I started doing layout and paste-up for my mom who was a "Commercial Artist" after working for years as an animator at Hanna-Barbera. From there I never stopped, and was doing layout, illustration and design for school papers, posters and yearbooks through the seventies. I used countless sheets of Letraset type, did countless dropouts using amberlith and rubylith...and Good Lord, the fonts. The thing was, I was too young to know any history of fonts at all. I guess I knew the classics from the trendy, but I had no idea of the lively era that I was witnessing. Thanks for the retrospective, I remember it all better than I would have believed.
Submitted by joancarlson on Thu, 05/01/2008 - 18:18.
Great article ! On the Pacific southwest coast of the U.S., I had typositor & over 4000 fonts. Made a fair living assisting art directors and the like.
One photo modification device not mentioned: the Modigraphic distortion camera. The problem for most shops have this device was the price and the space (darkroom) required. I may have not caught this in your article, Lettering Inc. small film pieces, assembled on glass or plastic, to form a line. A Clydesdale camera with movable back assisted in distorting the lettering. Lettering Inc.'s form of setting film lettering dates back to the 1940's patent.
Thank you for permitting added comments.
gb.
I found an old brochure for a Spectra Setter and did a search only to find this. Awesome stuff. My family owned a screen print shop and I began setting type on the SS. In the early 80's I took a job at Black Dot Graphics in Chicago as a typositor operator. Man those were the days, lots of work and overtime. We also used a machine called a typeflex and IIRC one called a graphic modifier which did fatties, skinnies and drop shadows. Then the Macintosh came along and the craft died. I guess that's the price of change. Thanks for the article.
What a trip back in time!
I started doing layout and paste-up for my mom who was a "Commercial Artist" after working for years as an animator at Hanna-Barbera. From there I never stopped, and was doing layout, illustration and design for school papers, posters and yearbooks through the seventies. I used countless sheets of Letraset type, did countless dropouts using amberlith and rubylith...and Good Lord, the fonts. The thing was, I was too young to know any history of fonts at all. I guess I knew the classics from the trendy, but I had no idea of the lively era that I was witnessing. Thanks for the retrospective, I remember it all better than I would have believed.
Cheers Gene
Great article, very informative and made me chuckle.
A Lesson LEARNED
Awesome really awesome article here man. As a 26 year-old freelance designer..I learned so many techniques and do's/don'ts for my next client.
Thanks again for typing this informative article. Us 20-somethings need to know how and why we use what we use.
70's & 80's phototypesetting.
Great article ! On the Pacific southwest coast of the U.S., I had typositor & over 4000 fonts. Made a fair living assisting art directors and the like.
One photo modification device not mentioned: the Modigraphic distortion camera. The problem for most shops have this device was the price and the space (darkroom) required. I may have not caught this in your article, Lettering Inc. small film pieces, assembled on glass or plastic, to form a line. A Clydesdale camera with movable back assisted in distorting the lettering. Lettering Inc.'s form of setting film lettering dates back to the 1940's patent.
Thank you for permitting added comments.
gb.
Great stuff
I found an old brochure for a Spectra Setter and did a search only to find this. Awesome stuff. My family owned a screen print shop and I began setting type on the SS. In the early 80's I took a job at Black Dot Graphics in Chicago as a typositor operator. Man those were the days, lots of work and overtime. We also used a machine called a typeflex and IIRC one called a graphic modifier which did fatties, skinnies and drop shadows. Then the Macintosh came along and the craft died. I guess that's the price of change. Thanks for the article.