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The
Influence of Technology
While the invention is moving through the various stages,
numerous individuals are working to refine, improve, make
more efficient, extend its application and reduce cost. We
have certainly seen the computer go through the historical
developmental patterns. Primary factors leading to adoption
of new technology have been improved products that are more
economical to produce; they are made more quickly and in greater
quantities or new products with a predictable market. With
the shift from traditional methods and products to new ones,
there generally was a trade-off. As products were improved,
they became more complicated and costly; as they could be
produced more economically or quickly, quality decreased.
As new technologies replaced older ones, traditional values
and methods tended to disappear while new values were created,
and they seldom were superior to traditional ones in many
respects.
Adoption
of new machinery and processes invariably led to worker unrest
as change usually meant less workmen were required. During
the nineteenth century, workers revolted and destroyed new
machines as they vainly strove to preserve their livelihood.
What we have seen with iron, manufacturing, logging and ranching
industries is not peculiar to our times. The process has been
going on throughout the industrial revolution. Today, we call
it down-sizing. During the late 1880s, loggers exhausted timber
resources in northeastern Wisconsin, and thousands of loggers
were unemployed. Several aluminum manufacturers moved into
the area and retrained loggers to work in factories. The area
became the largest concentration of aluminum cookware manufacturing
in the world by the turn of the century. There has been a
limited revival of many industrial crafts in our century as
cottage industries or by hobbyists and artists. Some combination
of weaving, ceramics, paper-making, woodworking, glass-blowing
and letterpress printing have been included as art courses
or programs at most universities.
At
the risk of sounding like a displaced craftsman from the past,
I am firmly convinced that the fundamentals and values of
visual design are better learned through traditional methods
than can be accomplished with the computer. In our eagerness
to embrace the new computer capabilities, we should not blind
ourselves to those aspects of tradition that remain relevant
regardless of what technology is favored. There is evidence
suggesting that for some graphic design educators and students,
the computer is still being used at the toy stage. As such,
traditional values and pedagogy are discarded by many in the
belief that they are no longer relevant. It is only when the
computer ceases to be a toy that it becomes a tool and values
emerge as something more than what a machine can do. When
I left graduate school and began work as a teacher and designer
during the 1950s, advertising design was better known than
graphic design. Linotype, monotype and foundry type were the
sole means for typesetting. Advertising designers relied on
hand-generated concepts using pastel or watercolor for client
comps. Type indication was rendered with a pencil, typesetting
was hot metal, work was key-lined and a blue-line proof was
the final check for offset printing and a press dummy for
letterpress printing. Concepts and comps were generally made
by the artist/designer; typesetting was furnished by an outside
source; key-lines were done by specialists and blue-lines
or press dummies were supplied by the printer. The differences
between the designer’s comp and the printed piece usually
were substantial.
At
school, we installed a copy camera and worked with photostats;
we had a film and photography laboratory; we had a hot metal
type shop where students learned to set type and used hand-operated
printing presses. Financial constraints were handled by soliciting
subsidization from a variety of manufacturers and suppliers.
With time, additional constraints were imposed which were
mainly financial. We could no longer afford the new technologies,
the cost of photographic materials escalated to a point that
students could not afford them, and students began to use
the photocopier in place of photostats. Even the cost of a
Color-Aid pack required for Albers’ color classes increased
so much that it became prohibitive for student use.
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