by Elizabeth Brown Lawler

Louisville's art directors have come a long way with computers over the past few years. Generally they have come to realize that the Mac is not a typesetter or a toy for computer geeks - it is an important creative tool.

While drawing boards are gathering dust, and markers are drying out, art directors are increasing their use of computer techniques for finished art.

All agree that the designer's talent far outweighs the abilities of the computer alone, but the adaptability of the artist to integrate this tool into their creative process affects their creative freedom.

Power up, start Quark, get coffee, check email for
daily schedule. This is how award-winning art director
Kevin Lippy starts his day.

Kevin started at Doe-Anderson almost five years ago and works on clients like the Louisville Zoo, the Courier-Journal, Hard Scuffle, Grisanti's and Powerbilt Mowers. Educated in traditional design, he was on the board for 10 years before a Macintosh occupied his desk. And when his agency moved into a new building about two years ago, there was no room in their offices for drawing boards.

"They trashed the drawing boards. And I had just gotten a new set of Design markers..."

Forced to make the transition, Kevin wasn't happy with his early computer experience... "They wanted to start us out slow, so they got us Mac Classics." Kevin says. "They thought Macs were like stereo systems - the bigger they were, the more bells and whistles they had. I explained to them that the bigger Macs were the same, they just had more power."

Doe's art directors first got computers about three years ago in the old offices, but, Kevin says, the drawing board was still the focus of his room. "At first I just used the Mac to set headlines. Then I'd still cut up the laser copy for my layouts!"

He said most of the art directors learned the Mac at about the same pace and would rib each other to keep doing better. Doe's oldest art director, Marty Jewett, used the Mac before anyone, and the running joke was "If Marty can do it, we can do it."

Now Kevin knows Quark inside and out, and works on a Quadra 610 and 17" color monitor. One look at his office tells you he spends most of his time working on it, with the area around the keyboard and mouse clear, while stacks of papers occupy other parts of his desk. He just recently got a PowerMac at home, where he can access his office work by modem, and he hopes to spend more time learning Photoshop.

Like most art directors, Kevin still concepts on paper. Spending a day with co-worker Rankin Mapother results in a wall covered with rough tissues containing possible headlines.

But when it comes to design, Kevin says he sometimes starts working on the computer before he has any idea how he'll lay out an ad.

"The Mac lets me be able to try a lot that I wouldn't have been able to do before... Doing marker renderings, it took so long that you'd talk yourself into the design. Now the account people hate me because I'm always changing things. It's good for the client though, because we're always thinking of how to improve the work."

When asked if Kevin thinks computers have lessened or increased the quality of advertising work, he says it's improved things. "Looking through CA, I can definitely see how art direction has gotten better overall. It [the Mac] offers a lot more versatility."

For art directors who are resistant to using the Mac, Kevin thinks "are afraid because they don't know what they can do with it."

He also says that it's true, many people automatically think they can be designers just because they can use a Mac. "Even account people standing over my shoulder will start trying to make design decisions."

Another effect Macintosh has had on art direction, Kevin says, is that there are no secrets anymore. He can look through CA and recognize techniques used, when it wasn't so easy before. "I can see where they've used Photoshop for something, or where they forgot to kern letters properly."

Because of his particularity about such things, Kevin prefers to produce finished art himself most of the time. He uses Doe's two Mac production artists when he's swamped, but always likes to take a final look before ads go to print.

"Sometimes the account people want to free us up from the computers, thinking that it takes our time. But really, it's a lot faster for me to do it, rather than going back and forth to production making changes."

Kevin says the only way the computer can be limiting, is when speed and power slow things down. "On the Mac Classic, I'd press a key and go get a cup of coffee."

But even that was better than the old way of doing things. Kevin reflected on the time he would spend cutting up typesetting. "I used to cut copy apart, then go to the Xerox machine and lose words on the way back. I remember one time when I lost the letter `t' and and yelled `Nobody move!' so I could look for it." When asked what he would like to see in the future, Kevin says, "More RAM. More power. Faster. Quicker. Cheaper. And more time to learn."

Tom Fawbush has been an art director at Creative Alliance
for the past two years. Originally hired to do KFC production,
his conceptual design abilities soon brought him to the
art department.

