8 Comments

Love this! It took me back to my newspaper days in the mid-80s, while in high school and college.

Embracing constraints is a critical concept to adopt and can be powerful in the creative process.

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Thanks, Andy! I hoped a few other readers could relate. It’s also fun to share what it used to be like for younger designers who didn’t know.

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100%!! It is great to share how creatives used to work.

I have always told my junior ux/ui designers that I do not care about software, which will constantly change. Being able to sketch things out on paper with a pen, pencil, and markers teaches rapid iteration and not being precious about the work. Pixels can be fine-tuned later.

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This is awesome. Thank you for sharing and going in depth!

Computers were essential to my gateway into graphic design, and when I was younger I’m not sure if I would have cut it in such a precise, manual industry. But now, as I approach 30 (next week!), I do wish I had some of those experiences.

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Thank you! I’m glad that it was interesting for you to read. I would say if I was able to do this work you would’ve been able to do it too. It’s just a matter of learning the systems which I’m sure you’ve done in your own context.

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That’s probably true. That kid was alright.

One day, I’ll be telling kids about the ye olde days of Photoshop Elements and Adobe CS3 😂 I’m not even old enough to have used Quark

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So relatable! This article took me back to my college newspaper days, where we finally got our first Mac to do our layouts, after a few years of hand-crafted layouts. Then, desktop publishing was the exciting new technology revolutionizing the printing process. We've come a long way since then!

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The school newspaper I was on was all paste-up before I left, but eventually they did migrate to Macs and PageMaker. My experience was more Macs and Quark, which I think could make for another fun story in the Ye Olde category!

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