
PART 1: STEP-BY-STEP DESIGN
STEP 6
Choose Your Tools
It wasn’t long ago that the headline
shown above cost $12 to set. That’s right,
as recently as the 1980s it was not
unusual for a designer to pay $4 or more
per word to have headline-sized words
set on a machine called a Typositor. The
words were cranked out, letter by letter,
on strips of photographic paper,
trimmed, lined up, cemented to a
paste-up board, and burnished down.
Designing something as simple as a
letterhead was expensive and time-
consuming, and it required significant
mechanical skills.
Today, the financial and mechanical
barriers are all but gone. With a personal
computer and some specializ ...