Abstract/Summary

This article recovers the introduction of fluorescent inks to Britain in 1950. Reported sightings that year and discussions around their deployment and impact are followed through the pages of the British trade journal, Advertisers Weekly. Contemporary fascination is similarly tracked in a symposium convened by the Royal Society of Arts, chaired by the designer, Ashley Havinden, in which the technical achievement of fluorescent inks was explained and their uses and putative mis-uses debated. Drawn out of many sources is a persistent linkage of fluorescence with atomic age anxieties, and a push-and-pull between high design and vulgar theatricality in fluorescent ink applications. High design is conspicuous in documentation of the 1956 London exhibition of the Alliance Graphique Internationale (AGI), whose graphics designed by FHK Henrion exploited fluorescent inks.