#119 Drag & Drop

#119 Drag & Drop

#119 Drag & Drop
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This is a high-​resolution pdf & may take a few minutes to download.
Find printing tips & framing ideas here.

 

Drag & Drop. The mean­ing is obvi­ous to any­one who works with a com­put­er, along with “copy & paste” & “blue screen of death.” But right now, crank­ing this issue out just before the dead­line, drag & drop is how I feel at this moment. 

I promise the next issue, Amper­Art #117 See & Be Seen, will be lots of fun, will intro­duce you to a fan­tas­tic guy, & will be sat­u­rat­ed with red, red, red for Valen­tine’s Day. Look for it next Tues­day morning.

Now, dear read­ers, I’m going to drag myself to bed & drop with a thud on my pil­low. Good night. 

 

chaz sez ...

My clients are scream­ing at me to pub­lish more arti­cles  for the chaz sez blog at Des​i​moneDesign​.com (my pro­fes­sion­al graph­ic design web­site). So I will attempt to pub­lish one arti­cle per month, just like Amper­Art. That is, if I can pull it off before I real­ly drag & drop — I hard­ly got this one out on time.

chaz sez is most­ly about design, typog­ra­phy, print­ing, pub­lish­ing & mar­ket­ing, but on occa­sion I’ll divert to a side­ways top­ic that just can’t escape my rant­i­ng & rav­ing. They even want more of that — do I actu­al­ly have a cult following?

Join the cult:

 


Production notes for #119 Drag & Drop:
Original size: 20x30 inches

Program: Adobe Illustrator
Fonts: Myriad
Ampersand: Myriad
Credits:
Whoever invented the mouse (thanks, although I prefer a trackball)
You may repost the image. Please credit Amper​Art​.com.
To download a full-​size high-​resolution 11x17-​inch poster, click on the image.

For pro­fes­sion­al graph­ic design, please vis­it Des­i­mone Design.

Desimone? Damn good!

#71 Ring & Ring

71-Ring-&-Ring


Click to view full-​size or download hi-​rez image for gallery-​quality printing & framing.
This is a high-​resolution pdf & may take a few minutes to download.
Find printing tips & framing ideas here.

Amper Fans meet Apple Fans

Today’s the day every­one’s been wait­ing for (unless you’re an Android or Win­dows fan — ha ha Win­dows fan sounds kin­da fun­ny, does­n’t it)…

THE OFFICIAL ANNOUNCEMENT OF iPHONE 6

brokeberry

No, that’s not an iPhone. It’s my cracked, scuffed, worn, tor­tured, bro­ken Black­ber­ry Curve 6310 that I’ve had for 8 or 9 years.  Think I’m ready for a new phone?

Believe it or not, it still works. (It has to, it’s the only phone I’ve got.) I’ll tell you more about this Badass­ber­ry — the phone that won’t quit — in my “chaz sez” col­umn below. It’s been a work­horse, but I am so ready for a brand new iPhone — & final­ly the iPhone 6 has the one fea­ture I’ve been hold­ing out for, a larg­er screen. (I’ve also been cross­ing my fin­gers it will come in grey or black, & sure enough it does.)

Remem­ber before answer­ing machines (remem­ber answer­ing machines, which were before voice­mail?) the phone used to ring & ring & ring & ring & ring, some­times 10 or 20 times? Real­ly annoy­ing if you had an annoy­ing friend (or worse yet, a bill collector…or worse yet, a tele­mar­keter) who kept call­ing & you did­n’t want to speak to them. At least with answer­ing machines you could fast-​forward to the next message.

Let’s fast-​forward to today:

Well, the iPhone 6 has been announced, but we’ll have to wait & wait & wait & wait & wait until it’s actu­al­ly avail­able. I’ve wait­ed 9 years for a new phone so I guess I can wait a few months longer.


UPDATE: I did get that iPhone 6 Plus, & enjoyed it very much…until the iPhone X was intro­duced. I jumped at that imme­di­ate­ly, main­ly because I like the let­ter (or numer­al) X & the num­ber 10. It’s a mile­stone. & I love the phone, with its edge-​to-​edge larg­er screen (retain­ing near­ly the same size body), face recog­ni­tion, & super-​duper cam­era. (I had way to much fun with the ani­mo­ji fea­ture at first, turn­ing myself into a robot, chick­en, & such…until that nov­el­ty wore off. It was fun send­ing my great-​niece a col­or­ful ani­mat­ed uni­corn, though, on her birthday.)