Decorating his office are cibachromes painted with gorgeous digitally-altered photography. They show Tom is a master of Photoshop. With a history of traditional painting, Tom prefers Photoshop's paint-oriented tools to object-oriented drawing programs like Freehand or Illustrator.

Like a lot of people though, Tom had a traditional design education and studied under Doe-Anderson veteran Joe Rigby. "He taught us the old way - marker renderings, pencil layouts, hand lettering, then introduced computer."

Looking at his drawing table, you can see he has pretty much abandoned the old way of doing things. "I'll use it when I need to cut and paste something, but... well, it's good to each lunch on. I stack stuff on it. And it's a good pen holder..."

Actually, he says he does like gettting on the drawing board every now and then. He will often still do thumbnail layouts before he begins work on the Mac. "But sometimes I have the layout in my head, so I'll just start on the computer."

During college, Tom had a Mac at home, and started working in Photoshop as much as possible... "well, as much as you could with 4 megs of RAM and an 80 meg hard drive..."

Compared to that, he's spoiled now with 65 mb of RAM and over 1 gig of hard disk space.

His computer skills, combined with a portfolio including slides of his fine art, and a 14" x 6 1/2" resume no one could file got him notice at Creative. He was tending bar at Studebaker's between jobs, and applied from an ad in Business First. They called him two hours later.

A good move, as Tom's contribution to a Metro United Way campaign helped the agency win the 1994 Best of Show Louie award.

Tom says he's never professionally worked without a computer, except at Studebaker's, and in the past two years, he's seen most of Creative's 12 art directors switch over from boards. "Even Joe Adams - a person we never thought would use computers... Now we can't get him off of it."

With the agency's breakneck speed pace, it seems vital. "It's so easy to change things. I'm constantly making revisions." And he says the Mac allows him to meet client requests that would not have been possible before. "Once we needed a photo of a guy standing in front of a teller machine. I scanned the stock photo books but couldn't find one, but I did fine a teller machine and a person, so I combined them for the initial layout." Based on that, they had photography shot for the final ad.

Computer techniques sometimes enter his thinking when he is concepting a layout. "When I lay things out, I think, how will I do this? Will it work?" But he says the working on the Mac does not limit his ideas, and he's always interested in learning new methods. "When I see a technique or effect used, I'll ask how it was done."

Tom says that he gets tired of seeing traditional ways and enjoys the power that Photoshop gives him for special photo treatments.

And special treatments they are.

Mark Miller loves to spend hours on a (hopefully)
quiet afternoon creating beautifully illustrated
layouts on his drawing table.

When he arrived at Bandy-Carroll-Hellige in 1990, Mark had been in the ad business 17 years but always considered himself more of an "art guy" than an "ad guy."

At the John Herron School of Art in Indianapolis, Mark studied design and illustration. He then went to McCann-Erickson. Now his work can be seen in ads for McDonald's, Bank of Louisville, Acordia, Saints Mary & Elizabeth Hospitals and Cucos Mexican Restaurantes.

At BCH in 1990 (then Bon Communications), a Mac had just been purchased. No one was really using it at first, and Mark had thought he could finish out his career without ever having to learn computers.

They were supported by management who said they didn't care what tools were used, they "hire people for their thinking and their art direction."

"Nobody was really using the Mac when I got there, then they hired someone, but it was still only being used for typesetting." Mark wasn't interested in learning it then because he didn't really know anybody who was using it for complete layouts with illustration and photography.

The single Mac definitely began to be used, but the art directors never depended completely on the new technology... they had a paste-up artist that they relied on to finalize layouts before they went to press.

"During the switchover, you had a few people left like Dave Cartmill who was an excellent production artist. The Mac people don't think the same way he did. There are very few people who are Mac production people who really have the skills... the pride in their work. They haven't learned all the aspects of production art. The Mac makes it easy for them because they can let it do a lot of the work." (Dave sadly passed away last summer and I know he is missed.)

Mark says he's learned "picked up bits and pieces" over the past couple years from BCH art director Cindy LaRoy and production artist Laura Lee. He would seek out an available computer and set his own headlines in Quark, but when it comes to basic Mac functions, "I'm not sure I could go back there and take one of the jobs I did, and put it on disk with the fonts and everything."

With a new Mac on his desk, Mark says, "I have at my fingertips the ability to make it exactly the way I want it."

Maybe not right away. Mark's initial feelings as a traditional artist are that "the Mac is too confining - that's just me where I'm at now. Maybe down the road, I wouldn't feel that way."

