If you are as old as I am 
you may remember some of the ridiculous graphic design tools we used to use. I can remember some of the list of things I was given to buy for my design college course, magic markers, rotring pens, type gauge. I never did quite work out how to use that stupid type gauge or master the art of magic markers. When I was at art/design college the graphic design industry was using computers but the college hadn’t quite moved forward that much and computer use was more minimal than working by hand. Over at http://www.drawger.com there is a museum of forgotten graphic tools you can reminisce fondly (not) about, or have a laugh at if you’re too young to remember any of them. I had a dig in my desk drawer and found a few too, an adjustable set square, magic marker, rolling ruler and my own dreaded type rule mmm.. they’ll come in handy.
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What I used to find incredibly irritating were the angled mounting board cutters, those blades for cutting 45 degree angles in your frames.
One tiny slip of the wrist and bang goes another cutter against the wall.
Well I’m too young to have ever worked with some of that equipment, but I am definitely old enough to understand that while working with computer we use our brains very differently than while working in ‘analog’, and therefore is often important to first start off with a pencil and paper.
Can I have your type rule if you don’t want it? I lost mine ages ago!
I hated hot waxers. Bloody things never worked right. And they took ages to start up. And setting headlines (or worse, fixing typos) was an enormous pain in the rear, unless you were allowed to use Letraset. Still, better than breathing in lots of Spray Mount.
And you tell the youth of today, and they won’t believe you…
Luckily I never had to do the black board frames, I came in just after the prof that made students do that left. I still hated working with the stupid boards though, and after graduating I went right out and bought a leather book with the plastic sleeves. I just tack my projects on with masking tape. SO much easier to shuffle stuff around, update the work and tote around to meetings! Plus, no sticky, stinky spray mount :*(
I totally agree with you Joel. I find my work is not as good if I don’t start out analog (hehe).
My first job was as an assistant art director for a small advertising company. My days were split between marker comps and paste up. After a while I had had it with copy-fitting and stat cameras so I left the job to become an airbrush illustrator.
I remember one day talking to a friend about computers and how they would soon make the airbrush obsolete. He looked at me and said …”Bob, they’ll never be able to do what you do on a computer” …3 years later I traded in my airbrush for a computer.
Some days I miss the craftsmenship that went along with being an artist, but not many.
That brought back a few memories. I fondly remember, Letraset texture sheets and a razor blade for removing mistakes from board or film…those were the days. tearinhiseye.gif
This prompted me to dig through my old (very old) portfolio of architectural illustrations: I’m now looking at an A1 sheet of film- the building is faced with bricks every single one hand-drawn because the shop had sold-out of Letraset Brick!
)
(ps: that was back in the days when we worked a 25 hour day and lived in a shoe-box
I definitely remember. Especially when I left my cutting board in my car during a hot summer, the nasty burnt rubber smell never went away. Although I was given a lot of tools and paper pads – like bristol board, I never really used much of it. Our first few classes were about learn fundamentals and drawing shapes and the like. After that, didn’t really use any of it.
Hey right on sister! I am old enough to remember them! Infact my type scale is sitting on a shelf above my monitor as we speak! Spray mount, yes I still have a crusty old can of that too!
I do miss those days, but I must admit I wasn’t the tidiest of people! My desk whilst at design school was
more like a fine artist’s!
Rotring pens – mine were always clogging up! I also remember spending a bomb on tokens for the photocopy machine! In fact when I worked at Designer’s Journal we still used the gear you mentioned. I loved it and I think the rats who supposedly lived in the surplus paprer did too!
Do you rmember PMT machines – aaaaaaahhh! Now that’s a different story! I could never use them properly. I think the company must have come close to receivership due to all the paper I wasted and tried to hid away! – lol!
Oh how I loved my T-Square! Being left handed, I had to hunt high and low for a T-Square that had a flat on the other side as more T-square have an angled bottom.
Thanks for the link, that site is classic.
I am old enough to remember the good old days of working on the board. Sleeping in the dark room on Friday afternoons. The smell of cow gum and carefully cutting up type. I did master type specifying though. I still have my letraset burnisher, dividers and scapels, along with many type books which have been pushed to the back of the cupboard. The old skills still come in handy when doing mockups etc. Then I was one of seven artists in a Finished Art studio (Creative was next door), now I am another designer working from home.
I wish I could go back and learn how to do graphic design with these tools. I’m young but I think that craftsmanship is very important and that is what is missing from design as I see it. If you are doing letterpress printing for instance you have better sit and think about the project before setting your type, on the computer its a click of a button, the thought process isn’t forced and it shows.
What about the grueling pen… arrrggghhh. Almost put my mother’s eye out when she came in the door as I was hurling it across the room.
Hi everyone, I’m glad its not just me that remembers those horrible (in my opinion tools). Give me a mac anyday, though of course I wouldn’t be without my layout pad.
I agree with Igor Alexander…copyfitting was a pain in the rear end, BUT, you HAD to learn what your type could do before you used it, if not it could represent days of counting and recounting your original manuscripts. Designers would learn to love their condensed types for small spaces and their display types for the headlines. Today you just select, change the font and click… there is no actual reasoning behind the decisions aside from the fact that it looks better or worse and it fits…
I think copyfitting is like learning how to add and substract before you learn how to use a calculator. Once you use one you will seldom add by hand, BUT, at least you know the process behind the operations.
