made back in 1936, when Ed Rondthaler and Harold Horman at Photo-Lettering Inc. in New York City effectively claimed the term ‘photo-lettering’ for their firm. In doing so, they left Lettering Inc., and subsequent firms, with little choice but to describe the process in different ways.

Ironically, the names of both companies, Photo-Lettering Inc. and Lettering Inc. would themselves become almost generic, further contributing to the never-ending confusion about the process.

The sign-off at the bottom declares that “Lettering Inc produces more lettering than any other organization in the world.” It is a bold claim that supported Rondthaler’s early concern (noted in part one) that Lettering Inc. was the company to watch.

 

 

A full-page ad that appeared in the Toronto Art Directors Club First Annual of Advertising and Editorial Art, 1949. Every word, including the body copy, was hand-set on glass plates. The examples, set in various Lettering Inc. alphabets, demonstrate how difficult it was to distinguish photo-lettering from hand lettering. A distinction that would soon become irrelevant.

 

 

Two Sides of Commercial Art: Creative and Production

Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, much of what we now call graphic design was known within the advertising industry as commercial art. To understand the role of photo-lettering within advertising requires a brief description of the division between creative and production work that shaped both mid-century advertising and commercial art. Advertising agencies provided creative services to promote their clients’ products or services. They were also usually responsible for producing the finished artwork for the ads that would appear in newspapers, magazines, and other mass print media. All trade and related production services, including typesetting, lettering, illustration, and photography, were purchased from a large pool of outside suppliers.

As a result of this split, commercial art and advertising were largely structured around two distinct categories: Creative work (art directors, designers, and decision-makers) and Production work (typesetters, assembly artists, and those responsible for execution).

Both categories required skill and expertise but drew upon different kinds of knowledge. Hand lettering and Photo-lettering, like illustration and photography, could fall into either category, depending on the calibre and reputation of individual artists or firms.^¹⁶

These divisions of labour were essential in large agencies and type shops. In smaller studios and cities, people usually had to wear many different hats, moving fluidly between creative and production roles as time and circumstances required.

 

 

Two small ads from 1949, coincidentally placed side-by-side, demonstrate how the division between creative and production services worked in practice. Eveleigh-Dair sought recognition as a creative agency, while Mercer and Ray were busy promoting their range of production skills.

 

 

The Typesetting/Photo-lettering Partnership

During most of the 1950s, advertising typography was handled through a mix of established practice and emerging technology. Text continued to be set in metal type, even though attention was increasingly focused on the anticipated arrival of phototypesetting. Headlines existed in a transitional state, with most agencies and studios using whatever method best suited a particular job. In practice, the principal constraint was not artistic but structural and lay within the type shops themselves.

Most typesetters had invested heavily in their equipment, and although early phototypesetting systems were less costly than hot metal, they still required substantial capital outlay. Only a small number of companies in Toronto were in a position to reequip themselves, an economic reality reinforced by an already established division of labour within the industry.

The majority of trade typesetters were fully unionized shops. Traditionally these firms had limited involvement in the content or appearance of advertisements, typically supplying type in ‘galley’ form, which their clients then assembled into the ads.^¹⁷

Photo-lettering studios were staffed with non-union artists who were often directly involved in the final appearance of an advertisement, particularly in the design of headlines. The work of a lettering artist often extended beyond execution to include visual judgement: selecting or adapting lettering styles that could attract attention while reinforcing an ad’s central message. This often meant working closely with art directors and participating in decisions about the overall ‘look’ of an ad.

One response to the creative and production divide was to form independent lettering studios that were partially or wholly owned by large typesetting firms. Bringing both services under one roof simplified matters for advertising agencies, which could now deal with a single supplier. It also allowed type shops and lettering studios to share sales staff, delivery services, and other support functions.

Equipment and facilities could be similarly divided. The Headliners, Cooper & Beatty’s photo-lettering division, chose to maintain separate camera and darkroom facilities. Lettering Designs, Mono Lino’s new photo-lettering division, took a different approach, and despite initial objections from the union, they were permitted to use the firm’s union-operated camera department.^¹⁸

 

The Growth of Photo-lettering in Canada

The Second World War was followed by a period of economic prosperity that fuelled the growth of advertising typography. Metal type still ruled, but photographic technology was showing up on everyone’s radar. However, many companies had not fully recovered from wartime restrictions and were in no position to switch to film.

This situation led to photo-lettering entering the trade as a parallel system rather than a replacement for an existing one. It was a relationship that would continue right up to the digital era.

