Alan Meeks

I was born in West Ham in the East London. I had no formal art college training so started work in a small graphics studio in London straight from school in 1970. The studio’s main business was Photosetting and dry transfer lettering so I learnt about stencil cutting and type design. In 1975 I was approached to join Letraset as Senior Type Designer and studio manager. At Letraset I designed over 40 typefaces whilst being in charge of all the artwork output of Letraset with a studio of ten artists and designers and an army of freelancers throughout the world. During this period myself and the Type Director managed to turn Letraset into one of the most important Typefoundrys in the world. All the typographic artwork produced at Letraset was done by Stencil Cutting, I was responsible for all the training in this technique. In 1984 I left Letraset to go freelance specifically to broaden my work beyond typefaces to more general type and specialised in Corporate Identity, packaging and type design. I designed and drew various logos such as the Champions league ball, Tesco, EMI, etc…and corporate alphabets such as British Airways, John Lewis, Cathay Pacific etc. I founded my own foundry in 2008.