… and I certainly need no excuses.

How did I become, what I am now: a blogging Media- and Graphic Designer?

I was not meant to chose the path I am walking now. But I am happy, that I am walking this path.
I don’t think that my work is really work to me in the sense of “a burden”, “just something to do for living”. I really love what I am doing.
Depending on the tasks I can really lose my self in my work – means you can stand next to me, talking; I wouldn’t even realize you are there.

When I finished high school – oh I can say it now: last century!
When I finished high school last century …… I wanted to become a journalist.
Really I wanted to spend my life writing.

I did some jobs for the local news paper, certainly the kind none of the other journalists wanted to do. It was fun, it was pleasure.

University: studying English and Communication science – blogging is communication too, and Media Design is all about communication.

Than one day I found myself on my way from the Ruhr-area to Berlin.

Still wanting to become a journalist.
And Berlin University – FU – offered journalism as a major.

Perfect and brilliant.

Not so brilliant: no more student’s loans.

I actually had to start working for my living.
Can you imagine?

WOW – but it was much easier those days to find a job, a part time job than it is now in 2011.

I worked for a Berlin news paper – unfortunately not as a journalist, but in the archive.
Was nice too, I had to communicate with the journalists.

And than one day, a friend told me about a job in a Translating office.
They used to translate these little manuals, you all have in your car. The ones that tell you, where you can find the heating for the window ……

……and I found myself layouting these manuals. Not only for cars, also for huge cranes.
Had to do them not in German, no I had to layout them in English, French, Italian, Swedish, Danish and even in Russia and Serbo-Croatian.

I know it sounds horrible – but it wasn’t. It was kind of flying blind. The only lights have been the German manuals. Although it has been some years since I did it, I still can recall the way the Dutch word for “Warning” looks like. The very font, the very bold letters.

My first steps in the wide field of Media-Design.

It was at times, when PageMaker was first released.
It was the time, when film setting business thought they are superior to the new establishing desk top publishing (DTP).
Film setting is dead, and we are all doing DTP.

It was pretty interesting at that time.
Really I loved it.
Not so much design as it is today, but to be so close at the changes of a whole field.
That was fantastic.

I also had had the pleasure working in an exposure company.
Such an exposure unit ( is not so much different from your laser printer.
It works with a laser too, has higher resolution – although today you can buy laser printers with the same resolution as the exposure units used to have last century, and the material used is film, kind of cellophane.

When taking it out of the unite, you had to launch it to a developer. Same process as in photography, but all done automatically.

Result: a film. That film was used in printing to create the printing plates.

First time that we had been able to create plate ready films.
No more gluing, no more cutting to create a page.

WYSIWYG ( was born.

I just realize I could go on talking and talking.

It was so interesting and it is still so interesting.

Industry has changed a lot.
Have a look at your desk. I bet most of you have a scanner on their desk too. Most scanners are compact unites today. They include scan unite + fax + printer.

At the time when I made first contact with the graphic industry, scanning was done by drum scanners. Some as big as a whole room.

Sometimes I get the idea, that my CV is not very linear.
One day I was really pondering about it.

Journalism, Computer to plate, News Paper Archive, Media Design, even Match Prints are on the agenda. And than I got the picture. I am able to do a whole news paper on my own. From writing to producing to selling – based on the terms of the WildWest and ancient printing presses.

So hail to Johann Gutenberg, I am your fan for life.

 

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