The principle behind Day Glo ink is both simple and mind-blowing. When we see a colour on a page, this is the natural light being transformed and reflected back off the colour to our eyes. Day Glo pigments not only reflect this light back, but the also pigments convert some of the unseen light — ultraviolet light — to visible light. When this reflects back to our eyes we perceive that more light is reaching our eyes than in the wider environment — looking like the colours are themselves glowing or giving off their own light.
The Day-Glo Color Corp. was founded in Ohio in 1946 by Joseph and Robert Switzer, but the brothers had been working on pigments with these qualities since the 1930s.
By November 1950, the British Printer ran a detailed article on the current state of Day Glo in the UK. The pigment was initially only offered to hand-painters (for signs) and screen printers. There was some relief that all manner of printing couldn’t use Day Glo inks and that it would be limited to some specific uses. While best in daylight — containing the ultraviolet light needed for conversion — the article notes that posters that were ‘invisible’ beyond 50 yards remained clearly visible at 200 yards when printed Day Glo.
The initial application of Day Glo had to be in a film 3/1000th of an inch thick meaning it could not be applied through letterpress which lays a film much thinner than this. Initial colours were the now-familiar crimson, vermillion, green and yellow but to give an impression of their brilliance these were re-named — Neon Red, Fire Orange, Saturn Green and Signal yellow. Day Glo posters were listed as having around a month of fade resistance in strong sunlight.
Just as have many other spectacular innovations, so has ‘Day Glo’ suffered from misuse in its early days. Hoardings in the vicinity of The Haymarket and Leicester Square have been plastered with such unrestrained enthusiasm that they have become cauldrons of riotous colour: superfluous brilliance so engulfs the passer-by that he cannot possibly, without difficulty, assimilate anything but the largest patterns and letters.
— British Printer comment on Day Glo, November – December 1950
The next development to bring us letterpress Day Glo was a change of approach by 1957 where a Chicago printer was noted as using litho but then a bronzing-type process to apply Day Glo pigments. Essentially, slightly wet ink is dusted with Day Glo powder, and a light brush dusts away the powder from the non-sticky/uninked areas of the paper. This powder was not as light fast as the inks used in screen printing.
Day Glo Letterpress
By 1962, Dane & Co inkmaker was offering Day Glo letterpress inks. They had been offered earlier but had to be applied in two coats. The inks dried within 4-6 hours and were as light-fast as the screen inked versions.
Day Glo then became another characteristic of letterpress that can’t be easily replicated at home. We can each now print high quality pages, with many different fonts from our own home, but like the light impression of letterpress, it’s not easy to recreate Day Glo at home.
Suppliers Today
My favourite letterpress ink suppliers each offer flouro inks:
Day Glo and Paper
One additional Day Glo innovation made it in to the world of commercial printing — just as the base chemicals behind Day Glo reflect back additional visible light, papermakers could add a small amount of ‘optical white’ pigments to their papers.
By adding just 0·05% of phosphorescent zinc sulphide to dry pulp, the resulting paper reflects back more visible light giving the overall effect of an ultra-white stock.
Year and Era
1946 / Modern
Object Type
Other Objects
Location
Cleveland, Ohio as headquarters of the Day Glo Corp.
Sources and More Information
- British Printer Magazines: 1950, 1957 and 1962
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Header Image: “An early Globe Poster” flickr photo by Nick Sherman https://flickr.com/photos/nicksherman/14992854186 shared under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-SA) license
British Letterpress in 100 Objects 