Tonight We're Gonna Print Signs Like It's 1984

Well, episode 8 is going swimmingly, with our iTunes feature and some great feedback from our YouTube fans. Time to talk about some of the work that went into the show. Robb's already been posting some wicked cool music from this episode, so today I am going to show you some classic Neo Amish literature and signage.

First of all, do you remember this?



If you do, you should enjoy today's tale. Print Shop (no one ever called it THE Print Shop) was a revelation in the early age of personal computers, especially for a type-loving kid like me. I could make signs and banners and greeting cards on the Apple IIe! No more messing around with hand-drawn stuff! (That's not really true in my case... I still made hand-drawn posters, but I won't get into all that here.)

Print Shop's output would, today, be laughable,with it's extremely low resolution and reliance on dot matrix printers. But it was a great program at the time. I loved it. So of course, since the Neo Amish could use no technology created after 1984, I wanted to make sure their flyer and bake sale signs looked like they were printed with Print Shop (or something similar) on a dot matrix printer whose ribbon was very well worn.

Creating retro computer printouts is rather hard. First of all, the font could not be all laser-printy smooth, but had to be pixelated. To do that in Photoshop meant creating a bitmap document, 11" x 8.5" at 72dpi. In this mode, it's just like working in an old graphics program. Type would not be re-editable once I'd laid it down. It was draggable once after being created, so I could do some rudimentary layout. Moving it afterward meant cutting out the text using a marquee or lasso tool and dragging it along with its white background. Does this all sound familiar?

Though I did not have the Print Shop font, I chose fonts that looked like they might have come bundled with Print Shop: Times and Galleria. Amelia BT was used in the Neo Amish logo, which Robb designed. (He did not realize he got the N backwards until much later. I hand't brought it because I thought he'd done it on purpose. It was perfect that way!)

After the layout was done, I spent a few hours in the Hall of Trial and Error. Here, I was trying to get a dot matrix look, including some pixels, ink smear, and the stripes where the ribbon was wearing out. I applied three different layers to get something that would hopefully pass muster on screen. Here's an enlarged detail, best showing the smear. Click the image to see it full-size.



Here, then, is the entire Neo Amish flyer, fresh from the Image Writer! Click on the pics to see them full size. (1984's full size is not as terrifyingly huge as today's full size.)

The front:



The back:



I didn't spend as much time writing this flyer as I had the ABSRD flyer for episode 7, but I can assure you that all typos were created on purpose. I was very happy to bring back the original, full term "douche bag," progenitor of today's popular "douche."

The flyers we used in the show had the NA logo taped into place, like it was just easier to paste the logo onto the flyer and Xerox the whole thing. But we did use the pixelated logo for the bake sale signs. Mostly out of laziness.

Ah, yes! The bake sale! Here's where the dot matrix printer ribbon mess could really shine. Most signs had both a Times and a Galleria version. Here's a sample. Again, click them to see them full size.











So there you have it! Can you just feel the authenticity? I'm sure someone from one of those font archaeology sites would have many nits to pick. If so, leave a comment. I love font archeology sites. I'd put a link here so you could visit one, but I seem to have lost them all...

Thanks for reading, and be sure to watch the exciting conclusion to episode 8 next Monday!

What a Bunch of Turkey!

I have been waxing long-winded about stuff here lately, so here's a nice fluffy post that will mean nothing to the future of humanity, as did the others.

I got an e-mail from a friend who obviously does not subscribe to our large, easy-to-see iTunes podcast. He was asking me, "Hey, what does Guy's shirt say in the Thanksgiving short?"

On the off chance you have the same question because, like my friend, you obviously do not subscribe to our generously-sized, clear-as-a-crisp-New-England-winter-day iTunes podcast, here it is, in all its easy-to-see glory (click to see it even bigger):



Ah! Turkey! On board! I see! On board! A turkey!

Glad to clear that up.