"I saw an interview where this guy was saying real art people still like the lead on the paper... The Mac is an extension, but it's kind of like riding in a car compared to running... running you get your feet on the ground and you feel the bumps, in a car it's kind of like you're on top of something or inside it..."

Recent browsing through CA and Print has peaked his interest for challenging any limitations. "When I see illustrations and Photoshop work, mezzotints and stuff, I think, I wish I could do that."

"The beauty of it for a person like myself is that once I get proficient at it, is that when I have an idea, and I'm very meticulous about the way I do things, then I'll be able to do it myself and carry that nature all the way through the project rather than have to pass it off to somebody else."

He doesn't see the Mac changing all of what he does..."I think the birth of an idea will always come off the pad."

But, it's a double-edged sword. In Mark's relatively new position as Creative Director, he won't have the time to devote to learning computer techniques and may not feel the total impact of the change.

"As Creative Director, I enjoy the details, but I don't have time to do it either. I'm basically a hands-on person, so I would enjoy using Photoshop and doing some of my own stuff, but this position I'm in probably won't let me do that as much..."

Though he also says, to be a good manager, he will need to learn the programs to be able to understand what the art directors must go through to produce ads.

When asked what impact the Mac has had on the quality of advertising work, Mark says, "no matter what the tools are, what's important is talent and design sense."

"I can still recognize a Mac layout. I used to think that was bad. I think the design community has somewhat accepted that - not as harsh a look to me as it was at one time."

For deadlines though, Mark says, "If you have a proficient operator, [the Mac makes things] three times as fast."

"You've got great talented people and people proficient on the Mac, but the one thing in our business society right now is that time is a commodity that agencies sell - everyone's supposed to be good, everyone's supposed to be talented, everyone's supposed to be able to do great commercials, or great ads - but whoever can give them those great pieces of work faster is where it's at.."

And clients know that... "there's a lot of same day stuff when it used to be tomorrow or day after tomorrow. Clients know that they can call right now (4:30 pm), and by 9:00 tomorrow morning we can have an ad for them. (It might not be a good ad but they know we can get it done)"

As Creative Director, Mark will continue to work on new business, but does he want to learn to design for multimedia (see story on page XX)? "No.. I'd just as soon leave it to someone like you or Cindy [LaRoy]... I might change my mind five years from now, you never know."

Peyton Talbott is senior art director at Babcock-Rickert.*
He is probably one of the most advanced computer graphics
experts working as an art director in town, using programs
like Adobe Premiere and Strata Studio Pro every day.

Unlike a lot of traditional designers, Peyton jumped at the chance to learn the Mac. At East Texas State University, he was enrolled in the Computer Science program. He approached the dean and asked to specialize in graphics but was told they didn't offer that, so he went into Art Direction and Design. There was no computer training for that degree, but Peyton would sneak into a computer lab and use the school's only existing Macs - a Mac Plus and a Mac II. But granted, this was 1987.

For his final project, he suprised his teachers with a laser printed page of typeset headlines. Peyton said, "They couldn't believe it was from a computer. Everyone thought computers just made those dot-matrix printouts." But tradition was tradition... "I still had to render the type by hand so I wouldn't flunk."

He continued teaching himself computers, and upon his return to Louisville, he began working at Graphik Ink, doing line-art drawings in Freehand for GE. Then he went to Crane Productions where he designed direct mail and coupon inserts.

"I wanted to do art direction and design though... I didn't want to do any more junk mail and inserts or ranges and refrigerators." So he went to Fearless Designs.

He is definitely one who prefers to start and finish everything on the Mac. Although he does concept ideas on tissue, like many, he thinks it's a bad idea these days not to have work on disk.

"The problem with traditional methods is that if something happened to that board, like it got ran over, then your whole project is lost. With a disk, you can just make a new one."

His computer generated techniques have definitely won over management in the past year and a half. "They would come to me with a project, and I would show them alternatives [to traditional ways]. They were blown away at first, but I think the shock value is wearing off."

When he first got to Babcock-Rickert, he created a speculative interactive presentation to show the AE's what's possible. He is working on a concept for an promotion piece, but has to be careful that the animation doesn't overcome the portfolio content.

