blast from the past

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MSD

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Jan 13, 2012, 10:05:10 PM1/13/12
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Akk,

Pour a glass of Port
and remember
what we are missing.

MSD


http://www.theatlantic.com/video/archive/2012/01/newspaper-behind-the-scenes-1970/251384/

Dick Margulis

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Jan 13, 2012, 10:18:51 PM1/13/12
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Not me. I don't miss it at all.

Victoria Shepherd

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Jan 14, 2012, 11:49:21 AM1/14/12
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Thank you for sharing!
Students would probably flip if they watched this...
Vicki

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Helen W. Lee

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Jan 14, 2012, 2:40:48 PM1/14/12
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On Jan 13, 2012, at 7:05 PM, MSD wrote:

> Pour a glass of Port
> and remember
> what we are missing.

Thanks for sharing! Took me back years to when my uncle took me behind the scenes at the Pacific Press building, where he set type for the daily Vancouver newspapers. Oh how things have changed!!

--

Helen W. Lee, Kamloops, British Columbia
Webmaster, Canine Review Magazine: http://www.caninereview.ca
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Kathleen

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Jan 14, 2012, 3:57:27 PM1/14/12
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Bringing it closer to home, those were the days when you had beg then to drive to the typesetter for late night changes. And of course all the paper and exacto knife cuts during production. Yup, those were the days.
kat

On Jan 13, 2012, at 7:05 PM, MSD wrote:

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Kat
McGraphics Design, Inc.
(626) 799-2195
http://www.mcgraphics.us

Biz-comm

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Jan 14, 2012, 4:07:31 PM1/14/12
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I came in a decade later. We used DOS computers to write font size, font name etc. Little did I realize at the time, that this would stand me in good stead for html. :-)

We used the page sketches to position photos, etc before sending the copy to production. And if we hit the wrong font size and it printed out in production, the head guy would come screaming into the news room, wanting to know who the idiot was. :-)

My first time on the front page, I was 10 minutes late to deadline and boy did I catch hell from the editor. Scared the living **** out of me.

On Jan 14, 2012, at 3:57 PM, Kathleen wrote:

> Bringing it closer to home, those were the days when you had beg then to drive to the typesetter for late night changes. And of course all the paper and exacto knife cuts during production. Yup, those were the days.

Regards,

Patrice Olivier-Wilson
828-628-0500
http://Biz-comm.com
b...@biz-comm.com


Biz-comm

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Jan 14, 2012, 4:31:44 PM1/14/12
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>
>
> My first time on the front page, I was 10 minutes late to deadline and boy did I catch hell from the editor. Scared the living **** out of me.
>
>

That probably wasn't clear. As front page layout editor I was late, not as a reporter. I was the "business desk" writer/editor, but pulled front page layout editor duty too as back up, and as needed.

The day I quit, as a reporter, I had 3 major stories on the front page. I loved that job, in fact, I think it was my favorite job ever, other than being self employed.

David Bergsland

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Jan 14, 2012, 5:05:33 PM1/14/12
to indesi...@googlegroups.com, David Bergsland
Actually, I think it shows how far behind the times Web Page layout tools really are.

On Jan 14, 2012, at 3:07 PM, Biz-comm wrote:

> We used DOS computers to write font size, font name etc. Little did I realize at the time, that this would stand me in good stead for html. :-)

--
David Bergsland

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Biz-comm

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Jan 14, 2012, 5:15:07 PM1/14/12
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I'm sorry, but I don't understand your comment.


On Jan 14, 2012, at 5:05 PM, David Bergsland wrote:

> Actually, I think it shows how far behind the times Web Page layout tools really are.
>
> On Jan 14, 2012, at 3:07 PM, Biz-comm wrote:
>
>> We used DOS computers to write font size, font name etc. Little did I realize at the time, that this would stand me in good stead for html. :-)
>

Regards,

David Bergsland

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Jan 14, 2012, 5:56:23 PM1/14/12
to indesi...@googlegroups.com, David Bergsland
With Web page layout we are still forced to write code: font size, font name, font weight, font family, ad nauseum. Not to mention divs, float, margins, padding, size, location, indent, and on and on. Even the best do not do this well in a WYSIWYG interface. Thankfully, print design has moved beyond that.

