A New Year

The far off future world of 2010 A.D. is here!
Well, it was the future when I was young. It had flying cars and hotels on Mars, clothes that dried at a push of a button on your sleeve, etc. But I still use a pencil to draw on paper. Yes, there is that old time MAC computer in front of me to do the digital stuff now and then. I couldn't stand doing a pastup the wax or rubber cement and illustration board way. The horror.

Getting back to business

Times have changed for those of us who chose graphic arts as our vocation. If you have been doing graphic design long enough, you first worked with illustration board, x-acto knives, Letraset®, (or PressType®, ah, those were the days) and non-repro blue pencils. Then, an amazing technological breakthrough in the '80's. Desktop publishing. It was great for making "pancake breakfast" notices and such, then with ever increasing sophisticated graphic software, we were able to actually design flyer's, catalogs and annual reports, not to mention ads with juxtaposed images not easily done before. Gone were rubylith and acetate overlays. Some printers and designers didn't keep up with this change. Others flourished.
Now. Now it has happened again. Sort'a crept up on some of us, even though it was obvious to the rest of the world. Web, SEO, PHP, web 2.0, Java, CSS, action script and on and on. Should we as graphic designers/artist know these "things?"
Yes... at least in my opinion, at least the basics.