Jim Parker

When I started as a writer, content creators wore one hat or another: writer, designer, graphic artist, editor.

 

Then I got a personal computer. And nothing changed. 

 

Oh, some things changed: I'd lose the thread of an idea behind a wall of impenetrable code and nonintuitive keyboard commands. Or I'd lose a file altogether because I couldn't remember its 8-character file name. (Yeah, I've been at this that long.)


Then I got a Mac and things started to change. Words and graphics snuggled up next to each other, wherever I thought they'd be happiest and might contribute most to the meaning I wanted to create. 

 

That's when I realized I'd grown beyond being an either/or writer-editor and had morphed into a both/and writer-designer. And that was just the beginning, years before multimedia and the web emerged from the cocoon of page layout and print graphics to change the world.

 

Which basically brings us to where we are now: Contemplating the future by considering the recent past. My recent past, at least. And, maybe, our mutual future.

 

Let me know what you think. And where you might want to go from here. 

 

Chances are we'll be going in the same direction, anyway.