So, am I anx­ious to get my hands on the lat­est & great­est iPhone 10 XR, XS, XS Max, or any­thing else? NO! I love my X, the sim­plic­i­ty of the mod­el name, & don’t plan to upgrade (not that I con­sid­er the newest mod­els much of an upgrade) any­time soon…although I doubt I’ll wait anoth­er 8 or 9 years.


phone colors adIf you’re won­der­ing what all the col­ors are in this Amper­Art piece, “Ring & Ring,” those are the col­ors tele­phones came in while I was a kid in the 1950s & 60s. Up until then they came in any col­or, as Mr. Ford would say of the Mod­el T, as long as it was black. The new, mod­ern col­ors were excit­ing, instant­ly mod­ern­iz­ing & adding a touch of glam­our to any liv­ing room, bed­room or kitchen. This ad announces all the new phone colors.

 

princess-phone-pink-rotarySMShort­ly after the new col­ors, along came the Princess phone (that was in my mom’s or sis­ter’s bed­room, of course, although I don’t recall if it was pink or turquoise).

 

 

 

black pushbutton phone

But the most rev­o­lu­tion­ary con­cept, that which changed the world of tele­pho­ny, was the push-​button phone. That allowed all sorts of won­der­ful new appli­ca­tions, includ­ing auto­mat­ed cus­tomer ser­vice depart­ment selec­tions that usu­al­ly dis­con­nect­ed the call. (I always just press 0 for a live oper­a­tor, although that usu­al­ly dis­con­nects the call as well or recy­cles back to the main menu). Then cord­less phones were the next big thing.

single-brickAfter that, of course, cel­lu­lar phones were all the rage, & any­one who owned one was an instant celebri­ty. For decades they were first nov­el­ties, then acces­sories, & today they have replaced the home phone alto­geth­er for sev­er­al house­holds. For many solo entre­pre­neurs such as myself, the cell phone is our main busi­ness phone, along with Skype.


Ah, the sim­pler days when all the instruc­tions for using your new phone were print­ed on a sin­gle sheet of paper…

dial telephone instructions

If you hap­pen to have a Bell & How­ell 16-​mm sound pro­jec­tor sit­ting around, you could sim­ply learn from this high­ly edu­ca­tion­al film which shows you step-​by-​step how to place a call with the rev­o­lu­tion­ary new sys­tem. Is that an ear­ly portable cell phone she’s stand­ing next to?


I know, I know…this Amper­Art release coin­cides with the iPhone 6 release & it was planned that way, so why have I hard­ly even men­tioned the Shiny New Toy? Because you’ll be hear­ing enough about it on the on the news, on the Inter­net, at Star­bucks, & from your geek col­leagues. You might even be at an Apple store plac­ing your order right now.


listen up!Why do I still have a Black­ber­ry Curve where I can’t read half the screen; the ear­piece does­n’t work so I have to use it only on speak­er; the track­ball fell out once & until I found it weeks lat­er (right under my chair) I had to do every­thing with the key­pad, which meant no scrolling (now it’s taped in place); & I have to pull the bat­tery out to charge it because the usb jack is all screwed up? Oh yeah, & it’s held togeth­er with duct tape?

Because it still works—and I’ve been wait­ing for an iPhone that has all the fea­tures I want, includ­ing a nice big screen. Oh yeah, & the price. Oth­er bills came first. The new iPhone 6 Plus is exact­ly what I want, & the old Beast­ber­ry prob­a­bly won’t hold out much longer.

Which means I’m going to get the iPhone 6 Plus for sure (and all its 128g), so I bet­ter get back to work right now to afford it.


