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.
Thursday, August 6, 2009
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Hi Jim,
ReplyDeleteI remember those days. I learned more about fractions from working at an ad agency than I ever did at school. I once had a piece that I had been working on for two days torn up in front of me because something was 1/32nd off. I worked for two menopausal women and there was a lot of tearing up (both pronunciations,)rending of garments and climate wars going on in that office.
I was looking at a college catalog yesterday and I saw classes for a lot of the new technology being offered for graphic designers. I am glad I just do the old-school fine arts stuff now because I understand you can't teach an old dog new tricks. Of course, you are a slightly older dog than I am so have you been able to work some of these "things" into what you do?
I like the drawing on this page -- I want to know where the rest of the giant crab went. It has been a couple of years since I ate any fresh crab. It's the tragic part of being stranded here in the middle of the country.
Sorry about the image of myself that I used. I am not trying to hide. I will update with something better when I get time.
I'm going to take a few days off next week so it may be a week before I post again. Talk to you soon. ME