I loved this article! I just missed the experience of paste-up by going to beauty school instead of art school during high school. (work program) A friend of mine was one of the last classes at her school to learn about paste-up. She lords it over me all the time! I love my job and would never have bothered with graphic design if it was still like that, but I feel I missed out on something magical, not to mention any old shemp with a computer thinks they can do layout. lol
Many, many stories but one that really stands out for me about this period of time in my graphics history is about my first real graphics pasteup job. I had experience using press type to do an entire brochure (four friends over a weekend did about 20 pages of type!). I had lots of experience with rapidiographs having gone through architecture and working for an architect. But no typesetting or pasteup skills to speak of. But I was hired to work on a weekly newspaper of 32 pages called LA. Roger Black was the art director and he had previously hired a designer who was assigned to do some of the ad pages. The first issue we ended up spending three days and nights up and were really wiped out. At 3 am Roger was handed the flat containing the restaurant ads. Now Roger was intimidating enough in that none of us had any typographic skills nor experience with this kind of production. Of course he didn't like the layout and started to move things around. The designer had gone nuts using chartpak rules. In early July in Westwood it was hot; but by 3 am it was much cooler. Pasteup boards would change with humidity and temperature--curling and shrinking all that was upon them when cooled. So as he started to move the rules, they started springing and going all over the place. He started yelling, then progressed to a real rage. Bam! windows flew open and the entire flat was hurtled onto Westwood Blvd. Never to be seen again. From that day forward that was known as the "eat-me-page" and one prayed with fear that Roger would never hurl that epitaph your direction.
Boy, did this article bring back a lot of memories! When I was in community college getting my degree, we had to learn to set type on an IBM Composer, print the content on clay-coated paper (which was rationed like meat in WWII) and paste it up.
When I began working, I still had to cut amberlith and Zip-a-tone (finding scraps of it in weird places), shoot my images on a process camera and paste everything up. I also had to make mock-ups of POP pieces for photo shoots using Pantone paper, photos and press-type.
I am glad of the advent of desktop and electronic publishing (I started learning the Mac in 1986; we imaged the type onto RC paper, then pasted it up). Life is so much easier now.
I consider my Mac as another tool (like a template or Rapid-o-graph) and apply my traditional knowledge to the way I create pages. A lot of the new kids don't understand how print works and how they can improve the lives of their service bureau people (and keep costs down) by generating documents that will actually image without some poor guy having to troubleshoot the document to death. I wish schools would apply real world techniques in their cirirculum instead of just going through the tutorials.
Submitted by TRDavidson on Thu, 02/12/2004 - 04:53.
Thanks for Gene Gable and his recollections of what it meant to be a Graphic Artist back in the day... which really isn't that long ago.
I was explaining to my kids about how software and personal computers came along and changed my working life forever, and they just can't grasp the concept. I don't know if a technical revolution will happen like that to them, but I hope to prepare them for it.
I too, started out as a paste-up artist. I was a Schaefer wax, X-acto knife, Pica rule kind of guy who just rolled with the changes and ended up becoming totally digital. I don't think anyone who was a casual observer of our industry 20 years ago would ever dare to imagine the changes we've encountered. I just hope that we don't get "obsoleted" by software someday...
Submitted by geozinger on Thu, 02/12/2004 - 06:51.
I started my design career in the mid-80s, when we were still pasting up boards but starting to experiment with the Mac. Gene's article brought back a flood of nostalgia for me--I too remember the special attention given to my "good" Rapidograph; the hell of having to ink a curving border again and again until I got it right (and hiding all my ruined boards from the other designers); the horror of waxing a galley on the wrong side, or accidentally slicing through some type with the xacto.
I always enjoy Gene's articles as I have a keen interest in retro art and methods, and this one was especially meaningful.
Thanks Gene!!
