From Copy Machines to Computers
From paste-up boards to Illustrator, one designer's path through the industry's shift to digital, and what it teaches about navigating the AI transition happening now.
I graduated from Cal State Northridge in 1991. Almost everything I learned in my Graphic Design classes was done by hand. Paste-up, layout boards, manual production work. I had exactly one class where I got to use a Mac, working in Illustrator.
When I started interviewing for real jobs, nearly every interview opened with the same question. Do you know how to use a Mac?
I could say yes, technically. I'd had one class, over a year earlier. But I didn't feel confident saying it, and interviewers could tell. That hesitation cost me more than a few opportunities.
So I took a job at Kinko's, running a copy machine. That wasn't the goal. It was the way in. I wanted access to computers, and Kinko's had them. I worked my way from the copy counter into the Computer Services Department, learned the tools properly, and from there built the career that followed.
What sticks with me now isn't the copy machine or even the Mac. It's that I lived through an entire industry shifting from manual work to digital work, and I had to learn it in real time, without a roadmap, while everyone around me was also figuring it out.
We're in another one of those shifts right now. AI is already handling a lot of simple graphic design work. It's tempting to see that as a threat, and for some parts of the job, it probably is. But I've been through this transition before. The tools change. What doesn't change is the need for someone who understands the client, the industry, and what actually needs to be communicated. That part was never really about the software.