Visual communication has come a long way since people started leaving pictogram messages on cave walls: here we are, you & I, interacting digitally. It's how things happen these days. But what can I say? I love print: Magazines. Newsletters. Expressions from groups that are assembled with care to communicate a vision. Reading materials you actually hold in your hands. Turning pages with your fingers. That sort of thing. It was a natural and instinctual choice to end up making a living as a desktop publisher. Having both a visual and written approach to creative expression, I have toggled between writer & designer since the early 1970s. Desktop publishing combines both these modalities seamlessly. And as I expand my skillset into the digital realm... well, time will tell where it may lead! BACKSTORY: While in college, I gravitated to the school's weekly newsmagazine where I quickly rose in the ranks (easily done, if you were willing to stay "to the bitter end" on the weekly all-nighter putting the paper to bed!). This is where I learned the secret art of photo-typesetting — a skill I was able to take to the bank for the next decade. After college I made a decent living typesetting in small ad agencies around L.A. and hanging out with print-folk (eg those annual Heidelberg Conventions) until I landed my first job at an L.A. trade magazine. I negotiated a multi-faceted job description in order to explore the editorial aspect of publishing while providing all the typesetting and some layout for this monthly behemoth. But technology was evolving, and my chief mode of survival was quickly becoming out-moded. It was evolve or die! Time to leave the comfortable ergonomic seat in front of someone else's big honking $50,000 typesetting machine (owned by the publisher's bank), and get mobile.
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I was first in line for one of Apple's Macintosh early desktop models, making a good living with my tiny SE as a freelancer. That's back when art directors either did the math to spec type, or just sent it off to a good typesetter to do the copy fitting. When the little music company I was working for saw the power of this little machine to squeeze reams of words into a layout, and then change fonts and reflow the entire job with the push of a button (without paying those pesky typesetters), they were soon asking me to help them convert. Twas the death knell of the photo-typesetting niche, and a harbinger to our present situation, where just about anybody with a layout program can go all the way from concept to publish--whether seasoned by the school of hard knocks or not--in the comfort of their own home, 24/7! So it goes. As a writer & designer, I have experienced the pacing of monthly publications, weeklies, dailies, and quarterlies. In the past, I've worked out of a tweedy cubicle in a corporate highrise, at a ping pong/conference table with a small agency creative team, and at home in my fuzzy slippers as a one-person band. Along the fuzzy slipper vein: Most recently, I've found a creative home with a Chinese herbal company & subsidiary, providing their various desktop publishing needs on a 900 mile telecommute. From the mutual interests developed there, the twinklings of a cottage industry publishing company, Lifegate Press, is starting to take form. Keep you posted! Meanwhile, in efforts to keep evolving along with this most amazing expanding industry, I'm gathering the basic skillsets for web design (you're on the first efforts now!). |