Gene, you and I are proof that "old dogs" can indeed keep learning new tricks. I made the same trek from Olfa knives and rubber cement, red litho tape and red Grumbacher opaque (hated that other stuff, the black shiny slime--think it was made from pencil sharpener leavings). I've survived Crosfield and Scitex systems and many years of Photoshop and QuarkXPress. (It's made me appreciate InDesign all the more.) I still can't bear to throw away my stainless steel T-square and French curves, or my precious Ulano knife. I cut myself just last night with my Olfa silver, but my fingers are sort of immune to pain by now. You know you're old when your first Pantone swatchbook has only 6 colors in it...
Thank you for the flashback.
I went to art school 83-86. The first two years were hell because of my professors fixation with the ruling pen. This appliance looked like it belonged more in a dentists office than a drawing table. His gentle flourish with this device was admirably frustrating. His carefully crafted accidents left my meager skills in the dust. In 1984 a small box showed up on the doorstep that changed everything. Today I create mathematically correct and precise lines by the dozens. Each time I endlessly play with a bezier curve handle trying in vain to find the right slope I remember this teacher and his ability to kick out the perfect line and curve from eye -- to hand -- to board with the experience of a master craftsman.
The sad side-bar of this story is told by the 60 or so trained and certified compugraphic, linotronic typesetters, who graduated the same year I did into a dead profession.
Thanks Gene, a great story. I was always a surgical scalpel man (#11 blade). They were pretty much the norm here in Australia (though many preferred the 10A blade!). X-actos were fiddly. Olfas were wobbly (didn't try the stainless model though). There's definitely an art to fitting and removing scalpel blades safely though.
I can still cut a straight line by eye, and cut through plastic software wrappers without marking the printed box. Comes in handy for stir-frying (which I do a lot of!).
A few more things I recall: the IBM Composer; Letraset headlines; and of course the mighty bromide camera.
Submitted by David Glover on Tue, 08/21/2007 - 11:52.
Thanks for the walk down memory lane. Your article described some of the best days of my life and brought both smiles and tears. Wow. What a lost art it truly is.
Submitted by Fran Troup on Wed, 02/25/2004 - 11:30.
Gene does a really good job here of describing the way graphic design used to be. It's hard to believe I started in '68 as a photoengraving apprentice at a newspaper and am still working in the printing industry (for the gov't - still as a photoengraver!). Not many of my colleagues from that era are still around. One thing he did leave out was that the printing/graphics industry used to be much more enjoyable than it is today. Economics and technological changes have changed the landscape forever. :(
But I can't complain, printing has been very good to me.......
Submitted by joecomputr on Sat, 07/02/2005 - 16:54.
Until I read this great article I thought I was the only designer left on earth who relishes in her olfa cutter. Love that sound. And long retired Schaefer waxer!! I love nostalgia, but i love my MACs more! i agree, the current tools are loved just as much if not more.
Thanks for the time travel. I enjoyed it.
I totally agree with Mr. Gaebel.The one thing about paste-up work he didn't mention
is the rubber cement pick-up.After pasteing
up pages and preparing them for the printer
one would make sure there wasn't a speck of dirt,grime or dust to ruin the pages for their filming.Thus you either used a store purchased rubber cement pick-up.It was shaped like a square or if you were a real
Paste-Up Artist, you used your own personal pick-up made of dried rubber cement droppings rolled over time into a ball
and added to with each job.It was like making a rubber band ball.You added to it whenever you could.Contests were held to see who had the largest ball many times in
our ad agency.You could tell who cheated by the cleanliness of their ball.The pros ball always looked like dried snot rolled through
dirt and you know they did bounce like a rubber ball.Good times!
This brings back so many memories, I can smell the thinner. Well, that could be because I still have a can on my desk. I also have a few Gaebel rulers and a line gauge, my old rapidographs (saw new sets on sale recently at the local art supply store), my lucite roller, and a jar of Pelikan Graphic White, all tucked away in my taboret. I never liked Olfa knives; I used a surgical scalpel instead (resulting in only one instance of nerve damage).
I would email this article to coworkers, but none of them are (or would admit to being) old enough to remember much of the content.
Thanks
X-Actos were only for cutting intricate Amberlith® or Rubylith® masks. Once the sharp tip got messed up, they were useless. Some people kept a sharpening stone around to resharpen them, since the blades weren't cheap.