Posters on Peyton's office wall show promotions for 50 Off. Each features a cash register, and one has beautiful red gift package bows, while the other has a background filled with almost photo-realistic fall maple leaves. The lighting and textures barely alluded to computer generated work. All were rendered in Strata Studio Pro, Peyton's favorite program.

For one of the posters, he went out and picked up a leaf and just laid it on the scanner. He took it into Strata Studio Pro to give it depth and realistic lighting effects that would take forever in Photoshop.

Peyton is truly one who knows his tool so well, it never limits him. "I use everything for everything. There's just no sacrificing the idea - that's the most important."

The only limitation is time.

* Peyton has moved to another agency, Kleier Communications, since this article was written.

Quantum Communications art director Patty Marguet
has an interesting mix of conventional art training
and computer "genes."

She learned the trade from Claudia Hammer, a traditional designer and illustrator, in the art department of the old Byck's clothing store. She grew up with her father, who is an engineer, so she always had a propensity for any kind of drafting.

"I was always fascinated with dimensions," says Patty, "I can remember being very little and knowing how to use a ruler."

That interest helped her transition into using Macs back in 1987. Her on-the-job design education continued at Stewart Winter, and then at Franklin Ross, where she was a layout artist. There she got a Macintosh, and was probably one of the first people in town to use one.

"I really took to it quickly, it was easy for me to understand - I understand how they work. I completely went to Macintosh for all of my design and layout work." She also appreciated the Mac's accuracy. "It's so precise in it's ability to measure. When I lay it out, it's exactly the way I want it with little margin for error."

Clients appreciate it too. Patty loves showing clients things that look printed. "It's enhanced the sales relationship with clients because it's so apparent [the finished piece], nothing left to chance on their side of it."

"It lends a certain legitimacy to what we do - where as before they had to sort of just believe us - `well its gonna look like this, I promise, when it gets on the press.' Now we're really proving it in advance."

Patty starts and finishes all her work on the Mac, for clients like Wakefield-Scearce, Blockbuster Video and Cissell Manufacturing. She does, however, take an occasional trip to the drawing board. "I sit at it when I'm really stuck but usually I'll read Shakespeare and listen to music," and unless she has a layout already in mind, she will do tissue thumbnails.

She thinks the Mac assists with concepting, even if it has changed the craft of design. "When I design now, because the computer has eliminated so much time in mechanical work, I get to spend more time conceptualizing and laying out and really designing, so therefore it is a creative process."

But Patty knows how to use the Mac so well, it doesn't hinder that creativity. "I do think it's hard for some designers to because so much of the process for them was rooted in the tools, and when you take those tools away, it's sort of like starting over - how do I do this now? How do I design?"

"Whatever the tools are, you have the master them to get past worrying about how to use them, so you can worry about the actual work."

The Mac has eliminated a lot of the old tools, and consequently, pieces of the design process.

"Some parts I really miss - getting out a rapidiograph and actually drawing a letter. It was really tedious, but that's why it was a craft - and a certain bit of that is lost."

While I was wondering what a "rapidiograph" was, she said, "I'm almost flabbergasted when I interview people now from college and they have no idea what a haber rule is or they can't spec type. It was a big part of what we do, and now it's completely eliminated.

"It's hard to believe there's a whole generation of artists who don't know what all that is."

"Although it's just like anything, technology pushes forwared and the craft changes and develops in another way, and I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing."

She does think though that some computer techniques can be overused."There are some tricks I can do that I like but I try to steer away from that because I think that's what it looks like - tricks. That's ok some of the time, but I think that there's gonna be a real, not a backlash, but a look back, just like there always is - you know `Oh that's from the 90's - that's when everyone got Photoshop and they started doing shadows.'

"I try to still keep what I do very pure and not convoluted - I think its important to remember that what were doing is communicating and it shouldn't be hard to get at the information."

Patty also thinks designers shouldn't feel pressured to do everything just because the capability is there. She says, "I think we're starting, finally, to realize again, `Oh yeah, just because I have a computer doesn't mean I have to do everything.' In other words, I don't have to be a photo retoucher, just because I have the software in my computer. I don't have to illustrate if I don't want to, I can farm it out and scan it in, or have it done in Illustrator or Freehand..."

"I don't want to do trapping either and pre-press again - even though I know, in my software, I can do that. I am really setting us up if I take responsibility for the stripping. I think we have to realize our own limitations and I think people are."