Tina’s Perspective
Part 1: 1976-1985
The Early Days
There’s a particular smell that defined my early career in graphic design, and it wasn’t the fresh scent of inspiration, it was hot wax. Specifically, the warm, slightly sweet aroma of the Letraset wax roller, the magical glue-adjacent substance that held typeset galleys onto paste-up boards. If you know, you know. If you don’t, just imagine doing a giant jigsaw puzzle while wearing oven mitts, and that’s close.
In 1976, “desktop publishing” meant you literally worked on a desktop (an actual desk) with an X-Acto knife, a T-square, a proportion wheel, and a blue non-photo pencil that your boss swore was invisible to the camera (it mostly was). Type was set by a typesetter, delivered as long strips of photographic paper, and you cut it apart with scissors. Then you waxed the back, slapped it on your board, and burnished it down with a little bone tool like some kind of artisan bookbinder from the 1400’s.
The most important safety lesson I learned in my early career is that X-Acto blades are not loyal. One afternoon, a blade rolled off the edge of my drafting table in what I can only describe as a slow-motion betrayal. It fell, point-down, through the top of my shoe and directly into my foot. I stood there for a moment, blade handle sticking straight up like a tiny flag claiming my foot as its territory, genuinely unsure whether to laugh or cry. I did both. I got a bandage, I got back to the table, and I never again left a blade near the edge. That X-Acto taught me more about occupational hazard awareness than any safety training ever could.
Meanwhile, America was recovering from Watergate, disco was in full swing, and the word “logo” meant something a real person drew by hand with a ruling pen and India ink. Computers? Those were for NASA. The closest thing we had to digital design was a PMT camera the size of a refrigerator. We called them “stats.” We loved stats the way people today love a new app.
The real magic of those years wasn’t the tools, it was the craft. You had to really know your stuff: typography rules, color theory, grid systems. There were no undo buttons, no layers, no Command-Z. The work was slow, tactile, and deeply satisfying. Stabbing yourself in the foot was optional, but apparently I went the extra mile.
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