Waxing Nostalgic Over Paste-Up

I saw today that Creative Pro had a new article: Heavy Metal Madness: Waxing Nostalgic Over Paste-Up. The article is referencing a story that the San Francisco Chronicle recently completed paste-up of its last page, converting to a CTP (computer-to-plate) system.

I really came into the publishing world towards the end of the paste-up era when I started working at the ARRL in 1994. Computers and desktop publishing largely took over at that point but the result was outputted on photographic paper to be pasted-up on boards to be sent to the printer.

As I read the article, I clearly remembered how messy everything got when using the waxer, how high I got form the Bestine, and snapping the blades off of the Olfa knife (we used the cheapest one at the top of Figure 12). My production and graphics department coworkers remembered similar things.