Why Publish?

Factsheet Five and its related booklet, Why Publish are significant now because that whole world of self-publishing on paper came to an end when the Macintosh computer came along. Well technically it was the beginning of the end - people switched to doing their artwork and layouts on the computer - "desktop publishing" - but then printed and distributed the results. It wasn't really until the Internet became available to most people - first via AOL (I had an AOL account in 1989) and then thanks to the Netscape browser in the mid-90s. The rest is history.

Sigh. My life is now part of antiquity. 

I did get a chuckle out of one of my illustrations for "Why Publish." Ah, the late 1980s.

I've been archived!

Out of idle curiosity I Googled "Factsheet Five" a magazine devoted to cataloging 'zines - self-published
printed periodicals of the 1980s. I had contributed art for several covers of Factsheet Five.        Well lo and behold one of my covers was on display in 2016 in the NY State Library, in its Factsheet Five collection. 

That's my work in the lower-left corner. It's a student in math class getting a detention slip for reading an issue of Factsheet Five behind her algebra book.

This particular layout is meant to display how the Factsheet Five art changed over the years. My art uses the spot color printing technique - and I had to do the spot color separations myself. Hey, at least my one year spent at the Philadelphia Printing School was good for something.

Then they went into 4-color printing process work but I had moved on by then, having gotten my very own Macintosh computer in 1988.

Another one of my covers was apparently chosen for the "Factsheet Five Archive Project." Presumably because they like the logo I created for the t-shirt. I couldn't help but leave a comment.

Damn they also made it their banner art on Twitter.

AND some Factsheet Five issues are at archive.org.

And here's issue #34 at the Poopsheet Foundation site - it actually mentions my name, for a change.

I'm pretty sure I did a third cover, which was an allusion to the Pandora myth. I haven't seen it online - I think that was probably my best cover too. I'll have to look around in my paper-based archives and see if I can find it.

I actually did previously mention my connection to FF on this blog back in 2008.