Remember Letraset? It’s odd to think that its strangely satisfying transferable type used to be a staple in the graphic designer’s day-to-day tool kit, since nowadays it’s something that we rarely come across. Whilst Letraset might seem to be verging on obsolescence in some corners of the creative industry, Canadian designer and writer Derek Beaulieu has found a novel and beautiful new use for it with this series of typographic visual poems.

Beaulieu explains: “Once ubiquitous in business and graphic design environments, Letraset has now become a cultural artefact denigrated to art production. These poems interlock letters not around meaning but around physical shape.” His compositions are a celebration of the Letraset transfers’ forms and unique textures, and by treating them as visual elements rather than as straightforward type, he’s given them a new lease of life. The images below are only a selection of his experimentation with Letraset and visual poetry – if you’d like to see more, take a look at his site.