2006-08-29 - 8:21 a.m.
Control+alt... what? Eeek!
CafePress is complicated for a Luddite like me. I'm trying to set up just three little designs - I have the designs pretty much worked out - but I haven't scanned and set them up yet because the requirements are making me giddy. I'm skittish about electronic things in general (why do you think I'm so keen on the 16th century?), and all the image requirements for my stuff make me terribly nervous that I'm going to get it all horribly, horribly wrong. I *know* I can work this out if I try hard enough, but honestly - while working out a pattern or sketching embroidery is a snap, computer image requirements (not to mention trying to get the images scanned so I can mess with them) terrify me. Heck, I'm trying to work out how to do it all in Word, because while there's an image, most of the design is text based, and I'm used to messing about in Word. Photoshop? I wish. To me, that's like the PhD of computer imaging - and I'm still in Pre-K. I managed to quit art school about seven years before this stuff became part of the curriculum. Okay, technically, I'd have *graduated* before it became prevalent, and Fine Arts students tended to regard "graphic design" as beneath them, leading as it did to actual 9-5 jobs that earned real money as opposed to starving romantically in a garret in Paris (circa 1920, but that's neither here nor there). I can silkscreen, acid etch, linoleum *and* wood print, work in any paint/ink/graphite/charcoal/etc. media, sculpt, and make really cool sculpture/bas reliefs from found objects, but computers? Only if I can take them apart and glue them back together again in amusing and thought-provoking shapes. In fact, I was almost ten years into the workforce (sort of) before I even realized one could use such arcane things as "scanners" to place one's painstakingly crafted artwork onto the computer screen (even though they were huge and wonky files and took forever to download, one was no longer constrained by one's access to clear tape and a copier). I went from trying to fix my artwork and logos (I was a secretary, since you ask - the artwork was an often unpaid sideline) for printing readiness (often with White-Out and erasers) to fixing the aforementioned unpaid work for scanning readiness overnight (though the White-Out remained a key part of the finishing process, since the copier was old and made little black marks on everything). Now, of course, people create and download image files without a second's thought, and I am *so* jealous. I have these super images, just no skills with a computer at *all*. I'm still wistfully handling my White-Out, and wondering if the taped edges will show up on the copier. Darn those snotty art school professors, with their disdain for graphic skills! Yes, I may be better at creating designs than 50% of the graphic artists out there, and the actual day-to-day grind of producing most graphic imagery would drive me up the wall with boredom (what, like doing statistics is any better?), but I would really like to be able to negotiate the CafePress site without needing a Xanax, a hand to gently hold my nervous little paw and very patiently tell me (in the same voice one speaks to a shy four-year-old - I find that very soothing) that it's all going to be okay, and I *can* do it, I just need to try a little harder. *sigh*
Dorsal - Ventral
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all words copyright Laura Mellin 2000-2005
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