We have a long and illustrious history of making custom shirts for Guy to wear. "Daddy's Boy" for episode 5. "This is My Best Shirt" for episode 6. See? Long and oh, so illustrious! When it came time to do a Thanksgiving short, we knew Guy had to wear something Thanksgivingy, and the chances of just finding something ready-to-wear were slim. Especially in September, when we actually shot the thing. Not much turkey going on in September.

I came up with two T-shirt phrases, probably just one morning in the shower. Or maybe while making graham crackers and apple butter. Though, come to think of it, I have not made graham crackers and apple butter in a few years, and I have showered recently, so it was probably more likely the former.

Two choices. Yes. The first was what you see above, and the second was "I'm with Turkey," also having the same arrow pointing to the stomachal area. (There's a veiled reference to episode 8 in that last sentence. Bookmark this page and come back in January to see what it is!)

We chose "Turkey On Board" because we had to choose something. We had trouble deciding, really. "Turkey On Board" is silly, ridiculous, and conjures a pretty amusing though unoffensive image. "I'm with Turkey" is a triple-fronted assault, referencing the famous "I'm with Stupid" shirts, pointing at a stomach full of Thanksgiving turkey, and, most disturbingly, suggesting that Guy is pregnant with a turkey baby.

It is perhaps that last item that made us go with the easier-to-digest (ba-dump BUMP!) "Turkey On Board."

Just so we can have some fun, I have re-designed the graphic, and we can now see what it would have actually been like had we chosen the other phrase. Enjoy!

Graphical Fakery

If I write this quickly, I can still make my Monday posting deadline! I should be in bed, but blogs come first.

Now that you've seen the final part of Episode 7 (hopefully several times so our YouTube count can go sky high), I can reveal the following graphical items. Since Robb only has two hands, I took on some of the designing duties for numero 7. Here, then, are my contributions.

You can click on any of the pics below to see them larger.

If I were to go chronologically—and I am going to go chronologically—the first graphic up would be the batteries. Yes, believe it or not, those batteries had fake labels! You never know when something's going to get a decent close-up, so you just have to design things as if they will.

The "copper top" color on this label looks way off, but that's 'cause I had to adjust it for printing. I never can get the hang of color calibration.



Then came those obnoxious customers on their Bluetooth headsets. We wanted to put a capper on their obnoxiousness, so we came up with the credit card idea. Ah, but which credit card should it be? Why, the American Express Black card, a card so exclusive, no one even knows if they really, truly exist! Well, that's not true. They do exist. But I'll never see one in person, that's for sure.

To be sure the card was not 100% AMEX, I decided to reverse the letters, in keeping with the palindrome/reversal theme of the episode. Since we never heard the name of the obnoxious customers, I was free to name him anything I wanted. Oh, and make him a lot, lot older than he actually was.





Next up, the ABSRD flyer. The goal with this was to make it look like Jennifer had whipped it up herself in a few minutes. I took the party invite Corrie had done herself for Episode 1 and tried to simulate her handwriting. As it is, I think it looks like a guy trying to get his writing to look like a girl's writing.





The hardest thing to do on the flyer, aside from making the panels fit properly between the folds, was the drawing of the little dog chasing the Frisbee into the grain thresher. My drawing skills have atrophied over the years, so this took some warming up to get it right. I wanted the thresher to be evil-looking, like no living being could survive a run-in with the thing. Then there was the doggie. Was this really Stumbles, or did Jennifer draw a different dog because the memories were still too painful?



Now we come to final and most exciting item on this graphical tour!



I know. Right. That took me, like, three minutes. But even this hat design has a back story. See, I figured that Guy, after buying everything else for his boot camp, realized that he needed a hat. So he dashed into a mall to one of those make-your-own-hat kiosks. Sadly, in his hurried state, he could not remember how to spell "sergeant." Of course, the poor girl getting paid $2.36 an hour couldn't spell it, either, so this was the result.

And lookie there! Just under the wire! My post is on time!, Well, I hope you enjoyed Episode 7. See you real soon!