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Looking at these old BYTE magazines makes me think that magazines these days simply look much better. Graphics design has has simply gotten better. Not sure if
by galaxyLogic 7y ago
Looking at these old BYTE magazines makes me think that magazines these days simply look much better. Graphics design has has simply gotten better. Not sure if this is just my subjective opinion but somehow I believe there must be some truth to that.
- pault 7y agoGraphic design was done by hand in those days. They literally cut and pasted images and text for the pages. My parents were both graphic designers and I watched them do this as a child before computers took over the industry. You can imagine how digital publishing tools made this process easier to iterate on.
- vidarh 7y agoCase in point, Letraset sheets was a big thing for decades: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letraset https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letraset
- NikkiA 7y agoDTP was a major revolution, even if it's rarely called DTP these days.
- munificent 7y agoThey don't call it desktop publishing anymore because all publishing is digital. It would be like if we still referred to cars as "horseless carriages".
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- JasonFruit 7y agoWhich I would, by the way, totally love to do. It's kind of like the fad among some early- to mid-20th Century writers of using only words of Germanic derivation. I love quirky, old-fashioned language.
- ddingus 7y agoThey do look better, but I must say BYTE and friends packed one hell of a punch. I've almost zero interest in magazines today, but I would still subscribe to BYTE, COMPUTE and a couple others, given their editorial focus was similar to what made them great then.
- pmarin 7y agoThe first year of BYTE is amazing but over time in all of those computer magazines there is a shift from hobbyists and doers to just consumers.
- ddingus 7y agoThat is why I wrote, "what made them great", and that was true of BYTE for more than a year. Adding consumer material did not displace enough great material for a while.
- tomcam 7y agoYou’re absolutely right, although I believe the information density in today’s magazines is quite a bit lower.
- Arcanum-XIII 7y agoWhat amaze me the most is that half of it is ad. Those and the content seem to have a very similar production value, which did muddle the reading a bit... I don’t miss this.
- chadcmulligan 7y agoI used to buy it half for the adds - this was one of the few places you could find that stuff. Edit: Actually, I remember buying the digital logic books on page 144, probably not from this issue.
- BeetleB 7y agoThis should be a reminder to everyone that regardless of how annoying ads are, they did serve a very useful purpose!
- tjoff 7y agoAds of today are much more invasive. And even the articles themselves today are often ads in disguise or direct copies of press releases. Haven't read a computer magazine in at least a decade, but this I would read.
- aj7 7y agoThe laser magazines, Laser Focus World, and Photonics Spectra, were historically and are today plagued by the “ads in disguise” problem. They have gotten a little better.
- blackhaz 7y agoHoly cow, I like this old BYTE more. Like Computer Chronicles. I like how direct and no-bullshit the layout and all the graphics are. Ads are creative and fun, and the content is rich in ideas. Modern magazines often lack substance and soul, including graphics design. What modern computing magazine can compare, is there a single example? Looking at this BYTE mag pretty much confirms to me the old adage that the Earth's population is increasing but the IQ levels are staying the same.
- aj7 7y agoYou are right. Think about publishing that thing in one month, rinse, and repeat. No time for bs, cutesiness.
- JasonFruit 7y agoOn page 158 of the linked issue, it points out that they just started using digital typesetting. (I totally disagree with you, by the way; I like my content front and center, and my design well to the rear, which I think BYTE does very well indeed.)