January 31, 2010

Cutting in the Corrections




I’d come straight from work to do adds and layout and pasteup stuff. Last of all, I cut in the corrections.




Himself: He had a good day yesterday. Cold at the museum, but a good day none the less.

Herself: Wore parts of me out but almost got that DVD done. Today I tweak it, tomorrow it will be done. Yes, I still have that drawing board, my wax machine, and one exacto knife.

Reading: Finished the newest Cadell.

Balance: Giving my eyes a rest.

As an architect and draftsman, my mother did layout and paste up. She would type out or draw what she wanted. Next she coated the backs of each piece of paper with rubber cement. When that toxic stuff dried, she could lay a piece of paper down on another or pick it up and move it if it wasn’t straight.

When I was doing newspaper work, we used wax as the medium to coat the various pieces with.

We would give the copy to our typesetter, Janey, and when it came back we would wax the specialized computer printouts, trim the columns to the exact width with an exacto knife, and lay them down on the templates. When they were approved, we burnished the finished product down, rubbed it with a rounded tool or roller, so it would stay together. As we discovered mistakes, we sent these off to Janey so she could make new words, paragraphs, or sometimes even just one letter. When they arrived back.....always just at publishing time, I would carefully cut out the corrections, wax them, and insert them as straight as I could.

Yesterday, I finished the photo DVD…or so I thought. When G took a look on his computer, I found duplicate photos, incorrect descriptions, and other trivia that needed corrections cut in.

These days it’s all done in the computer. One just clicks on the backspace or highlights then deletes. Cutting in corrections is so easy now. Not an exacto or wax machine in sight.

4 comments:

  1. I can appreciate your wonder. Since I worked at an engineering office and saw the draftsmen do exactly the same sort of meticulous work you've describe here.

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  2. Life has gotten simpler and more complex all at the same time. Sigh. I haven't decided if that's a good thing.

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  3. It's been interesting watching the evolution of this kind of work on the computer. Kay is right, simpler and more complex at the same time. It also means fewer people to arrive at the same finished product. That's part of our problem now.

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  4. And thank God for computers! These thoughts brought back lots of memories of my high school newspaper days. Been there, done all that! Found out soon thereafter I was allergic to rubber cement though, so the adviser let me out of that duty. :) yea! Still had to smell it though. :(

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