Australian Infront

the job jobs did

Posted 07.10.2011 @ 10.57AM

http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/25/the-job-jobs-did/

Posted 07.10.2011 @ 12.13PM

i remember when macs started changing the world of design and print, without this market there may well have been a different outcome for apple, we were it's main client, pc's struggled to catch up, the interface was more visual and accessible

my first was a mac 2si, 8 ram, 240 hard drive, quark, illustrator and p/shop, i knew of only one other studio using them where i worked in fitzroy, melbourne

work was transferred to printers on floppy unless you could afford syquest, one time i was doing a magazine, the repro house told me floppies were too hard, they could transfer them to syquest for me for $400, i bought a syquest for $350 and never used that mob again, after telling them they were robbing bastards

when i bought it i was going blind, it cost me as much s a very nice car at the time, was a gamble

i budgeted for it to take 3 months to cover it's cost, it was paying it's way in one week, i had never worked a computer before and did not have any help, my computer guy told me, sod the lessons, they know less than you, just switch it on and start using it

i started off printing out galleys of type at 300%, making bromides at 33% of those and pasting them onto pasteboard, the old fashioned way

then i slowly moved into full page layouts, dropping in pics and getting bromides from repro or type houses, which still needed to be pasted down

they seemed to think everything that went wrong was the designers fault, when in fact it a steep learning curve all round

gradually typesetters lost out, photographers lost out as we started creating work on the screen, art shops missed out as we didn't need any of their supplies again and reps faded from my memory with their nice cars, long lunches and suits

many designers seemed to think it was sacrilegious and refused to use them, within 2 years they had to leave the industry and retire to their organic yak farms

p/shop was the exciting end of this work, re-touching that we used to pay thousands for could be done in a few minutes, i would stay up all night playing with it

small design studios could complete with large ones, no more hours of airbrushing visuals, pasting colour p/copies and acres of card and board laying around the studio, present the ink jet prints and win the job

gone were chromalin proofs too, well for me anyway, i worked out how to produce colour correct a3 plus size prints on my hp ink jet, even when the printer insisted on doing there own proofs, they invariably ended up using mine

then came the advent of direct to plate, an even more worrying time, but one we got used to

then pdf's, ooh thank you lord

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so again i say, without apples being used by designers they may have very well never happened in the way they did

as for becoming a fashion item - well i say without those working in the visual media loving them, as apposed to geeks, history may well have been different

Posted 07.10.2011 @ 12.22PM

Bromides. Jesus. there's a word i haven't heard in a long time...

Posted 07.10.2011 @ 3.15PM

radiograph, artiscope, letraset, cow gum - now all wrapped up in a computer

Posted 09.10.2011 @ 7.24PM

I'm from the new wave of designers who learned almost solely on the computer (besides a Cert IV in Design w/ some hands on experience). Thankfully I've heard of most of those things mentioned above.

Not sure why young designers don't learn more about the older methods. Gives a better appreciation as well as producing a more well-rounded and considerate designer...

But I digress. Hooray Apple.

Posted 09.10.2011 @ 10.49PM

i read a lot of cynics about how jobs was just a business man and didn't know a thing about his products, but if you read/watch anything about his past he has a fairly strong design background especially in typography and the inclusion of multiple fonts in a system.

actually a member on here told me 7 years ago "once you go mac, you don't go back". picked up a mac not too long after and haven't gone back since.