Real World Print Production with Adobe Creative Suite Applications

The Olden Days

Twenty-five years ago, the responsibilities in the graphic arts professions were rather clearly defined, and there wasn’t much overlap of skills or responsibility. Designers knew a bit about prepress and printing endeavors, but they usually weren’t required to perform any work typical of those operations. Design was a more hands-on process involving more hand drawing and pen-and-ink work. Production artists created page layouts by gluing down photo prints with wax or rubber cement to a piece of thick illustration board, creating a mechanical (short for mechanical artwork). We did type corrections with X-Acto^® knives and rubber cement, sometimes going home at the end of a long day with words glued to our elbows and the occasional ...