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Michael Brady

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Jan 14, 2012, 6:40:11 PM1/14/12
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On Jan 14, 2012, at 3:57 PM, Kathleen wrote:

> all the paper and exacto knife cuts during production. Yup, those were the days.

Yeah, but you also had rubber cement, the original TuffSkin. And the fumes!


| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
Michael Brady
www.michaelbradydesign.com/Blog/ | mic...@michaelbradydesign.com
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Biz-comm

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Jan 14, 2012, 6:55:59 PM1/14/12
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Ah... above my pay grade then to comment.


On Jan 14, 2012, at 5:56 PM, David Bergsland wrote:

> With Web page layout we are still forced to write code: font size, font name, font weight, font family, ad nauseum. Not to mention divs, float, margins, padding, size, location, indent, and on and on. Even the best do not do this well in a WYSIWYG interface. Thankfully, print design has moved beyond that.

Regards,

Robert Severn

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Jan 14, 2012, 9:05:01 PM1/14/12
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I've inhaled enough Bestine to kill an ordinary person...

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Bob

Robert K Severn
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Time is the best teacher,
unfortunately it kills its students.

Hazel Hipkins

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Jan 14, 2012, 11:18:23 PM1/14/12
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Technologies may have changed, but there are still a lot of people working deep into the night to make a morning edition happen.

Aren't there?

Hh

William Adams

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Jan 16, 2012, 7:12:45 AM1/16/12
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On Jan 14, 2012, at 11:18 PM, Hazel Hipkins wrote:

> Technologies may have changed, but there are still a lot of people working deep into the night to make a morning edition happen.
>
> Aren't there?

Depends on your evaluation of ``lots'' --- they do have some pretty sophisticated systems for building the pages, optimized for the needs of the industry / specific paper which make it possible to do this w/ far fewer people than in the past.

SoftMagic's Project M is one notable example:

http://www.softmagic.com/HomePage/eng/main/index_m.jsp

William

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Dick Margulis

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Jan 16, 2012, 8:10:15 AM1/16/12
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On 1/16/2012 7:12 AM, William Adams wrote:
> On Jan 14, 2012, at 11:18 PM, Hazel Hipkins wrote:
>
>> Technologies may have changed, but there are still a lot of people working deep into the night to make a morning edition happen.
>>
>> Aren't there?
>
> Depends on your evaluation of ``lots'' --- they do have some pretty sophisticated systems for building the pages, optimized for the needs of the industry / specific paper which make it possible to do this w/ far fewer people than in the past.
>


Let's take this back to roughly 1969, so you can see what this reduction
looks like over a longer term. I'll draw this from a different part of
the graphic arts industry because, while I'm generally familiar with the
way newspapers were composed in those days, I never worked for one.

My first real job after college was at an ad agency, J. Walter Thompson,
as a junior copywriter on the Ford Division account. In those days,
virtually all typesetting was done in hot metal on Linotype and
Intertype machines (some book publishers still had composition done on
Monotypes, particularly in England). But advertising typography, at
least at the big New York agencies, was done by hand-pegging foundry type.

The company that set the type for our art directors invited us all to an
open house to see their new phototype equipment--the latest
technological breakthrough that would enable them to do all sorts of
wondrous things with body type. (They put their AlphaType machine in the
same small room where they already had a Photo-Typositor and,
incongruously, a Ludlow line caster.)

But the main plant was a four- or five-story building on East 42nd
Street that was, guessing in long hindsight, 80 x 120. On the ground
floor they had the proofing presses and proof assembly area, and I think
they may have had a small Linotype department. From the ground floor,
you could look up through a rectangular central opening to galleries on
all the upper floors. There was a walking path around the gallery, and
then extending to the walls in all four directions, six-foot-tall type
cabinets. Floor after floor of row after row of drawer upon drawer upon
drawer of California job cases. No sort was ever redistributed to a case
(for fear of ever using nicked or dirty type). All type was bought new
from foundries and distributed as needed to the cases by helpers. There
were easily a dozen men with composing sticks and galley trays kept busy
filling orders for new ads and revising according to the corrections
that came back from art directors ("corrections" in the sense of orders
to kern here, change a line break there, the sorts of things that are
mostly automatic today or that you or I do with a keystroke--these guys
did not make typos in the usual sense of the word). Other employees
pulled proofs and packaged them to be messengered back to the agencies.

