Art Center teacher Sean Adams explains how graphics were accomplished with physical tools before the digital revolution of Photoshop. (link to YouTube video)
For the amount of time he had, it's a pretty good summary, but I wish he had mentioned Lektro-Stik waxers, X-acto swivel knives
, ruling pens
, Chartpak line tape
, Mayline parallel rules
and Merganthaler Pica rulers, many of which are still useful today (I still use all of them).------
Museum of Forgotten Art Supplies
Previously on GurneyJourney: Dead Tech
Wow. That brings back a lot of memories. Cleaning out 000 Rapidographs...and putting them back together! Type setters! Process cameras!
ReplyDeleteI graduated the year computers were introduced into our graphics department. We had to hand-cut headlines, letter by letter and indicate type, Who can forget waxing machines, rubber cement thinner, and blue line board?
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ReplyDeleteUlano made the best swivel knife. About a hundred bucks in early 90's money before they stopped making them. But worth every penny if you cut a lot of amber/rubylith/frisket. You have to make new blades for them now from X-Acto #11s so it's not quite the same. Before you got your coffee in the morning you turned on the waxer to warm up. Ha, I bet this post gets a lot of comments!
ReplyDeleteYes Rapidographs! Use them continuously or spend half your day cleaning them and finally tossing them out.
ReplyDeleteWe used to stencil all our text. lay it out in pencil for spacing and spelling and !$%*! when you mis-spelled somthing!
Those were the days.I remember being absolutely thrilled with invention of border tape. No more coloring in double lines. Designers today have no idea how lucky they are that design is now done on a computer.
ReplyDeleteI remember. Oh I remember...
ReplyDeleteI remember the mathematical challenge of copy fitting!
ReplyDeleteBefore Photoshop came to dominate there was Quantel Paintbox. This fact seems to slip by because Photoshop has become so ubiquitous.
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