Digital Design

Digital Technology: From Punch Cards and Plotters to Desktop Computing

In the early 1960s, electronic computing was still limited to mainframe computers with no graphical user interfaces.  Such technology appealed to only a very limited community.  Output was usually produced by a plotter pen, like a robotic arm that traced a path dictated by mathematically specified coordinates.  Conceptual artists took an active interest in information processing and interaction with early monitors was conducted through a command-line interface.  Graphic designers played a role in visually interpreting and packaging the new technologies.  The development of affordable printers and the establishment of industry standards for outputting film  from digital files closed the loop between desktop and print production.  Many designers picked up new tools as useful extensions of what they already knew and did.

Media Transitions: Type Design and Publications

The digital typeface design introduced philosophical questions as well as aesthetic challenges.  There were limits on output questions of scalability, and the differing demands of screen displays vs print quality.  Print publications remained important venues for the promotion of digital design.  For most graphic designers, digital design initially meant manipulating type, vector graphics and pixel-based images in the display space of an application.  However, interactivity soon became a part of the focus of design.  The practice of design for print changed.  The designers now had to be responsible for things that had previously been specialized, such as: prepress tasks, detailed knowledge of screen percentages, dot angles, and ink colors.

Fluidity and Functionality

The basic characteristics of the digital environment made boundaries among formats fluid, overturning material distinctions that had been rigidly enforced by earlier print technologies.  Early digital design programs were clumsy, hampered by limited memory and processor speeds.  As the programs developed, they proved well suited to the sophisticated layering and collaging of images and texts that had been characteristic of design in the 1970s and 1980s.

Glossary

Algorithm - from the name of ninth-century Arab mathematician al-Kwarizmi, a set of step by step instructions for calculating or problem solving.  The basis for accomplishing any task in a computational environment.

Analog - of or pertaining to forms (information, expressions, or representations) stored in, or rendered by, media that have continuously variable values, such as photographic film or magnetic tape as opposed to values coded in discrete or digital units.

Bitmap - a means of describing the position and value of pixels in a display.

Command-line - a text based interface to a computer's operating system.  The actual line through which a command is typed and entered.

Desktop - a computer environment, modeled on the physical analog, in which icons act like objects they represent, so that folders contain files, and a trash can is a place to throw away (delete) files.

Digital - of or pertaining to anything composed of a code of discrete units.  Now usually with reference to the binary code underlying computational calculations or the representation of information in such a binary code.

Fonts - originally, a complete set of characters for a particular typeface in a certain size cast in metal.

Mechanicals - finished artwork (including text, images, layouts, and so on) that has been prepared o be photographed for reproduction.  So called perhaps, because they were made using a straight-edge and other precision instruments.  

Pixelated - of or pertaining to an image or graphic that shows the basic units of its digital display (pixels), usually because the resolution of the file or screen is not high enough to render a smooth line or image but also, sometimes, as a deliberate aesthetic effect.

Telematic - of or pertaining to the processing of information at a distance, often using wireless technology.

Transparency - the quality of a text or image whose meaning seems to be perceptible without being mediated by the material or format of its representation or delivery.