That type house probably offered fifty or sixty body faces and, thanks
to the Photo-Typositor, a somewhat larger catalogue of display faces.

Compare that operation, with its several employees, its tons of type,
its real estate (employing construction and maintenance people), and the
messenger service it supported to what you or I can do in a day with a
laptop and an Internet connection.

Now when the type was finally approved and the photo of the car was
selected, the art director's sketch went to a studio where the comp was
assembled. A dye transfer print was made of the photo (and if you don't
know what a dye transfer print is
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dye-transfer_process), let's just say it
was a multi-step, labor-intensive, time-consuming, space-consuming process.

The type proof was then photographed and turned into a silkscreen, which
was then applied to the dye transfer print. Other features (rules,
mortises, logos, etc.) were applied, and the whole thing was mounted and
trimmed. This was all done, typically, overnight. So the studio had a
good-size staff, as well.

Then the art director marked up the comp to indicate where the car
needed more of a highlight or more shadow detail or a suddenly
discovered reflection removed. The studio made another dye transfer
print, airbrushed the corrections, and built a new comp. With any luck,
they didn't get it back for yet another revision before we showed the
comp to the client, along with three or four others for the same ad.
Then the client picked one, suggested additional revisions, and a few
rounds later, there was a finished ad, ready to go to the engraver. When
the proof came back from the engraver, the art director again marked it
up, this time for the dot etcher. Only after that was the ad ready to
ship to a publication as a set of films. And because different
publications had different page sizes, many of these steps had to be
done over and over and over, all by hand, in order to run the same ad in
half a dozen magazines.

Compare that with today's graphic artist, using Photoshop and InDesign
and a hard drive full of fonts and turning out a finished ad
single-handed (perhaps with just as many rounds of revision but with
nowhere near the amount of labor per revision).

Michael Brady

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Jan 16, 2012, 8:30:32 AM1/16/12
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On Jan 16, 2012, at 8:10 AM, Dick Margulis wrote:

I have a similar background to Dick's. I learned hand setting type in a hot metal typesetting shop that had 3 linotypes, proofing presses, etc. That was 1965-69. As low man in the pecking order, I carried chases of composed forms around, 10+ pounds each (held in place with, by God, really strong magnets), sometimes putting 10 or 15 in the car and taking them to a printer, swapping the composed material for buckets of killed-out Linotype slugs that weighed the same (like returning the soft drink bottles for a refund, if you remember that). Fast forward twenty years to 1990. I was pleasantly stunned to be able to put all of the same finished layouts on a 3.5" diskette that weighted all of 2 ounces compared the the several hundred pounds of lead forms.

> Compare that with today's graphic artist, using Photoshop and InDesign and a hard drive full of fonts and turning out a finished ad single-handed (perhaps with just as many rounds of revision but with nowhere near the amount of labor per revision).

But one big and very significant change that has happened since then has been, not only the reduction in manpower, but the shifting of work to other parts of the production flow. Now editors--and even authors--get involved in the work of layout design, designers are making decisions about color separations and imposition details, etc. What used to be a pretty linear path from author to printed piece--with clearly defined transitions from one area of responsibility to another--has changed dramatically. And with the touted ease of revisions touted as part of the "enhanced productivity" of ever newer software, the perception of time allocation in the workflow has also radically changed. Some changes are expected in a matter of minutes rather than days.

I don't think we're uploading to Kansas anymore, ToTo.

Hazel Hipkins

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Jan 21, 2012, 6:01:45 PM1/21/12
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Thank you for your insight, William, Dick and Michael. Eye-opening!

Hh

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