Monday, October 09, 2006
Student Days
Earlier this summer I came to realize that my home
business was at this time going to be an auxiliary
income source but not a primary one. The main
reason is the lack of a client base. At this point
I’m aiming at getting back into the job market
in the area of publication/graphic design which
was my occupation for an number of years within
the religious nonprofit arena.
In late August I became a student again. I have
seen the need to upgrade my graphic design
computer skills to make me more competitive
in the job market. Tucson, Arizona boasts a
private art college and a community college
with numerous graphic design courses. Because
of cost issues I’ve opted for the community college.
I’m currently taking two course each in computer
programs that are widely used in the graphic design
(or digital arts) industry.
For a number of years I worked as a traditional
graphic artist using cut and paste methods of design
to achieve the desired layouts. The layout were
produced as thumbnails, then full size dummies
or mockups and then the actual typeset copy would
be pasted (rubber cemented) to artboards for the
making of negatives and plates to be run on the
printing press.
In 1987 this all changed. That year the non profit
I was working for at the time purchased a MacIntosh
II computer and some desktop publishing software
called Quarkxpress. The Mac II was then state of
the art with 1 megabyte of RAM (more memory
that the room filling Univac computers of the 1960s)
and a massive 40 megabyte hard disc. With current
computers having 256 or 512 or more megabytes and
RAM of 80 gigabytes of hard disc this seems small
in comparsion and it is. But almost 20 years again
this computer was a wonder machine. Quark was
then an unstart competitor to the then dominant
Aldus (now Adobe) Pagemaker program.
Next week I’ll share more about my new student days.
business was at this time going to be an auxiliary
income source but not a primary one. The main
reason is the lack of a client base. At this point
I’m aiming at getting back into the job market
in the area of publication/graphic design which
was my occupation for an number of years within
the religious nonprofit arena.
In late August I became a student again. I have
seen the need to upgrade my graphic design
computer skills to make me more competitive
in the job market. Tucson, Arizona boasts a
private art college and a community college
with numerous graphic design courses. Because
of cost issues I’ve opted for the community college.
I’m currently taking two course each in computer
programs that are widely used in the graphic design
(or digital arts) industry.
For a number of years I worked as a traditional
graphic artist using cut and paste methods of design
to achieve the desired layouts. The layout were
produced as thumbnails, then full size dummies
or mockups and then the actual typeset copy would
be pasted (rubber cemented) to artboards for the
making of negatives and plates to be run on the
printing press.
In 1987 this all changed. That year the non profit
I was working for at the time purchased a MacIntosh
II computer and some desktop publishing software
called Quarkxpress. The Mac II was then state of
the art with 1 megabyte of RAM (more memory
that the room filling Univac computers of the 1960s)
and a massive 40 megabyte hard disc. With current
computers having 256 or 512 or more megabytes and
RAM of 80 gigabytes of hard disc this seems small
in comparsion and it is. But almost 20 years again
this computer was a wonder machine. Quark was
then an unstart competitor to the then dominant
Aldus (now Adobe) Pagemaker program.
Next week I’ll share more about my new student days.
# posted by Dino Don @ 8:34 PM 
