The year is 1987, and the giant-haired version of myself is a sophomore at the University of Texas at Austin. Disillusioned and uninspired as only a 20 year old can be, I find myself hiking across campus to that bastion of black jeans and unfiltered cigarettes, The Art Department. I have found my people. More importantly, I have found my new major.
And so begins my life as a graphic designer. My parents/financiers have no idea what that means, and I fear my funding may soon be in jeopardy. My classrooms contain drafting tables and easels. The supply list includes paintbrushes and razor blades. Am I taking a class or remodeling a house? A laptop is where you put your napkin, a mouse is a small rodent, and Adobe Acrobat is a gymnast from New Mexico… The year is 1987.
In case you are wondering how to identify the illusive “Outstandingly Long-lived Designer” (O.L.D.), here are a few clues:
- Missing tips of two or more fingers
- Has worked with cameras larger than most one bedroom apartments
- Understands that zips and floppies aren’t the latest drug fad
- First computer was a MacPlus or SE
- Knows the difference between tracking and kerning and actually cares
- Remembers when clipping paths were made with scissors
- Permanent lung damage from inhaling too much spray mount (and from smoking in class)
- Has needed at least one unintended haircut due to a rubber cement incident
- Has actually heard of rubber cement and understands it’s not a form of birth control
- Can identify and work a proportion wheel
- Doesn’t think of bikini lines when the term waxing comes up in conversation
- Remembers when a spray booth wasn’t a place to get a tan
- Knows that Letrapress is not a dryer setting
- Can identify and use a French curve
- Understands that Swiss style is not a sexual position
- Would be okay if there were only seven typefaces in the entire universe
- Occasionally dedicates songs to Univers
- Loves the smell of Bestine in the morning
- Has uttered these words: “I won’t be a starving artist, Mom, I’ll be designing record album covers!”
- Knows what a record album is
So, what am I missing? Calling all designers who remember when MTV played those things called music videos… What say you?
{ 13 comments… read them below or add one }
Has made the mistake of leaving layout boards in a hot car in the summer in Texas. Bye-bye layout.
I will admit- I don’t know what anything other than rubber cement is on that list. However, I do remember that MTV used to stand for Music Television…. commonly referred to as the good old days. What a great post! My little sister talked about being a graphic designer recently and was shocked when I told her that people used to have to do BY HAND what is now done by Photoshop. I believe she changed her mind for fear of having to learn to do it herself. Wimp……
* Remembers when there was no such thing as type sizes 13, 15, 17, etc.
* Knows how to cut Rubylith
* Remembers when a home office included a darkroom
* Remembers when stripping was a respectable job that didn’t include any clothing removal.
* Still has a stash of Rapidographs
* Remembers when border tape had nothing to do with immigration or crime scenes
* Still thinks of colors when hearing the term “PMS”
* Used a healing board had no new age connotations whatsoever
* Is still comfortable measuring things in picas
* Knows what a pica is
Wow, all soooo true! I was a Korbus design student at UT in ’86 or ’87, and the noteworthy distinction of that time frame was that I was in the last design class that did not include the use of computers. Macs were introduced into the curriculum the very next semester.
Funny stuff, above. :-)
Ha! Great comments ya’ll.
Lisa: I did the same thing with bluelines. Just like magic: Now you see it, now you don’t. DOH!!
Cathy: Tell your sis she’ll hardly have to do anything by hand, which is actually too bad. I sometimes miss getting my hands dirty. I don’t even feel like a graphic designer without India ink under my nails.
Julie: Brilliant! Especially love the one about stripping. I used to blush when I’d do a press check and have to talk to the strippers. Tee-hee!
Don: Were we classmates?? I was in the first graphic design class with computers. Our “lab” consisted of 3 or 4 Macs and met in a closet under the staircase in the art building. We used to print out type and cut it out to do leading and kerning exercises. HA!
There wasn’t a computer in sight in my college. We were still xeroxing font book pages and making cutouts to do type. I had a Tandy 1000TX at home that I some how managed to get Pagemaker with an ancient form of Windows and a dot matrix printer and used to rail at everyone how this was the future.
I still keep a few sheets of Amberlith and Rubylith just to show the younger folks. Along with a non-repo-blue pen, some border tape, and a proportion wheel. PMS for colors? I still think of clip art when I hear PMS, then colors. (old Print Media Services clip art books we had in newspapers back then). If I want a grainer black and white photo, how to do it in a dark room goes through my head before how to do it in Photoshop. I still find occasion to use an xacto and a loop and I still keep a pica pole at my desk (right next to the mouse to my old MacSE/30).
Awesome, Scott! I remember fighting over the xerox machine in college. When we finally got computers, nobody knew how to use them!
Lo many moons ago, at my second agency, storyboards were rendered in black and white because not enough people had color TVs. Before magic markers, layouts were done with pastels. Before aerosol fixative, you had an “L” shaped device. One end went into a jar of fixative and you blew into the other end to coat the artwork.
21. Still has a stash of press-on letters (and symbols!) in the bottom of his desk drawer
22. Cannot get rid of his Communication Arts annuals from the 70s and 80s
23. Cannot get rid of his Print annuals from the 70s and 80s
24. Cannot get rid of his stock photo books and disks from the 80s and 90s
25. Still owns an electric eraser with boxes of 3 different kinds of replacement strips
I confess.
Awesome post.
Based on that picture I am quite positive we dated and you left me at a Flock of Seagulls concert. I still have nightmares.
Ripple On!!!
Ilene – I laughed so hard reading this – forgive my vanity for thinking the first one is for me and my trip to the ER at 3 am during finals! That index finger was never the same after having sliced it. Thanks for the trip down memory lane!
Rocky- I was TOTALLY thinking of you with that one!! Your trip to the ER was a good lesson in what NOT to do with an x-acto knife. :)
Now I feel old. My dad was a draftsman, so, even being a few years younger, I still got exposure to a lot of the stuff you mentioned and, believe it or not, during the first semester in the ADV Creative Sequence at UT, Jack Reed made us hand draw all of our type on our ad layouts. No computers were allowed until the second semester class. And this was in 1995. I’m glad he did it.