Yes, an example of typographic newsgroup humor at its finest. This circa 1982 tidbit is but one part of Mark Pilgrim’s off-the-cuff, and remarkably thorough History of the Tilde. Well, a history compiled through a rather geeky perspective that is. Enjoy, regardless.

In an email to S. Coles, I mentioned a time, long ago, when I was working for a small university newspaper. I spent several hours in the pre-dawn of an April morning keylining a newspaper page.

This was during the final pullout of U.S. personnel from Vietnam. We had taken the famous image and blown the shot to full page size, then ghosted it back. We then spent literal hours slicing and sliding each line of type to wrap around the art.

The type came in sheets of clay-backed paper from an IBM selectric typesetter and we used X-actos and wax on hand-made light boxes. I’m sure we were also imbiding a lot of liquids from bright green cans.

These days, the same thing would be done in Quark with a few keystrokes.

Do you spend an inordinate amount of time creating a graphic effect just because you knew it would look cool? Is it something that could be done easily today? And does it matter?

So it’s Friday, I’m kind of bored, I turn to the internet for some easy amusement and I find this. If you have seen it before I apologize for bringing it to your attention again. I never thought brackets and pound signs could use the force so well.

Some people just need to get a life.