Without the Mac, I don’t know what I would have done. Literally.
My design career began, not coincidentally, in 1984 when I first touched that big, blocky, beige mouse. Oh, I’d been doing my thing before then, using the Xerox machine at school, taking trips to Adcom to buy a precious sheet of rub-on lettering and some pinstripe tape. But when my best friend Eric Miller (with prompting from me) convinced his parents to shell out big bucks for a Mac in 1984, a whole new world opened up. My favorite font was Cairo. The Japanese woman combing her hair was astonishing. “Fat Bits” entered our vocabulary. A job as a typesetter was unsatisfying (not least because it was for a right-wing, anti-union foundation), but when the desktop publishing revolution arrived, I was ready and desperate. MacDraw was the staple of my first full-time design job (thanks, Marge Corcoran Brodahl). Pagemaker was a revelation. Quark was “robust.” Freehand was my app of choice, and then Adobe became a necessary evil. But through it all, there was the Mac. Every new employer was told, in no uncertain terms, that there had to be a Mac on my desk or I wasn’t working there.
Thirty years later, here I sit — using my Mac — having created silly newsletters and scholarly magazines, educational books and entertaining DVDs, websites and apps, trade show booths and film festivals. All with this mouse in my right hand.
Thank you, Mac team. You made my life.
Love, Gene
Applelink: gene.cowan
eWorld: genec
