Try these filters?

http://www.misterretro.com/image_filters.html

At last year's Typecon, Jim Wasco ran a workshop for non-digital type exploration. Maybe some of the attendees can share their experience"

Glyph Kitchen - Alphabet Sauce and other Typographic Condiments

The glyph kitchen is a place for exploring type in a variety of media. Forget the technological side of type design and return to the physical element of making letters, ornaments, words, and sentences - anything typographic.

Get hold of a photocopier or a fax machine (oldish is better) enlarge, reduce, send faxes, try some paste up, get hold of some 35mm lith film and a camera.

Tim

Photocopy + steel wool.

- Lex

Those old small office copieers with the sliding top are fun. hang a bit of your original out the edge of the imaging bed and stop it at points as the top tracks across. You'll get fun stretchy copies that way

You might even manage to get that stretchy effect on modern desktop scanners (though you'd have to supply motion in the original yourself), but you won't get the grittyness of a copier that way.

Those Mister Retro filters are pretty slick. I have the original 1st set and have used it a few times to customise t-shirts. The new pimped version of the software is even more slick. Seriously customizable and you really can tweak the living daylights out of it. Yes, I do think photocopies and steel wool are totally valid, but I also think these filters are just as valid.

Just give it to a 2-year-old for an hour or so, it will surely be anointed retro in some fashion :-)

ChrisL

Thank you very much people.
i will try the photocopies/fax and the steal wool
and also look in to these filters i heard of them before
but i didn't think people actually use them...today, i mean like in print work found on Aiga for example.

Thanks again!

I hate to state the obvious: hand-letter it? Is that crazy? ;) Everything suggested so far is a mechanical technique to artificially "antique" some type.

We're giving the hand-lettering workshop again this year at TypeCon and it looks to be very fun. Cut paper, ink, drawn, pen-written, calligraphic, brush-lettered and any other kind of handmade lettering. Experimental and low-tech. If you're coming to TypeCon, join us. Useful skills if the power goes out. ;)

I concur.

Some hand-cut linoleum type might be nice to try. Of course you'll have to get lino blocks and a set of gouges, but that's half the fun.

... but i didn’t think people actually use them...today, i mean like in print work found on Aiga for example.

Well, I'd guess they do, but the problem would be getting them to admit it. ;^) I hear sales of those filters are quite good. The key to using a tool is to know how and why to use them. It is all about subtleties.