Week 10

Introduction

This last chapter was simply about the introduction of Digital Design. Surprisingly, Desktop Computers were a very big thing in the 1960’s and continue to be up until this day. Computers sought to cause an unprecedented involvement in every aspect of production of goods and services. These changes were able to shift social structures which graphic designers and their designs operated. Digital technology thus brought conceptual changes to Graphic Designing.

Reflection

Any equipment used in the electronic communication process also involves electronic media. Game consoles, telephones, computers, etc can also be put in this category due to how they had made and also how their memory is stored. The term Computer Graphics though arouse in late 1960’s as a result of Boein Aircraft Company. At this time only few graphic designers were able to make or write programs so they thus depended on punch Cards. Punched cards were first used around 1725 by Basill Bouchon and also Jean Falcon as a more robust form of the perforated paper rolls then in use for controlling textiles in France.

The Tabulating Machine Company was one of three companies that merged to form a computing tabulating record, which later became known as IBM. They continued and manufactured and marketed a variety of unit record machines for creating, sorting, and tabulating punched cards, even after expanding into computers in the late 1950s. IBM developed punch card technology into a powerful tool for business data-processing and produced an extensive line of general purpose unit record machines. By 1950, the IBM card and IBM unit record machines had become ubiquitous in industry and government. "Do not fold, spindle or mutilate," a generalized version of the warning that appeared on some punched cards, became a motto for the post World War II era

SUMMARY

A typical blank punched card of the type used to store data.

From the 1900s, into the 1950s, punched cards were the primary medium for data entry, data storage and processing in institutional computing. According to the IBM Archives: "By 1937... IBM had 32 presses at work in Endicott, N.Y., printing, cutting and stacking five to 10 million punched cards every day." Punched cards were even used as legal documents, such as US government checks and savings bonds. During the 1960s, the punched card was gradually replaced as the primary means for data storage by a wide variety of other devices which were basically made, or evolved form what was already there. Electronic media was able to drastically improve consumption on behalf of the citizens. This century became a do-it-yourself society so all one needed to be successful in this way was to have access to a computer. The skills of graphic designers were thus constantly tested and the end result involved them having to prove themselves as skillful individuals. Graphic Designers went on to design virtual environments. This has contributed to the social and economic values of the world that shapes us. And as funny as that sounds, this will always and continue to be crucial to us.