Graphics Before Photoshop -- A Recollection with Examples 

Thank you for your thoughts. I think there are always limitations. Today the limitation is to avoid sameness.

The lack of limitation itself is a limitation.

I understand completely. In fact, I'm a composer. And in teaching students, I am struck by them being prisoners of their notation or DAW software. With paper tools and handmade instruments, they can be freed from the limitations of software in the imagination stage. Admittedly, graphics programs even back then weren't constrained by 19th Century thinking as music notation programs still are, so imagination wasn't quite as held back. Still, discovering old solutions to design or music problems can be refreshing and sometimes tarnish the software that seemed so gleamingly all-capable to a young designer or composer! Thanks for your comment! (And I think you might have meant "Pagemaker" rather than "pacemaker". I hope so, anyway 😀 )

@@bathorykitsz Great thoughts. Indeed PageMaker, not pacemaker. LOL. I corrected it in my comment for the sake of others.

Crazy, isn't it? So many ways we had to imagine something into existence and try to make the physical results actually work. Thanks!

I still whine about modern tech. It's part of working with graphics. 😉

Thanks for your kind words. We had to be really creative with physical materials back then!

@@bathorykitsz Yeah, I saw that when you showed it in your video

The printed text is crumpled to taste. 😀 Keep in mind that in those days (ca.1975), you sent out for your type; no computer output. It was delivered on photo paper, so you had limited chances to get it right. Because the bed camera had even lighting across the bed -- four lights, as I recall -- that cut out most of the shadows. It was then exposed on large graphics film (extremely high contrast), touched up with opaquing ink, and contact-printed from there. You could do it the same way by using lots of lights and a high-contrast setting in software.

same!!❤

Thanks! It was a dig-out-old-stuff-and-improvise video, with lots of edits later!

Thanks very much. I had no idea how much interest this video would generate. It was just for a class interested in old-school graphics!

Thanks! So long ago! :)

Obrigado! Yes, it was harder. Sometimes I go back to it for inspiration! You can see I've kept all my tools...

It's hard to imagine what it was like in the old days -- no computers, no cellphones, no digital photography. Everything with film that had to be developed, and you had to develop an eye for it because making mistakes was expensive! I can still do the old stuff, but only for fun, never because I have to.