How long have ya been doin' this?

[CathieHarris]

I thought it would be fun to see how far back we go in terms of this industry.

Myself, I started on an IBM Selectric (where you changed the little ball to change fonts) in the basement of our house with my father when I was in high school.

Move ahead a few years and I mastered the Compugraphic (forget which one, 2500?), film strips and coding green on a black background. Then taking the unexposed film and running it through the processor to see if you coded everything correctly or not. Then pasting all those pieces together with rubber cement. (We used wax once, but when we delivered the job to the printer, by the time we got there in the hot car all the wax had melted and it was in pieces all over the front seat. That moved us to rubber cement.) Then who can forget how fun it was to cut and peel that amberlith and rubylith?

My father loved technology and when the first Mac Plus came out in the '80s, he was right on it, with WYSIWYG being amazing. Wow, you could actually see what you were getting. We had Pagemaker (the only page layout program available at the time) and Illustrator. As my father was a very good technical artist, he loved the technical drawings he could do in that program.

Just kept moving up from there, using Quark, discovering Photoshop and honing skills along the way.

So, there you have it, my life history in print and graphic design.

I'd love to hear your stories.

Cathie

Oh, and by the way, I'm in my 50s, not my 80s as this post seems to be implying.

 

[dabob]

Cathie . . .

goin on 46 years - I signed up for the print shop class my Junior year in HS just to keep my dad off my back (he was in newspapers) - found out I liked it been through everything from handset, linotype, compugraphic 4B (line at a time), compugraphic 7500 had the BIG floppy disks, some kinda lino typesetter and onto imagesetting and today CTP. Every machine in the shop from abdicks/chiefs/multis to multi color heidelbergs, bindery, Kluges, Windmills, Cylinders, Digitial Presses, bookeeping, and now I just run our graphics/prepress and fix broke things-

so 46 years later - am more than ready to stop learning this industry and start relearning how to fish, get better in the wood/metal shop and learning to relax - its been a long time coming . . . .

Just wanted to add kudos to Mike Stinnett, my teacher in High School for changing my life

 

[akalaray]

Granite and chisel

 

[gordo]

My Mum was a bindery foreman and she would bring home piece work for us to do in the evenings when I was 12 years old (1961). Later I worked in the (4 up) printshop during the summer months making plates (coating bare aluminum, stripping film, and exposing the plates) and odd jobs that needed doing.
I went into semi-retirement in 2008 after being vaporized by Kodak.
So I've been in the business a long time.

best, gordo

 

[chad.trent]

Started in the family print shop at 12 or 13. That would have been somewhere around 1985. Been in prepress and in-house design ever since.

 

[CathieHarris]

My Mum was a bindery foreman and she would bring home piece work for us to do in the evenings when I was 12 years old (1961). Later I worked in the (4 up) printshop during the summer months making plates (coating bare aluminum, stripping film, and exposing the plates) and odd jobs that needed doing.
I went into semi-retirement in 2008 after being vaporized by Kodak.
So I've been in the business a long time.

best, gordo

When we first moved to Colorado, my father was a starving artist and had just acquired a large sign job, where he had to hand-paint the signs, I think it was about 50 of them or so. He had six children, including me, and I remember him painting in the basement and us each going down to get one as he finished them, bringing them upstairs and leaning them against any open space so they could dry overnight.

Wow, it's amazing how many of us are following in the footsteps of our parents, albeit quite different now-a-days.

 

[almaink]

41 years ago I started in High School graphics arts class dong Letterpress, Photographic Silk Screen, and we also had a few two color Multi's. We developed our own camera film too.

 

[Possumgal]

Started on a Compugraphic Comp IV, with two rotating filmstrips and a total of eight fonts available at a time.

I used a little handheld scanner at one place, about four inches wide. I also used a hand waxer, even smaller. It kept leaking when it was put on its resting plate. Had to keep adding little plastic films that were supposed to keep it from leaking but they never worked.

The first raster program I used was called EyeStar Plus. Anything you scanned had to be straight on the paper because it would only rotate graphics in 45 degree increments.

 

[tmiller_iluvprinting]

I am a third generation printer. My grandfather was the last typographer at the Banta Company, my father worked in the Flexo business, my mother worked in the bindery end, my brother was a sheetfed press operator. Set my first moveable type job in Industrial Arts class in '73 and was hooked. Worked in the bindery during high school, prepress house for 16 years after high school, and have spent the last 18 years working for Northeastern Wisconsin's largest commercial printer. At one point I wanted to be an open wheeled race car driver, downhill ski racer, or the 5th Beatle, thank God I found printing.......

 

[maas]

28 years, started as a general hand on a Harris m850, went on to do an apprenticeship in photolithography and working on the crosfield scanners...... ink gets into the blood in my corporate role now I still walk through the press hall to listen to the presses at full noise, it just never gets old

 

[Point918]

41 years and counting.

Feet got damp with a high school graphics arts program in NJ. Friend suggested I enroll after freshman year had started. Funny how one conversation changes your entire life. Hand set type, screen printing, offset litho - great program, excellent teacher! Thanks JT Swanson. Considered photography career but went with printing. Dodged that bullet!

On to RIT for printing program. Worked summers making Catholic church bulletins filling in for vacationing employees in all departments. Got to run sheet fed presses, web presses, do prep/stripping, bindery work. Soaked in ink at that point.

Recruited to New England out of school. Commercial mostly, newspapers and now packaging. Specialized in prepress when Mac was first capable of doing re touching and file prep - Quadra 950 with 256 megs of RAM - smoking! Figured out that technology was more fun to manage, for me, than wetware (people). Great career but future not looking so bright as 40 years ago..... Another 10 or so and I am DONE. Or maybe I'll teach if anyone needs to learn this trade then.

Great stories one and all. Lot's of complaining (or is it venting) on this forum but I think most of us are actually quite fortunate. Making decent livings - doing interesting work.

 

[KidBilly]

2000 I walked into a newspaper having no idea what a "Plate and Camera" department did. Two days and I was instantly hooked. Started stripping film. Fast forward 13 years, I am still in Prepess working for my third print house. Still love the job, love learning anything I can about the entire printing industry. Always enjoy talking to other prepress monkies as few know "the language" Hope I never loose my passion for this.

 

[MacTwidget]

My first job was working at a bar-b-que restaurant when I was 15. After 3 months I was tired of coming home smelling like wood smoke.
My dad was the prepress manager for the local newspaper. I BEGGED him for a job.
He hired me under the table to punch all the new plated for our brand new Goss Headliner, as the press was too new for them to come pre-punched.
I did that for a few months. Then the guy that made our halftones on the vertical camera had a medical emergency, that door opened so I walked into it.
A few months later our color sep guy went on vacation, and my dad taught me and I filled in.
26 years later and I am a prepress manager for a commercial printer.
Iam not sure whether to thank my dad, or curse him for getting me into the trade.

 

[kaiserwilhelm]

Got my first Print Shop "toy" at the age of 10. Had a little drum and small letters you would place with tweezers.
Of course, the "My Neighborhood Newsletter" that they showed never quite materialized.
I got into this at the perfect time in my opinion. 1990. Macs were just coming online. I got to learn from film strippers. I think I know more about layering and trapping than any of the whippersnappers that never got to see 28 burn per color build ups.
I used to have a friend in 1992 that would say, "I have forgotten more about printing than you know now" - Well, I get that finally. I find it amazing how many times in a year that I draw upon experiences or "how the hell did I get out of that one back in 1999?" moments.
We now have two digital web presses. To say that my life is fun now is an understatement. Try feeding a beast at 100,000 8.5 x 11 pages per hour? OK, now try doing that with two.