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Video Demonstration of the Manual Labor of Design

Before computers, everything really did used to take this long

By Rain Noe - July 13, 2015

in Visual Communication | design.edu | Hand Tools

Industrial design used to be a mess. I don't mean the field, I mean the work. ID'ers of a certain age will remember flushing spray guns in the model shop, the pain of cleaning and refilling a Rapidograph, the horror of knocking a box of mechanical pencil leads onto the floor and watching the leads shatter. Gummy erasers were admittedly fun to absentmindedly knead, but made your sandwiches taste funny come lunchtime.

Then there was the absurd amount of supplies you had to stock: Markers in every color and gradation, aforementioned pencil leads and Rapidograph ink, drafting tape, X-Acto blades, templates, triangles, T-squares, French curves, ship's curves, and rolls and freaking rolls of vellum, trace, mylar, newsprint, etc. It's hard to miss that aspect of the job.

The man fronting this video below is a graphic designer and not an ID'er, but as he demonstrates how people used to do the work before computers, the industrial designers among you will recognize plenty of overlap:

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Grant McGrath

9 years ago

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The execution of the printing shown here is definitely dated, but I think there's still something particularly helpful about having tangible assets to work with and physically move around in the design phase. I grew up in the digital age so maybe I'm just weird, but I still find myself laying out printed visual assets and sketching mostly in hard copy till I am at a final version.

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Jennifer Tarentino

9 years ago

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This is how we worked when I met you at Pratt Rain! Honestly, while I appreciate the speed of my digital tools, I miss the hands on work, a lot.

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- Rain Noe
  
  Jennifer Tarentino
  
  9 years ago
  
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  Tell me about it, Jen. And thinking about it, I decided to write up all the stuff we had to use. It won't let me post a link here but you should see it on the homepage.
  
  - Rain
  
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Pete Westafer

9 years ago

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Holy s__t. Been there, done that. Showing my age!

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Ezra Reynolds

9 years ago

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I watched this was sick horror. No rules. A DAY to change font. Accidental spills of ink. Manually cutting out masks. I saw people doing this manual process when I was a child, but when I started designing everything was digital and I have never thought about how much it took to do it purely analog. It felt like watching someone talk about using pine cones as TP.

It certainly does give an appreciation for computerized tools.

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