Going through some old photo albums and came across some fading pics from '73 when I was in my last year at MassArt as a Graphic Design major. Just kicking back in my studio apt. — and the stuff in the background triggered a nostalgia tsunami.



I'm remembering the must-have tools of the trade back then (Sellers, you know what I'm talkin' about):

• 60" or 72" hollow core door straddling a pair of adjustable Charrette trestles
• 40" Charatex-coverd Mayline drafting board with precision sliding straight edge
• 100-pen AdMarker set
• A rotary pen & tool holder
• Pica ruler
• A sharpener for mechanical drafting pencils with a stab-me ring
• Xacto knife and #11 blades
• Rubber cement, thinner, and pickups (or a waxer if you were hi-tech)
• Non-repro blue pencils
• Gum erasers
• Set of RapidoGraph drafting pens
• Multi-roll clip-on tape dispenser
• Dozens of sheets of LetraSet
• Rolls of Rubylith and Amberlith
• Pads of trace and layout paper
• Stacks of illustration board
• Pantone color guides (they were cheap back then)
• And your big-ass portfolio

I compare that to today's digital tools and I realize how much fun I've been missing!

Yeah, b!tch! Flat files!



and who is living in the past?






I know I've saved a stack of Letraset that's in a box somewhere!

I keep my cutting mat & straight edges in the flat file because I use them frequently. I staged the rest, I had a box in the closet with all this stuff.

These were all from my Art Center days in the early '80s which taught me to be compulsive with my mechanical paste-ups, back when I spec'd phototype. I miss the smell of Bestine in the morning.

LOL! I stil have my % wheel, gum erasers, pickups, and circle templates. And I only got rid of the surviving AdMarkers a/b two years ago. Still use a roller and smoothing blocks. I have to build comps now and then, but they're inkjet printouts instead of marker layouts. But flat files? You must've been a rich kid.

Me desk at home right this instant? A hollow core door, sitting on two two-drawe file cabinets, with cinder blocks and lengths of board for my top-of-desk bookcase. Why fix what ain't broke.

These modern-style flat files were bought for my first studio in 1985 from Flax Art Store. I bought two and stacked them. I think they were about $150 each. They still look great ... and I've had a place to keep all my posters and big drawings.

I thought I was going to catch you without a waxer, but nope.
You were truly a professional !

I have to do "tours" of the art dept. every couple of weeks, and my favorite moment is explaining to them the Formatt (?) cut-out lettering. Letraset rub on were for wussies.
They actually gasp. ROFL!

I see you in that picture, in your Danish Modern Recliner that only Trust Fund Art School students had … but MassArt?! ... the lounger probably was lifted from your parent's summer place in the Hamptons.

I should be so lucky...

Art Center comp from 1981. I used 200pt Avante Garde Ex-Light burnished onto a gouache painting …. THERE"S ONLY ONE 'Q' ON THE SHEET! …. and at 4am with the caffeine shakes, if it transfers poorly I'd have screwed the painting I worked on for days and was due in about 5 hours.

We we heroes, dammit.