Whatever . . . Whenever, Issue 5, Page 2

A million years ago, back in the very early 1980’s, we were comfortably ensconced in our graphic design business in the San Francisco Bay Area. Down the road a few miles, in a place called Silicon Valley, very new and mysterious things were happening.

Because we had clients amongst the pioneer companies there, we knew a little about chips and motherboards and Ram and Rom, but none of that stuff touched us personally. We toodled along doing the things we did best in the traditional way. I remember being terribly excited when they invented a way for our typesetter’s typesetting machine to put a solid black box in the middle of galleys of type so we no longer had to cut rubylith windows where photographs would go. That was revolution enough for us.

And then one day, our graphic art supply store put a monster “art computer”, with an unfriendly name like the ArtGraph 2000 or something, into a room in their store and started renting time on it for $200 an hour. They said it was the “future” of graphic design. We took one look at that thing and its instruction manual, and ran whimpering back to the studio. “Not our future!” we said.

But, there are some trains that you either get on or they run right over you, and we could already hear the whistle of this one from where we stood. Thank God and Steve Jobs, the Macintosh came along in 1984 and we bought the very first one to arrive at our local store. It didn’t do a lot, but we understood what it did do, and it smiled when we turned it on. What more could a few sniveling designers ask? At least, it wasn’t scary.

And now, more than twenty years later, that train has gotten to the paper arts neighborhood. When we started Cre8it in 2001, there were lots of artists on the internet talking about every kind of media - but there was hardly any talk about computer media, and what was written sounded pretty obscure - still does, actually. Though magazines have started to have occasional articles on things digital, by the time they make sure not to mention anything by brand name, the articles make no sense. I actually read in one article recently that you should just push buttons and turn knobs on a digital camera until you get something you like. Now, there’s a clean cut instruction! My 83-year-old stepdad did that to the point that the brand new $800 camera we gave him for Christmas had to be factory reset. And he’s a retired Master Photographer.

Much more specific articles that we ran in Now What? and this newsletter showed us that there was enough interest to publish our first PhotoShop CD, which is not the least bit obscure, and the result is that we now know there are a lot of folks waiting on the station platform for that train. We think, with our new additions here at Cre8it, we have your “ticket to ride”.


A million years ago, back in the very early 1980’s, we were comfortably ensconced in our graphic design business in the San Francisco Bay Area. Down the road a few miles, in a place called Silicon Valley, very new and mysterious things were happening. Because we had clients amongst the pioneer companies there, we knew a little about chips and motherboards and Ram and Rom, but none of that stuff touched us personally. We toodled along doing the things we did best in the traditional way. I remember being terribly excited when they invented a way for our typesetter’s typesetting machine to put a solid black box in the middle of galleys of type so we no longer had to cut rubylith windows where photographs would go. That was revolution enough for us. And then one day, our graphic art supply store put a monster “art computer”, with an unfriendly name like the ArtGraph 2000 or something, into a room in their store and started renting time on it for $200 an hour. They said it was the “future” of graphic design. We took one look at that thing and its instruction manual, and ran whimpering back to the studio. “Not our future!” we said. But, there are some trains that you either get on or they run right over you, and we could already hear the whistle of this one from where we stood. Thank God and Steve Jobs, the Macintosh came along in 1984 and we bought the very first one to arrive at our local store. It didn’t do a lot, but we understood what it did do, and it smiled when we turned it on. What more could a few sniveling designers ask? At least, it wasn’t scary. And now, more than twenty years later, that train has gotten to the paper arts neighborhood. When we started Cre8it in 2001, there were lots of artists on the internet talking about every kind of media - but there was hardly any talk about computer media, and what was written sounded pretty obscure - still does, actually. Though magazines have started to have occasional articles on things digital, by the time they make sure not to mention anything by brand name, the articles make no sense. I actually read in one article recently that you should just push buttons and turn knobs on a digital camera until you get something you like. Now, there’s a clean cut instruction! My 83-year-old stepdad did that to the point that the brand new $800 camera we gave him for Christmas had to be factory reset. And he’s a retired Master Photographer. Much more specific articles that we ran in Now What? and this newsletter showed us that there was enough interest to publish our first PhotoShop CD, which is not the least bit obscure, and the result is that we now know there are a lot of folks waiting on the station platform for that train. We think, with our new additions here at Cre8it, we have your “ticket to ride”.


Learning the tools and techniques of software programs like PhotoShop is the first step, but you’ve also got to have images to work with - in digital format. Where can you get them? Well, there’s your new digital camera, but not everyone is thrilled with all the pictures they get. There’s free clip-art (and not free clip-art) online if you can survive all the pop-up ads and flashing banners, but most is low resolution and even lower quality. When you go to print it, it looks pretty shabby. Copyrights prevent the scanning of almost all rubber stamp images, photos, fabrics, and decorative papers. So once again, you’re left with the images in the public domain - which are old - and getting older by the minute! What if you want something new? If you can draw your own images, you’re all set, but let’s face it - if we all felt so great about drawing, we wouldn’t love rubber stamps so much. So, along with our Photoshop instruction, we have decided to share images too. First, we launched the Art Safe of photo images and they have been very popular. And, now we are going further and introducing our Virtual Rubber Stamp line and Digital Fabrics (and Papers) to fill out our Digital Art Supply offerings. We’ll tell you about them and show you some on the next two pages, and then use them in a fun project, so you can see how the worlds of digital art and touchable art can become partnered in your creative process. This is exciting stuff - we hope you think so too!