Relatively few photo-lettering companies operated in Canada. In Toronto, Lettering Inc. was the only photo-lettering studio until the arrival of The Headliners at Cooper & Beatty in 1959.^¹⁹

Toronto was unusual in having three very large typesetting companies that dominated the local market. Though they competed directly with one another, each had developed distinct areas of specialisation.

Mono Lino Typesetting Company Limited, founded in 1912, was the oldest of the three. As their name suggests, it was also the first shop in the city to offer both Monotype and Linotype setting. Mono Lino served large corporate clients, such as insurance and oil companies, as well as legal and financial firms that all produced large quantities of printed material. The company typeset catalogues for major retailers such as Canadian Tire and Sears Canada. They also worked with large publishers and all levels of government, both federal and provincial.

Mono Lino also handled some advertising work, but did not actively pursue that market until the early 1960s.

Cooper & Beatty, Limited (C&B) founded in 1921, was the most prominent of the three, largely because of its long involvement in advertising typography. In 1933, it became the first Toronto shop, as far as is known, to appoint a type director, W. E. (Jack) Trevett, who would later become president.

From 1951 onward, C&B played a central role in shaping both Canadian typography and graphic design. Trevett was instrumental in the company’s expansion, particularly in its willingness to invest in new processes and to treat advertising typography as more than routine production work.^²⁰

The third of the ‘big three’, Howarth & Smith Monotype, Limited (H&S), also founded in 1921, operated under slightly different names depending on the equipment in use, but it was primarily a Monotype shop. H&S occupied a middle ground between Cooper & Beatty and Mono Lino: skilled in advertising typography but lacking a full-service photolettering department. Known for its precision work, H&S may also have been the first type shop to switch to film assembly. As a result, in 1974 the firm was chosen to produce barcodes when they were introduced into Canada.

To outsiders, the three shops appeared similar. They drew from the same labour pool and used comparable equipment. All were consistently busy, typically running three shifts. Their workforces would expand considerably during peak periods, such as the annual introduction of new automobiles.^²¹

The establishment of independent photolettering studios within the major typesetting firms was an important step in the growth of advertising typography in Canada.

 

 

Full-page print ad, design; Jan Burka, 1953. Photolettering studios maintained large collections of decorative ornaments and borders. This unusual ad departs from standard trade practice, assembling historical ornaments and letterforms into a deliberately eclectic composition. While such an approach would likely have been viewed with some skepticism within the industry at the time, it reflects a European, design-oriented sensibility, that would soon become common.

 

 

The Headliners at Cooper & Beatty

The Headliners parent company was founded in New York City in 1954, by John Schaedler, a respected lettering artist, together with Bob Evans and Herbert Rear. Initially, they used paper, then two-inch film reels for alphabets. The company would later drop the definite article ‘The’ and operate simply as Headliners or Headliners International.

In November 1957, Jack Trevett, president of Cooper & Beatty, wrote to John Schaedler to inquire about bringing The Headliners’ operation to Toronto. For several years Cooper & Beatty had been agents for Photo-Lettering Inc., but having learned his lesson, Trevett clearly stated that in order to provide competent service, production must be in-house. Schaedler replied that The Headliners already operated independently run outlets in both Atlanta and Chicago and agreed that local production facilities were essential to do the work properly. After two years of exchanging letters, and several visits, arrangements were finalised. On January 1, 1959, The Headliners was installed on the fourth floor of Cooper & Beatty’s new premises on Wellington Street West, at Spadina.^²²

Trevett had placed Allan Fleming, Cooper & Beatty’s type director, in charge of staffing the new Headliners department. In a confidential memo dated July 13, 1959, addressed to Trevett and Bob Evans (now president of The Headliners), Fleming outlined his recommendations for the manager’s position. At the top of his list was the noted lettering artist Al Elliott, though Fleming expressed doubt that a creative figure of Elliott’s calibre would be well suited to a role that was largely production oriented.

Fleming’s personal choice for manager was Earl Stephens, an Indigenous Canadian who had once been a top lettering artist, before leaving the trade to work in sales and now seeking to return to lettering. Fleming had also approached Ted Cruise, whom he regarded as the only artist in Canada comparable to Elliott, but Cruise declined. In September 1959, Trevett wrote to Stephens offering him the position, responsible for the effective operation of the new division. On April 1, 1960, Earl Stephens became the manager of The Headliners of Canada.^²³

By the early 1960s, Cooper & Beatty’s understanding of photo-lettering had evolved well beyond the strictly production-oriented role originally envisioned only a year earlier. The initial plan to treat The Headliners as a disciplined extension of the type shop, had given way to a more expansive view of its creative potential.