I only used single-edge razor blades until I someone turned me on to a stainless steel Olfa.
I still have a couple of them around, mostly for cutting packages open.
The three or four hundred singe-edge razor blades I have in boxes will be a legacy for my heirs. And their own heirs.
Rubber cement, Bestine, Ink, hot waxers, spray glue...Yes, walking around with a paper towel wrapped with masking tape usually stopped the bleeding from an X-acto cut. The Pica Rulers were the perfect shape and thickness for using as a car lock jimmy - for those working late that had gotten locked out of the car late at night (that was before cell phones). 409 cleaner worked well for cleaning out airbrushes. And, let's not forget the speedball pen set and the india ink either. Ahhh, the good ol' days! When talent got paid well, and computers were for only large corporations!
Thanks for this article, I loved it. Yes, I still have some of my tools, hand waxer, x-acto, pica rulers, etc. Centering rulers were the coolest. Yes and those 3x0 and 4x0 Rapidographs gave one fits. I miss working with my hands. Later, I had my own design business and did typesetting. I still dream sometimes of the galleys coming out of the processor it seemed like magic. I guess we have gone the way of the cart wright, the carriage maker and the ship builder. Technology marches on. On thing that has changed though is deadlines. I understand they can be even worse now! I loved this work and miss it sometimes still. I hand inked a logo for someone for the web and they didn't know what to do with it. Strange. Hey, even my watercoloring is becoming obsolute with filters in Photoshop. Time to move on.
Thank you. I can't say I'd like to return to my days as a pasteup artist, but it was a pleasure to read your article. I can still mitre corners in my sleep.
I remember all of these products! Thank you for this great article. I loved doing paste-up for hours and hours--trying for that balance of perfection and rhythm in the work, and being together in a roomful of workers all at our drafting tables. We took pride in not wasting the extra time to take out the pica ruler, but easily laying a rule exactly one pica below a photo or cutting in a single line of type and making the leading perfect. Oh, and what about searching around on the floor for that single comma you dropped?
Just missed it
I loved this article! I just missed the experience of paste-up by going to beauty school instead of art school during high school. (work program) A friend of mine was one of the last classes at her school to learn about paste-up. She lords it over me all the time! I love my job and would never have bothered with graphic design if it was still like that, but I feel I missed out on something magical, not to mention any old shemp with a computer thinks they can do layout. lol
eat-me page
Many, many stories but one that really stands out for me about this period of time in my graphics history is about my first real graphics pasteup job. I had experience using press type to do an entire brochure (four friends over a weekend did about 20 pages of type!). I had lots of experience with rapidiographs having gone through architecture and working for an architect. But no typesetting or pasteup skills to speak of. But I was hired to work on a weekly newspaper of 32 pages called LA. Roger Black was the art director and he had previously hired a designer who was assigned to do some of the ad pages. The first issue we ended up spending three days and nights up and were really wiped out. At 3 am Roger was handed the flat containing the restaurant ads. Now Roger was intimidating enough in that none of us had any typographic skills nor experience with this kind of production. Of course he didn't like the layout and started to move things around. The designer had gone nuts using chartpak rules. In early July in Westwood it was hot; but by 3 am it was much cooler. Pasteup boards would change with humidity and temperature--curling and shrinking all that was upon them when cooled. So as he started to move the rules, they started springing and going all over the place. He started yelling, then progressed to a real rage. Bam! windows flew open and the entire flat was hurtled onto Westwood Blvd. Never to be seen again. From that day forward that was known as the "eat-me-page" and one prayed with fear that Roger would never hurl that epitaph your direction.
Ahhh...the Good(?) Ol' Days
Boy, did this article bring back a lot of memories! When I was in community college getting my degree, we had to learn to set type on an IBM Composer, print the content on clay-coated paper (which was rationed like meat in WWII) and paste it up.
When I began working, I still had to cut amberlith and Zip-a-tone (finding scraps of it in weird places), shoot my images on a process camera and paste everything up. I also had to make mock-ups of POP pieces for photo shoots using Pantone paper, photos and press-type.
