From 'drawing boards' to 'ipads'

29.6.11

The old fart's reminiscing again!

All this talk of 'back to basics' has got me thinking, and I guess reminiscing to some degree. This year, at sanders, we celebrate our 20th anniversary, a point at which its only natural that one should tend to look back and reflect.

I know that I bore the the pants off everyone here in the studio with my tales of how things used to be, but it never ceases to amaze me how much our industry has changed in the course of my career.

I started in professional practice back in the mid 80's working for a consultancy in North London, before moving to South Wales at the end of that decade and helping to establish a design agency, which at one point was employing around 16 staff.

Technology has definitely brought with it speed and efficiency. I can clearly remember the day our first fax machine arrived in the studio. I seem to remember we paid around £700 for it and I can see us all now sat round the table watching this machine in amazement as it spewed out a sheet of paper with a drawing on it that had been sent from our more technologically aware clients. How times have changed!

We still have a drawing board in the studio, which is still used regularly. OK, mainly by me I admit, but the interesting thing is, I've noticed a genuine fondness and fascination for these more craft based processes from our clients too. They seem to have moved beyond the seduction of what often tend to be rather soulless CAD visuals.

Of course some of those skills I guess are, in large part, lost forever, like the ability of graphic designers to understand and visualise type and be able to specify it with the correct kerning and leading before getting it typeset and run of as a pmt before 'cow gumming' it into position on a spread.

When I first started my working career in a small product design studio in North London, there was a very clear demarkation between the designer and the engineer and a very clear mutual respect by both, for each others skills.

The designers' 'visuals' would be passed to the engineer who would magically generate, on layers draughting film, a two dimensional representation of a three dimensional object, complete with details and sections. All done using nothing more than a pencil a ruler a compass and set of stencils. Never did we have the luxury of running a software interference check, or rapid prototyping something over night to confirm fit or function. Instead, the drawings would checked by a colleague (we'd always include a deliberate mistake to ensure that they had been checked thoroughly!), dispatched to the moulder and the next time you'd see anything would be when a brown box arrived in the post containing the 'first off tool'.

I can still clearly feel that potent mix of excitement and anticipation (or was it trepidation?) as the polystyrene chips were discarded and two plastic mouldings would be ceremonially removed from their protective outer and offered up to each other in the desperate hope that they would meet in perfect unity! The relief when they did was palpuble. If they didn't, well....

Things have moved on (thank goodness) but I do hope that we don't forfeit completely all of those hand and eye skills that have served us so well over time.

Anyway, I'm off to find my pipe and slippers!

Labels: Design, Technology