This shift was reflected in the artists working in the department. Much had changed: Cruise relented and joined the firm, and Alex Hobson, another highly respected lettering artist, also came on board. Within a year they would be joined by Elliott. For a brief period, they were the finest group of lettering artists in the country.

Such a strong group signalled a broader change in attitude. Photo-lettering was no longer merely a means of executing finished work; it had become an important creative component of advertising typography. In effect, Cooper & Beatty had moved from integrating photo-lettering into its production workflow to building a department whose creative judgement was trusted, and increasingly sought out, by the agencies it served.

 

Cooper & Beatty, design; Ken Rodmell, 1962.Poster introducing the new management team at The Headliners. It shows a well-organised company in the business of supplying quality photo-lettering for advertising.

 

 

Lettering Designs at Mono Lino

After fifty years as a highly respected trade typesetter, Mono Lino decided to actively pursue the advertising market. However, doing so required capabilities the firm did not yet possess, most notably a dedicated, high-quality photo-lettering department.

In October 1963, Mono Lino moved into its new premises on Dupont Street. Joining it was Lettering Designs Limited, its new photo-lettering division, created after Mono Lino purchased the Toronto office of Lettering Inc.

By the 1950s Lettering Inc. was operating eighteen offices in North America, but the company was also beginning to show its age. Lettering Inc. was losing ground because it was not offering new designs. By contrast, The Headliners, based in New York City, had easy access to the largest pool of lettering artists in the United States, most eager to create new styles.

With its new name and connection with one of the city’s major typesetters, Lettering Designs could begin to distance itself from the older Lettering Inc. identity. Even so, the company still had its work cut out for it and progress was gradual. It would take close to ten years, but Lettering Designs eventually became a serious supplier of photo-lettering in Toronto. By the mid-1970s it was competing directly with The Headliners.

 

Full-page print ad, Mono Lino, 1959. Though the company was clearly aware of the focus on words that photo-lettering had brought to advertising, they were forced to advocate for the continued use of metal type.

 

 

Techni-Process Lettering

Techni-Process Lettering was another important Toronto shop. The company was founded in New York by Sam Ardell in the late 1940s. It had started with process-lettering using paper alphabets.

The Toronto operation was owned by George Phair and was unique in not being controlled by one of the three major typesetting companies.

At one time the Toronto office may have rented space from Howarth & Smith, though this has not been confirmed.

Anthony Liliefeldt, a well-known Toronto lettering artist was at Techni-Process for many years. The firm later installed its own typesetting facilities, further blurring the distinction between lettering studios and type shops.

 

Typsettra

In 1968, Toronto ad agencies encountered a new kind of photo-lettering supplier, one that spoke their language. Over a decade earlier, Cooper & Beatty had carefully tested the boundary between supplier and client, helping to loosen long-standing divisions within the industry. Typsettra opened into that newly fluid space, not by chance, but with a structure deliberately suited to rapid change—small, independent, and free of the constraints that were increasingly limiting the city’s large, unionized shops.^²⁴

Typsettra was founded by two accomplished lettering artists from England, Dave Thomason and Les Usherwood, who had both arrived in Canada in 1957, although by separate routes. Thomason initially settled in Hamilton, where he worked in an engraving studio, before moving to Toronto to join Art & Design Studios (ADS). Usherwood came to Toronto, intending it as a temporary stop before moving on to New York, his ultimate destination. He briefly worked at several studios before also joining ADS.

At ADS, both became increasingly aware of the growing possibilities for advertising typography in their adopted city. For a few years they had repeatedly proposed that the studio invest in a Photo-Typositor and offer a dedicated photo-lettering service, but the idea never gained the support of management. In 1968, they left to form Typsettra.

The studio began modestly, with a single Typositor and a small library of two-inch film fonts. What set Typsettra apart was not its equipment but its approach. Along with those standard fonts they had fifteen newly drawn alphabets unlike anything available. Combined with their remarkable lettering skills and obvious understanding of advertising typography, those new designs quickly made Typsettra the preferred source of inventive typographic solutions for many of the city’s younger art directors.

It was no secret that Usherwood was the driving force behind the company. Therefore, it came as no surprise when in 1975, wanting to return to hand lettering, and have more time with his family, Thomason established a home studio, with Typsettra as a client.