I am glad of the advent of desktop and electronic publishing (I started learning the Mac in 1986; we imaged the type onto RC paper, then pasted it up). Life is so much easier now.
I consider my Mac as another tool (like a template or Rapid-o-graph) and apply my traditional knowledge to the way I create pages. A lot of the new kids don't understand how print works and how they can improve the lives of their service bureau people (and keep costs down) by generating documents that will actually image without some poor guy having to troubleshoot the document to death. I wish schools would apply real world techniques in their cirirculum instead of just going through the tutorials.
Great and fun article
Fun to remember the good old days and also realize how happy they are gone.
I remember all of that stuff
Thanks for Gene Gable and his recollections of what it meant to be a Graphic Artist back in the day... which really isn't that long ago.
I was explaining to my kids about how software and personal computers came along and changed my working life forever, and they just can't grasp the concept. I don't know if a technical revolution will happen like that to them, but I hope to prepare them for it.
I too, started out as a paste-up artist. I was a Schaefer wax, X-acto knife, Pica rule kind of guy who just rolled with the changes and ended up becoming totally digital. I don't think anyone who was a casual observer of our industry 20 years ago would ever dare to imagine the changes we've encountered. I just hope that we don't get "obsoleted" by software someday...
Always enjoy Gene's articles
I started my design career in the mid-80s, when we were still pasting up boards but starting to experiment with the Mac. Gene's article brought back a flood of nostalgia for me--I too remember the special attention given to my "good" Rapidograph; the hell of having to ink a curving border again and again until I got it right (and hiding all my ruined boards from the other designers); the horror of waxing a galley on the wrong side, or accidentally slicing through some type with the xacto.
I always enjoy Gene's articles as I have a keen interest in retro art and methods, and this one was especially meaningful.
Thanks Gene!!
What a flashback!
Gene, you and I are proof that "old dogs" can indeed keep learning new tricks. I made the same trek from Olfa knives and rubber cement, red litho tape and red Grumbacher opaque (hated that other stuff, the black shiny slime--think it was made from pencil sharpener leavings). I've survived Crosfield and Scitex systems and many years of Photoshop and QuarkXPress. (It's made me appreciate InDesign all the more.) I still can't bear to throw away my stainless steel T-square and French curves, or my precious Ulano knife. I cut myself just last night with my Olfa silver, but my fingers are sort of immune to pain by now. You know you're old when your first Pantone swatchbook has only 6 colors in it...
Thank you for the flashback.
School daze
I went to art school 83-86. The first two years were hell because of my professors fixation with the ruling pen. This appliance looked like it belonged more in a dentists office than a drawing table. His gentle flourish with this device was admirably frustrating. His carefully crafted accidents left my meager skills in the dust. In 1984 a small box showed up on the doorstep that changed everything. Today I create mathematically correct and precise lines by the dozens. Each time I endlessly play with a bezier curve handle trying in vain to find the right slope I remember this teacher and his ability to kick out the perfect line and curve from eye -- to hand -- to board with the experience of a master craftsman.
The sad side-bar of this story is told by the 60 or so trained and certified compugraphic, linotronic typesetters, who graduated the same year I did into a dead profession.
Knife skills have other uses
Thanks Gene, a great story. I was always a surgical scalpel man (#11 blade). They were pretty much the norm here in Australia (though many preferred the 10A blade!). X-actos were fiddly. Olfas were wobbly (didn't try the stainless model though). There's definitely an art to fitting and removing scalpel blades safely though.
I can still cut a straight line by eye, and cut through plastic software wrappers without marking the printed box. Comes in handy for stir-frying (which I do a lot of!).
A few more things I recall: the IBM Composer; Letraset headlines; and of course the mighty bromide camera.
Those were indeed the days
Thanks for the walk down memory lane. Your article described some of the best days of my life and brought both smiles and tears. Wow. What a lost art it truly is.
Great article
Gene does a really good job here of describing the way graphic design used to be. It's hard to believe I started in '68 as a photoengraving apprentice at a newspaper and am still working in the printing industry (for the gov't - still as a photoengraver!). Not many of my colleagues from that era are still around. One thing he did leave out was that the printing/graphics industry used to be much more enjoyable than it is today. Economics and technological changes have changed the landscape forever. :(
But I can't complain, printing has been very good to me.......
