by Janis Susan
May/Janis Patterson
I'm lucky. I grew up in my parents' ad agency - Don May Advertising, one of the
top 300 in the country (as rated by AADA) for 16 of the 17 years of its
existence. I started 'working' there when I was 9 - as, believe it or not, a
stripper. (Bring that out at a cocktail party and see what happens!) No, my
folks were not perverts; in those antique days the idea of what we know as
computer publishing was not even a dream, it was the stuff of science fiction.
Back then you first thought up the ad, then did a rough
pencil sketch of layout to the specs of the ad space, whether it was in pixels,
columns and/or inches. Then you decided how much space you had for the
information your client wanted in the ad and how much for graphics. Then you
typed your copy - yes, typed, on a typewriter and in our office that meant on
an office-sized manual. Some clients wanted blocks of typed copy instead of
fancy fonts, so we gave it to them, which meant what you typed had to be not
only within certain space parameters it had to be letter perfect. And if you
had a client (as we did) who wanted typed copy in different typefaces, you had
to buy different typewriters. When my folks' office closed back in the early
70s, we had 27 of them. All standard manuals, big as an old-fashioned monitor
and heavy as an anchor.
You chose your clip art or photograph, your headline and
sub-head, and added the client's logo/information. You chose which type font to
use (if they didn't want plain typed copy) and then the fun began. You had to
use that tool of the devil, the proportion wheel, to figure out how much space
each unit needs and how it all fit into your space and design. The copy
(perfectly typed and with every word - especially the names - correctly spelt)
was then sent to the typesetter with the name of the desired type and the
measurements of the space. The images were sent to the photostatter with the
measurements of where they were supposed to go. Then you waited... sometimes up
to three days, which was not considered abnormal.
Once all the elements were returned you could (hopefully)
construct your ad. However, if some mathematically-challenged person got the
proportion wheel readings wrong the process - which was quite expensive - had
to begin again, which made both the agency and the client furious. Don't ask me
how I know.
Once everything was right, you cut out the various elements
and pasted them down on art board with rubber cement, then once it was
finished, cleaned up the little escaping dribs of cement with a square of
something rubbery whose name I have forgotten. I pulled the little bits of
collected cement off the rubbery thing and, instead of discarding them as the
other artists did, rolled them into a ball. When the office closed forever, I
had a ball of rubber cement drippings roughly the size of a softball. Have no
idea of whatever happened to it, though.
My first job, as I have said, was stripping, which meant
taking an eyedropper of acetone and very carefully using the acetone to
dissolve the rubber cement so I could lift off the reusable elements, put them
on a sheet of typing paper according to type and file them, so we could re-use
them later and not have the expense of photostatting. Hence - I was a stripper.
It was a smelly, sticky job and I did it proudly (remember, I
was nine years old, and the status of earning a paycheck however minuscule was
great) but when at the age of 12 I was promoted to writing copy I was ecstatic.
It wasn't romantic or even really interesting - ours was an industrial
advertising agency rather than a consumer one - but I took to writing copy
about industrial washers and drop-coin meters and car washes like the
proverbial duck. I worked there until it was time for me to go to college.
This was all long ago; aeons in technological time. When our
agency closed copy machines were huge boxes with a tub of liquid that the copy
went through to 'set' it, turning out a slightly slimy, slightly blurry copy -
and we thought they were not only incredible, but almost magical. Computers
were around, but they cost millions (millions then!) and took up entire floors
of office buildings. The thought of a phone you could carry with you or a
computer that would fit in your pocket only existed in the realm of fantasy.
Now they're not only commonplace but ubiquitous.
I wish my father could have lived to enjoy the age of
computers and desktop publishing. He would have delighted in it. I still do a
few graphic jobs, mainly for organizations to which I belong, and in an hour or
so I can produce a job (including the inevitable 'tweaking' time) in what used
to take three or four days. How my father would have loved such ease and
control! Unfortunately, he died before computers left the 'full floor of an
office building' stage. My mother, on the other hand, lived well into the
computer age and never ceased to regard them with suspicion and dislike. She
said that nothing so easily done could be good and the internet was a tool of
the devil. Well, I guess sometimes she can be regarded as being right, but on
the other hand modern convenience can be wonderful.
The only sad thing about such ease and luxury is that there
is no place left for 9 year olds to enter the business world by stripping.