Typsettra had grown rapidly and in addition to photo-lettering was now supplying typesetting and complete make-up of ads for their clients. They had invested heavily in Berthold’s Diatronic system, the recognised gold standard in phototypesetting. The next logical step was to offer their own designs for text setting, not just headlines. However, making high-quality text fonts would prove more demanding than two-inch film reels.

In 1976, Albert Macchiusi, newly married and tired of working nights at Howarth & Smith, applied for a day job at Typsettra. Usherwood learned that Macchiusi had also made glass-disc fonts for the Harris Foto-tronic at H&S. Realising what this meant, he asked whether fonts could also be made for their Diatronic system, and what would be involved in doing so.

Usherwood’s skill as a lettering artist and Macchiusi’s ability to design and manufacture high-quality fonts would soon place Typsettra in a unique position. Within a few short years Typsettra would become the first Canadian company to design, manufacture, and license typefaces internationally.

 

 

Poster announcing the formation of Typsettra, 1968. It introduces Les Usherwood (seated) and Dave Thomason. The copy reveals that they not only know lettering but clearly understand the persuasive role it plays in advertising. The heads are set in Graphis Bold, one of the fifteen new alphabets mentioned in the ad.

 

 

Then, in 1983, Les Usherwood suffered a massive heart attack and died. Only 51 years old, his death sent shock waves through Toronto’s tight-knit type and advertising communities. Many art directors felt they lost not only their most exciting collaborator, but a friend. At a time when the city’s type shops were already facing an uncertain future, the loss of such a restless and imaginative figure was deeply unsettling.

Typsettra continued for several years after Usherwood’s death, but the momentum that had driven the studio from photo-lettering to international type design could not be sustained without him. In 1988 the company was sold to Trigraph Inc., but it was a poor fit. From the outset they failed to understand what had made Typsettra successful, what remained of the studio closed in 1990.

Typsettra’s significance lies not in its longevity, but in its trajectory. In little more than a decade, it had moved from custom photo-lettering to phototypesetting, and then to the design and manufacture of original typefaces. In doing so, it demonstrated how far advertising typography in Canada had advanced, from a traditional trade service to a creative partnership, and how briefly that possibility had remained open.^²⁵

 

Photo-lettering Throughout Canada

Photo-lettering may have been primarily practised in Toronto, but it was not confined there. Other cities soon developed their own forms, particularly after the introduction of the Photo-Typositor. In Montreal, both Fred F. Esler Ltd. and FastType offered a variation on the service. B/W Type Service in Winnipeg, Zenith Graphics, Typex (later Graphex), and a few others in Vancouver also offered photo-lettering. Most of these firms used conventional alphabets supplied from VGC, Filmotype, Lettergraphics, and others.

Outside the large Toronto studios, photo-lettering was generally treated more like trade typesetting than lettering. It was usually supplied in galley strips rather than finished headlines.

The story of photo-lettering in Canada is not simply one of transition or obsolescence. It reminds us that technological change is rarely linear and that periods of overlap, when old skills meet new tools, can result in lasting transformations.

 

 

A popular Lettering Inc. sans serif named Flat Sided Casual. Almost every photo-lettering company had a version of this style, The Headliners was called Catalina. These designs, along with brush scripts, helped define the photo-lettering era in the 1940s and 1950s.

Footnotes, Part Two

 

Headlines were called ‘heads’, magazine art directors cut that back to ‘heds’.

 

 

The Threshold of Digital Type

By the time digital appeared in the mid-1980s, photo-lettering had done its job. For almost half a century it had occupied an ambiguous space between craft and technology, and between trade service and creative judgement.

Photo-lettering had not simply replaced earlier methods, it had coexisted with them, quietly altering the role of typography within advertising while also reshaping long-established divisions of labour.

It was a brief moment when creativity, technical capability and opportunity aligned. Photo-lettering was a relatively small field—lacking a written history. That it could one day be ‘lost’ should not be surprising.

In comparison with the much larger and deeply rooted traditions of hand lettering and typesetting, photo-lettering was easily absorbed and quickly disappeared.

By eliminating the conditions that had allowed photo-lettering to flourish, digital systems also eliminated the distinctions that once structured the industry.

Yet the influence of the process did not vanish. The carefully graded type families, spacing conventions, and expectations of typographic flexibility that emerged during the photo-lettering era passed quietly into the digital world and remain embedded in contemporary typographic practice.

 

Acknowledgements

This article also draws on material from the Cooper & Beatty collection at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library and from the Carl Dair papers held at the Robertson Davies Library, Massey College, both at the University of Toronto.

 

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