Olfa cutters
Until I read this great article I thought I was the only designer left on earth who relishes in her olfa cutter. Love that sound. And long retired Schaefer waxer!! I love nostalgia, but i love my MACs more! i agree, the current tools are loved just as much if not more.
Thanks for the time travel. I enjoyed it.
The Largest Rubber Cement Ball
I totally agree with Mr. Gaebel.The one thing about paste-up work he didn't mention
is the rubber cement pick-up.After pasteing
up pages and preparing them for the printer
one would make sure there wasn't a speck of dirt,grime or dust to ruin the pages for their filming.Thus you either used a store purchased rubber cement pick-up.It was shaped like a square or if you were a real
Paste-Up Artist, you used your own personal pick-up made of dried rubber cement droppings rolled over time into a ball
and added to with each job.It was like making a rubber band ball.You added to it whenever you could.Contests were held to see who had the largest ball many times in
our ad agency.You could tell who cheated by the cleanliness of their ball.The pros ball always looked like dried snot rolled through
dirt and you know they did bounce like a rubber ball.Good times!
Brings back memories
This brings back so many memories, I can smell the thinner. Well, that could be because I still have a can on my desk. I also have a few Gaebel rulers and a line gauge, my old rapidographs (saw new sets on sale recently at the local art supply store), my lucite roller, and a jar of Pelikan Graphic White, all tucked away in my taboret. I never liked Olfa knives; I used a surgical scalpel instead (resulting in only one instance of nerve damage).
I would email this article to coworkers, but none of them are (or would admit to being) old enough to remember much of the content.
Thanks
Blades
X-Actos were only for cutting intricate Amberlith® or Rubylith® masks. Once the sharp tip got messed up, they were useless. Some people kept a sharpening stone around to resharpen them, since the blades weren't cheap.
I only used single-edge razor blades until I someone turned me on to a stainless steel Olfa.
I still have a couple of them around, mostly for cutting packages open.
The three or four hundred singe-edge razor blades I have in boxes will be a legacy for my heirs. And their own heirs.
I Can Smell It Now
Rubber cement, Bestine, Ink, hot waxers, spray glue...Yes, walking around with a paper towel wrapped with masking tape usually stopped the bleeding from an X-acto cut. The Pica Rulers were the perfect shape and thickness for using as a car lock jimmy - for those working late that had gotten locked out of the car late at night (that was before cell phones). 409 cleaner worked well for cleaning out airbrushes. And, let's not forget the speedball pen set and the india ink either. Ahhh, the good ol' days! When talent got paid well, and computers were for only large corporations!
Snowball WAs There
snowball was there. a wonderful time was had by all (Union Printers)
Paste Up memories
Thanks for this article, I loved it. Yes, I still have some of my tools, hand waxer, x-acto, pica rulers, etc. Centering rulers were the coolest. Yes and those 3x0 and 4x0 Rapidographs gave one fits. I miss working with my hands. Later, I had my own design business and did typesetting. I still dream sometimes of the galleys coming out of the processor it seemed like magic. I guess we have gone the way of the cart wright, the carriage maker and the ship builder. Technology marches on. On thing that has changed though is deadlines. I understand they can be even worse now! I loved this work and miss it sometimes still. I hand inked a logo for someone for the web and they didn't know what to do with it. Strange. Hey, even my watercoloring is becoming obsolute with filters in Photoshop. Time to move on.
Walk down memory lane...
Thank you. I can't say I'd like to return to my days as a pasteup artist, but it was a pleasure to read your article. I can still mitre corners in my sleep.
I loved paste-up
I remember all of these products! Thank you for this great article. I loved doing paste-up for hours and hours--trying for that balance of perfection and rhythm in the work, and being together in a roomful of workers all at our drafting tables. We took pride in not wasting the extra time to take out the pica ruler, but easily laying a rule exactly one pica below a photo or cutting in a single line of type and making the leading perfect. Oh, and what about searching around on the floor for that single comma you dropped?