Cockney Slang Cooper & Beatty poster – Jim Donoahue and Al Elliott, c1970

We feel justified in giving this piece a shared credit. The poster itself was designed by Jim Donoahue, Cooper & Beatty Art Director. The title was hand lettered by Al Elliott who at the time, was with Headliners, the photo lettering division of C&B. We are fortunate to have both the poster and the original artwork for the title. This poster is a little unusual in that it was designed to promote Cooper & Beatty’s other photo lettering services.

Photo lettering was charged by the word and Headliners, Cooper & Beatty’s primary lettering studio, was quite expensive, so the type shops also offered less expensive photo lettering services. These secondary services would typically supply ‘galley’ strips of lettering that the client would assemble into jobs or headlines themselves. The libraries for this type of lettering also used 2-inch film fonts from a variety of sources including; Film-o-type, Visual Graphics Corporation (VGC) and Lettergraphics.