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Music U.K. advert July 1984


DaveFry

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19 hours ago, DaveFry said:

1181576818_MusicUKJuly84.thumb.jpg.720adfbf5cf257e9b10c185a23fcec0d.jpg

Henry " The Thumb " Thomas from the Rockschool TV series of the day .

Sorry to be obtuse but I'm fascinated with how rudimentary the layout, type-set and printing was in the 80s - pre-computers I suppose.

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27 minutes ago, visog said:

Sorry to be obtuse but I'm fascinated with how rudimentary the layout, type-set and printing was in the 80s - pre-computers I suppose.

It doesn't look wonky enough to be Letraset, so I'm guessing this would have been done on typesetting machine. This was a rudimentary computer that controlled a photographic imaging process to produce the type. Changing the typeface (including getting bold and italic variants) normally meant fitting a different photographic negative with the required character shapes, and everything else was done by inserting various codes into the text that controlled the type size, line length and alignment.

Since you couldn't be 100% certain what you were going to get until the program had run and the results had been developed in the dark room, a lot of the time it was simplest to run everything at a single size ranged left and then cut up the results and use a process camera to resize them to fit. The finished design would be assembled on a piece of board, cutting and pasting the various elements into position.

If you wanted colour you would specify it on a tracing paper overlay, and the repo-house would work their magic to turn black and white artwork into a full colour print.

The process was long-winded and time consuming and often the client would have revised the text before you'd even got the first version out of the developer, let alone stuck down onto the artwork board!

Edited by BigRedX
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7 minutes ago, DaveFry said:

I have no idea what to reply. 😨 ( I have autism , you see ) 

The Wal bass in the picture you posted looks like a great bass - it would sound ace through the big rack of Trace Elliot amps you also posted a picture of.

Thanks for posting some great pictures mate, wish I’d kept my old bass magazines!

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Phew , relief ! Thankyou Andy .
I discovered the magazine the other day whilst looking for evidence of keytar ownership for the keytar thread on here .

Another advert from the same ... :

596976703_MusicUK07.thumb.jpg.e9a7ff9baffb3f9f54caff8acef0d96b.jpg

And could the guy cutting the tape in the earlier pic be Carl Palmer ? Or Paul White from Sound On Sound magazine , maybe ?

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On 12/01/2019 at 16:51, mentalextra said:

You got what you paid for?

You would have probably paid quite a lot for the design and artwork of something even as simple as this, as it required access to specialist skills and expensive equipment that were strictly for graphic arts professionals.

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5 hours ago, BigRedX said:

You would have probably paid quite a lot for the design and artwork of something even as simple as this, as it required access to specialist skills and expensive equipment that were strictly for graphic arts professionals.

I was a typesetter back then, i know!

It's probably a little harsh to judge the work done at that time by this advert, even 'pre computer' times. The industry went through so many changes around that time. When I joined the trade it was at the start of 'computerisation'. I worked with many guys who had spent their working lives on hot metal. The front end systems were specialised, hugely expensive code driven machines that looked as though they could have put a rocket on the moon, but probably contained the same computing power as an iphone. But it all changed very quickly and fortunately I got out before DTP really took hold and everyone was doing it on their 386!

Anyway, the advert, to my mind, looks as though it's been 'pasted up', done on the cheap. EG check out the word spacing, especially between the words AMAZING and BASS compared to BASS and WITH. Also a little too much space after the word 'pop,' which I think indicates manual paste up and last minute changes! They have RR/RL the three para next to the image but the last para is centred weirdly. I'm guessing the text was set to suit a different design and it's been hacked around! Just my opinion:)

 

Edited by mentalextra
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