Hi Marina,
You make a good point, nowadays things are just so easy we just don’t have to think why are we doing this. When I am working in illustrator kerning type I must admit I just kern to be aesthetically pleasing rather than know any basic type rules.
Yeh! I remember those days in the 80s. [Stray drops of rotaring ink spoiling artwork etc.]
Rotring pens!! Gives me creeps,…. Broke 0.1 four times in a week while working on my thesis!
Sadly, I remember all these old tools of the trade and it was with great reluctance that I threw out the last lot of dried up Letraset sheets with all the lower case ‘E’s missing. Funnily enough my Ecademy profile is one long recall to those days; if anyone is interested, see it at http://www.ecademy.com/user/davidcradduck. A bunch of us old timers have started a society locally called GODS (Grumpy Old Designers). Membership is free but grumpiness is a pre-requisite and Pantone/Magic Marker sniffing is encouraged.
Marker comps were the best. They let me know exactly how much more I needed to practice.
It is good to see the actual evolution that has come through. From the actual tools that designers had to struggle with and now just a click does that all.
If you revisit http://www.drawger.com and see what is considered to be obselete, the humble Pantone swatch is amongst it. This is very worrying as we still use them (and Pantone still sell them). Does this mean we are also obselete?
Unfortunately I am old enough to remember the old days of working on the board. they represented tools of the craft like any skill. Not any more all Adobe products and Quark. Excellent!
Of course I remember these items! – Now I remember that about 20-25 years ago what really dislike me the most was getting the pmt thru the waxer and make the past up on a piece of board…. and be sited at the light table for hours tracing lines and drawings.
Well i finished college only a few years ago and all that stuff was part of the ‘graphics pack’ we bought at the beginning of the year. I left college in 2006, which to be fair was only 2 years ago, we only had 1 old blue imac (g3) to share between around 16 of us! We had the library, but there was no illustrator, nothing! Since then they have had a new Art and design complex built, so hopefully the students now won’t be scrapping over the computers!
Since then i have been mainly computer based, doing website design and search engine optimisation as well as the odd yellow pages adverts, business cards and folders. Its a shame because i don’t think our course was good to learn from, i generally have had to find out everything i know after college.
I think it would be useful for all graphic designers if we could take a trip back in time to see how it was done in the old days… then perhaps we would not get so frustrated when it takes more than a few seconds to open a large PSD or save a file!
Oh ye, I remember this
Your post have taken me back to those years of hardwork with these instruments. But luckily not anymore of struggle with those.
Ah! – the heady smell of Cow Gum (I still have a pot for sniffing). Most annoying was drawing a form with the Rotring pen and the client wanting to add another column. . . so glad when computers arrived. Worrying that Pantone charts aren’t being used – we also have a print department and all too often have to print 2 colours as CMYK as that’s how it’s been ‘designed’.
Its crazy to see how things have changed, growing up and designing on computers all the time, it seems weird how designers used to operate.
yeah the technology does have a great help. making things more easier and most probably getting more advanced and a time saver.
As you mentioned, those tools were on the starting edge, and it really impress me that how technology changes so quickly and we even adapt to it quickly as well.
I liked the flex ruler the best, I am sure I still have mine in a box in the garage.
Wow I think most kids my age will never have thought of designing by hand.
I’m pretty sure we have some people who can do graphic design exceptionally well on computer but can’t really do much on hand.
Roger – I admit I am one of those people. Although I would like to think I am more than adequate when the need to use software such as Photoshop or Illustrator comes into play, I am absolutely hopeless at getting my ideas onto paper with a pencil! I’ve got by until now so I won’t lose any sleep over it, I do actually still possess a lot of the items in that picture althought I couldn’t even begin to explain why.
Ahh these remind me of my engineering drawing classes..help!
Thankfully computers can do alot of the routine stuff far quicker now than I ever could with those “tools of the trade”
Actually drawing a design by hand, even if it’s just to clarify a 1st draft design is a good idea. We then transform it to CAD.
A slice of ‘Graphic Nostalgia’ – for anyone who would like a piece of of history to go with their Pantone tea mug – I’ve a selection of Unused – A2 pantone Letrafilm sheets for sale and some standard B/W texture, body copy, symbol sheets- – great mounted in a frame ( or you could cut them up)
– regards phill
I’m definitely ‘old enough’, but I didn’t get into this kind of work until well after the computer dominated, and did so via the computer (taking online classes, tutorials, etc). So while I can’t reminisce, I can relate to the concept.
When I was in college, I only used computers for my final papers. All the research and drafts were done by hand on paper. I do still find that writing things down by hand is helpful and sometimes (often) leads to better end results for me. Plus I get to revise it at least one more time when I enter the final version on the keyboard.
With that said though, I still think I’ll stick with all digital design! No thanks to the manual tools there.
It’s always good to realize and appreciate what you have; makes my more patient when I have a few glitches that ‘slow me down’ with the computer.
Hi Bob – Yes computers make things so much quicker – only thing is then people want their work quicker too