 PRODUCTION NOTES:
Original size: 20×30 inches
Program: Illustrator
Font: What font? This is hand-​lettered, just like ads were created back in the 1960’s (unless you could find a decent script in Fototype).
Colors: Sampled from period telephone ads & adjusted according to memory
CREDITS:
Ad: clas​si​cro​tary​phones​.com
Princess phone: playinginthe​worldgame​.files​.word​press​.com
Black pushbutton phone: unmesh​patil​.blogspot​.com/
Brick: bodyshapestyle​.com
Instructions: teach​inglit​er​a​cy​.tum​blr​.com
1954 film: YouTube /​ Bell System

#58 Up & Running

58-up-&-running500x750i


#58 Up & Running
Click to view full-​size or download hi-​rez image for gallery-​quality printing and framing. 
This is a high-​resolution pdf & may take a few minutes to download.
Find printing tips & framing ideas here.

Phish­ing mal­ware attacked Amper​Art​.com in Sep­tem­ber 2019, shut­ting the site down for sev­er­al weeks. It took quite an effort to remove all the infec­tions and restore the site to nor­mal, after which it was migrat­ed to a new host­ing com­pa­ny and for­ti­fied with all sorts or anti-​malware and virus fire­walls. Now that Amper­Art is once again Up & Run­ning, here’s a sto­ry about a spe­cial place where I used to vis­it my com­put­er genius friend after high school.


In the 1970’s one of my best friends worked as a com­put­er pro­gram­mer for the Glen­dale Uni­fied School Dis­trict. I’d fre­quent­ly drop in on him and enjoy the phe­nom­e­non of feel­ing like I was in the con­trol room of a sci-​fi flick.

The dis­tric­t’s Com­put­er Con­trol Cen­ter was a large room with an ele­vat­ed floor that was air-​conditioned under­neath to keep the mas­sive elec­tron­ics cool. I guess you could say the com­put­ers on that ele­vat­ed floor were lit­er­al­ly Up & Run­ning. There were banks of huge reel-​to-​reel machines that hummed and clicked in syn­chronic­i­ty. Besides those state-​of-​the-​art won­ders, data was stored on punch cards that sort­ed through a large machine sound­ing like cards shuf­fling at a casi­no, and on paper strips punched with lit­tle holes resem­bling a tickertape.

Every­thing you see here is on a tiny chip inside your smart phone.

But the eeri­est thing about this room was the strange green glow ema­nat­ing from the com­put­er mon­i­tors. Noth­ing like what you’re view­ing right now. Every screen dis­played rows and rows of same-​size let­ters and num­bers, a sin­gle font if you can call it that, in this cath­ode tube green glow. You even had to know a com­plex com­put­er lan­guage to type any­thing (I am indebt­ed to who­ev­er invent­ed wysiwyg). 

Amper­Art #58 Up & Run­ning is rem­i­nis­cent of those green-​glow mon­i­tors. See the faint num­bers in the poster image where it oth­er­wise appears black? That’s where the char­ac­ters have been burned into the phos­pho­rs of the cath­ode ray tube. No full-​color web­sites in those days! How­ev­er, with a lit­tle artis­tic tal­ent and a lot of patience, you could actu­al­ly draw pic­tures like this:

CAT on CRT

Here’s an inter­est­ing his­to­ry of cre­at­ing art with let­ters & num­bers, going way back to the days of typewriters. 


Dedicated to Joe Freezon, best friend, computer nerd. RIP
Production notes for #158 Up & Running:
Original size: 20x30 inches
Programs: Adobe Illustrator & Photoshop
Font: Green Screen (background code*), main text lettering by Chaz
Ampersand: custom design by Chaz
Credits:
Green Screen font* by James Shields (click to see all his fonts)
*an exact copy of the standard IBM PC text mode font
Note: &” replaces “and” in most or all text, including quotations, headlines & titles.
You may repost the image & article. Please credit Amper​Art​.com.
To download a full-​size high-​resolution 11x17-​inch poster suitable for printing & framing, click on the image.

Visit DesimoneDesign.com

RIP BLACKWOLF, AMOS & ANDY, BRIQUETTE, JEEPERS CREEPERS, & ALL MY FRIENDS& NEIGHBORSBLACK CATS WHO WILL BE CELEBRATING NATIONAL BLACK CAT DAY IN HALLOWEEN HEAVEN