Musings on the New Technologies
I just got an invitation to attend my high school reunion. (I won’t tell you the year, but it feels very long ago.)
I got to thinking about what I do for a living and realized that not one part of my job existed when I graduated high school (Great Neck South High).
None of the companies I write about existed.
None of the software existed.
None of the hardware devises existed.
None of the communication devises I use existed (cordless phones and cell phones).
The sad thing, though, is that in many ways, the artistic and fine art values that existed back in then, have been lost.
A generation of designers have been brought up with no concept of fine typographic ligatures, swashes, alternate letterforms, and so on.
The switch from film to digital cameras has created a slew of blocky, choppy, jpeg images used in print as well as the web. (Even the internet as we know it today didn’t exist.)
But there have been some advances. The other day I had dinner with a friend at a new Korean restaurant. We both marveled at the beautiful four-color menu that was both for at the tables as well as for take-out.
The menu was definitely digital printing, and up until very recently you might have seen a four-color menu at a table, but it would never have been the take-out menu.
The advances in printing have made it much cheaper to produce four-color jobs.
Now, my job is to make sure that the stuff being printed looks as good as it can.
Thanks for making me feel old, Anne-Marie!
I attended a high school reunion a few years back (Scott Kelby and I graduated from the same school, at different times). I had prepared two answers to the inevitable question: “So, what are you doing now?” One answer was accurate–”teaching and supporting high end design software like…”; the other answer was dumbed-down version that didn’t include the words “InDesign,” “Photoshop,” “Illustrator,” or “QuarkXPress.” Like you, my high school days preceded most of today’s commonplace tech.
I was astounded at the reunion by how many people understood my actual job description–many, in fact, used InDesign and so forth! Of course, there was the occassional “Adobe? So you work with that PDF stuff, right?”
Digitally printed, four-color takeout menus.
Digital printing and VDP allow even small periodicals to run and distribute regional or neighborhood-specific editions like USA Today.
Portland, OR just this week began using illuminated inks in advertising on the sides of busses and subway trains–a Korean innovation that pumps a low level voltage through standard process printing ink laced with phosphorous. Paper-thick neon signage.
A couple of months ago a lab in Japan debuted a system that “prints” pixel-based glyphs in rapid succession on water.
Design and publishing have come so far in so short a time… Where will they be in 10, 50, or 100 years? Ponderous, man. Simply ponderous.
Pariah, I didn’t make you feel old, that was Sandee.
Pariah,
I love your description of your job. I usually just say “I teach computer graphics”. I figure writing, blogging, teaching, speaking, and all the other stuff is really just teaching. But I think I will use your answer at the reunion.
The real sad thing in my experience (textbook publishing) all the technology and empahasis on cost cutting is eleminating the time to think about design, and it is increasingly becoming a ROTE function. There isn’t time to think about litigers, swashes, good kerning, patterns, textures, color pallets,or any of the myriad of things that help to develop a good design. You just have time to flow the text, add some color and print it, much more and you just killed the budget on the project, and you have the bean counters breathing down your neck.