Graphic Means

I was fortunate enough to catch the tail end of how graphic art was done - pre-Macintosh. I did paste-up, shot PMTs, specced type for typesetters to compose, etc. And I consider myself fortunate to have experienced it. (I was even lucky enough to get an education that allowed me to set lead type in galleys and print it on a century old Heidelberg press.)

This is how things were done for decades – and then in a few years it disappeared. Don’t get me wrong – I was thrilled to get my hands on a 512K Macintosh running PageMaker with one floppy disc to run the system on, and another floppy disc to save the files on. I was happy to retire the waxing machine.

But I think there is a real value to some sort of a record of the history of the graphic art trade. I think it’s good for people getting into the field to see how much of an effort, not to mention art and science, it was to produce even something as seemingly straight forward as a business card. Future generations should be able to get a sense of what all went into graphic art at one time.

Please consider helping fund this project if you too can remember how things were done at one time.


Graphic Means on Kickstarter