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GRAPHIC DESIGN HISTORY
The poetry of forgotten design tools
A trip down memory lane, and a test of chatGPT
I had a seven-year run as a print graphic designer starting in the late 1990s, in the adolescence of “desktop publishing,” following three semesters of coursework in graphic design.
When I started, I knew how to cut Rubylith to create color separations. I inhaled enough rubber cement fumes to kill off hundreds of thousands of brain cells. I still have the scar to show for the six stitches in my index finger courtesy of looking up while using an X-acto knife.
My museum of graphic supplies
Cleaning out storage boxes, I discovered some of the detritus of that era. Before discarding them, I decided to do an experiment: write haikus about these archeological artifacts from before the digital age, and then ask ChatGPT to do the same.
At the risk of embarrassment, I put my haikus head to head with ChatGPT and then rated each on factual accuracy, poetic rhythm, and “human-ness”: Does it sound like it’s written by a human being with lived experience, or is it lexically correct but lifeless?*
*Obviously this is my subjective scoring.
