In response to this post by London-based designer Rob Cubbon, my take on his article. It's interesting to note where our paths overlap... truly, we have come a long way!
1987: I discovered the MacPlus, PageMaker 1.0 and a 300dpi LaserWriter. I grappled with on-screen type peering through a tiny greyscale monitor and thought: "No way are you getting me up in one of these things ever again". My employer told me that very soon one of these computers would be sitting on everyone's desk. Ridiculous!
1989: Discovered the Mac II which actually included a hard drive! This meant I didn't need to load system each time I turned the machine on. PageMaker 3, Freehand 2 and my favourite fonts were already loaded and ready to go. I didn't need to manually download them to printer using Font/DA Mover. Fantastic!
1992: Developed my skills. Moved from a small design company into a corporate environment. The IT guy there (Jack the Mac) describes me as a ‘Power User’. Impressive!
1994: Discovered Photoshop. Realised it was very powerful and could do a lot of stuff, but not on a Mac II CI running a 030 processor. Upgraded to a Quadra (040) with 1GB hard drive and 12MB of RAM. Now we’re talking!
1996: Discovered the Internet and wondered what it was there for. Used it to send email. Discovered TAB notation for the guitar. Still can’t read TAB -- I prefer to play my 12-string by ear, as I always have.
1999: Thought I’d better come to grips with this internet thing. Lots of websites are being designed by geeks with computer degrees -- and it shows! The sites are semantically perfect but they all look the same. New business opportunity for freelance designer. Did a course in web design (passing convincingly)!
2005: Adobe brought Macromedia. They stopped supporting Freehand MX, insisting that Mac Freehand users switch to the wonderful world of Illustrator. BOO! (I resisted for years).
2009: Discovered the SilverStripe Content Management System. Now I can set up a templated 'theme' for my client's website and they can add and edit pages as they wish. The CMS is much simpler and easier to integrate than any other CMS I've encountered. And for my clients, updating content and adding pages is as easy as using a word processor. Great!
2012: Heard about the new world of 'Responsive Design'. Still 'responding' to this one but learning more every day!
