Yellowfıelds*

Analogue

I was educated and trained in analogue techniques; film positives, colour separated films, rub-down transfers and tapes, technical pens, lettering stencils, phototypesetting, scribing, etc. All the visualisation was in your head and in your hand-drawn concept designs. You had to know how the separated artwork would come together. It really was a more complicated time in terms of map-making. The digital world makes it easy, all too easy these days. The biggest issue of which is the ease at which you can create a map but be totally ignorant in how it may be reproduced.

Pen and Paper

Every project started with pen and paper, and for me, it still does today. It’s far too easy to start in software, which ends up taking you down that same old well-trodden path. I don’t believe you can improve upon pen (or pencil) and paper as a form of visual thinking. Okay, a stylus and digital tablet replicates that act, but still feels the lesser choice due to the physical disconnect in mark-making that is there for the most part. Visual thinking pervades human activity, from the abstract and theoretical to the everyday. Drawing is closely associated and linked with visual thinking. It’s that interactive aspect between, seeing, imagining and drawing that feels so important, yet largely missing today.

The Drawing Board

Working on a drawing board used to focus the mind. When you place yourself in a task-orientated situation, it allows you to freely design and draw, from ideation and conception through to a finished map. I enjoyed working at a drawing board, and miss it. Metaphorically, it has been replaced by the ‘artboard’ or ‘pasteboard’ in software, but the immediacy and connection is not really there. Similarly, popular online whiteboard tools really don’t work the same; lots of scrolling and zooming in and out, losing your sense of location and the wider picture. An drawing board, or even studio wall, enables you to see the greater picture as well as the details. A human scale enables you to see patterns, make connections, create ideas, and find solutions. Sometimes the old ways simply [still] work better.

Books and Reading

The longer I have been working digitally, the less I read! I'm sure there is a connection. The shorter timescales, the need to develop quickly, all take away time that could be spent researching and understanding the problem and potential solution(s). I still have a small library of books, and it feels both novel and luxurious to sit and read  —  not skim  —  and research your subject. Like drawing, it feels like a human action that ensures you really do learn and understand. The way we outsource learning tasks, firstly to search engines, and now to AI, does nothing but dumb down our capabilities.

Digital

My first introduction to the digital world was whilst at college, in the late-80s, with the early Macintosh Plus(?) computer. No more green mono-spaced letters on a black screen, we now had a WYSIWYG screen, keyboard, mouse and LaserWriter printer. Cutting edge! Prior to this, you generally coded in BASIC, or similar, visualising the output in your head or continuously testing by running the routine(s). Not that I remember any of it now! In terms of print, understanding and writing a little PostScript was also normal, especially when print houses started moving away from colour-separated films to ‘direct-to-plate’ workflows. These were the early days of desktop publishing (DTP). We used to feel so advanced!

New Possibilities

My first job after college was still traditional, analogue artworking. However, by around 1990 I was introduced to my first Windows 3.1 PC, running CorelDRAW and QuarkXPress! Since then, other software that I have worked with included Macromedia Freehand and Aldus PageMaker, both no longer in existence and acquired by Adobe. And for the last 20 years, working with Adobe Illustrator, PageMaker, InDesign, Photoshop and Acrobat, along with moving from PC to Mac.

Endless Options

Today, technology affords up countless possibilities, perhaps too many? There seems to be nothing that we cannot create and reproduce, though we remain somewhat ignorant about how this is all happening behind the screen. You no longer need to be qualified and trained to create these days. The upside is a release of creativity, but that is also matched by an increase in junk; bad maps and bad design. There are a lot of ‘solutions’ looking for problems; no focus and design for design’s sake. The truth is, and experience bears this out, there is always an equivalent downside as there is an upside to all technological advance.

Shortening Deadlines

Probably the worst aspect of the digital revolution, is the shortening of design deadlines. Apparently, this is a sign of productivity? I would have thought doing the right job at the right time is a good measure of that, not trying to bash out another ill-conceived idea as quick as possible, and flooding the information landscape with yet more garbage.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

To be honest, I have little experience of this as yet (may 2026). Quite simply, I have seen little need for it. The only ‘AI’ feature I have used so far is the turntable tool in Adobe Illustrator ;-). I will explore further in due course, though do have reservations about the whole application and adoption of AI… and its consequences.