Back in the 80s, I volunteered at Pacifica station KPFT during the midday. I did the news for them, which consisted of getting a feed from Pacifica News & recording it on a tape reel. Then I would play the recording back then slice & tape the reel back together so to cut out the intoning of “Next story in 5 . .4 . .3 . . 2 . . 1.”
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I used to do a newsletter this way. But instead of aligning with a draftsmans ruler, I laid the copy out on a light table with a transparent grid underneath, marked off for column edges, etc.
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That is what Cow Gum was always like. Everyone in the studio used to collect the scrapings into a gum ball which increased in size as you cleaned up artworks (until it became a flaming missile, everything we used was flammable except for the scalpel blades).
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Huh! I think I always used Elmer’s rubber cement, which was pretty thin and smooth—at least when the bottle was new. Probably more naphtha in it or something? I don’t think we ever lit any on fire (because high school class). But we did roll up the dried extra from pasteups into fake boogers…
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Friday afternoons saw regular arson in the paste up studio.
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You had opaque pens?!? We had little dishes of red clay & tiny paintbrushes.
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Or cutting out type from the galley using your triangle as a straight edge but it has a groove and so you slice your thumb to the bone when your x-acto knife slips. Fun times.
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I guess for high school students we had it pretty good! “Luxury.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKHFZBUTA4k
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I remember all this stuff, too. Amberlith . . . rubylith . . . casting off . . . ruling pens . . . I even used to help my great uncle on his printing press - upside down and backwards indeed. Heck, I even used to do lithography. Stone lithography. Using a hand-operated levigator to smooth the printing blocks was good exercise.
This article brings back lots and lots of bad memories of eyestrain and headaches, getting sick from the adhesive fumes, and minor cuts And just try to get blood off a layout grid. THANK GOD FOR MODERN ELECTRONIC DESKTOP PUBLISHING. No more screaming because of spending days working on something and it getting ruined because the %!#%$!!! eraser tore a hole in the paper. When I worked as a draftsman and production artist I would have sold my soul for an “Undo” button.
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A flash from the past: Chartpak tape. I think I still have some in my old tool box. And my old Ulano swivel knife - hard to master but great for Rubylith. I used to be able to cut around any intricate thing without ever lifting the blade. This thread makes me feel really, really old.
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I have a nice memory (for the first time in decades) of using one of those back in the mid '70’s to paste up our campus humor magazine. We were allowed by the printer to stay all night to use the equipment, and then they would print it.
How Things Have Changed.
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I worked this way from 1978 to 1996. I did my first “page layout” on a Compugraphic typesetting machine but still had to cut in the rubylith for photos.
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Same generation as well, I started in 1987, Pagemaker to put the text into columns, then printing on a laser printer (Canon disguised as Apple), cutting the columns, pasting them on the mounting board, adding the spaces for pictures, bringing them to the printer where the plates were done. With many more steps involved.
Also retouching pictures with razor blades to remove any default…
The kids have it easy nowadays, NOW GET OFF MY LAWN !!!
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Somewhere in a closet I have sheets and sheets of transfer lettering-Letraset, I believe. And in the basement is the letter press and the job cases of hard type.
There are some jobs where adjusting spacing and layout by eye would lead to a better product than endlessly tweaking the damned pixels.
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Oddly enough working in the print industry I still have to do it this way for some jobs. We do some work for clients who refuse/aren’t able to go electronic and it is sometimes faster and more accurate to do a paste up, especially when the job is in a language no one in the shop speaks.
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Yup, was doing exactly this in the 1970s and early 1980s. Can still smell the rubber cement. Took me years to throw out my remaining Letraset, which I kept because…why?
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I picked up a Waxer (with wax) along with a slew of other obsolete Graphic Design tools as I passed through old studios. Some of the stuff, nobody could remember the use of. I was even offered a make ready camera but where would I put a 600 pound camera with a 6" depth of field? Still regret not taking it…
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I was pretty upset when Xerox removed the non-photo blue filter. I never needed it for real work, but I did take advantage with Celtic Knot design.
I only used rubylithe in school but I still have some tucked away. I took home my jar of dead exacto blades from my last design job. Maybe someday I’ll have a chance to forge them into a knife.
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Some years back I bumped into documentary filmmaker Peter Wintonick and I asked about his daughter Mira. He said she was back at work at the CBC. It seemed early, then I said “all that tape splicing”. Of course, it was done digitally by then. And I realized not many people could joke about it, a relatively limited skill (even I just did it to make shorter cassettes), and in the past by then.
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If you’re not going to use it, you can donate it to a local art school. It’s used in screen printing.
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