Reflection on using technologies

I am a representor of a generation that was born without the Internet, digital technologies, not saying about AI and GPT chat. Now I am an artist, designer and teacher that started learning in ordinary school with in-depth study of English in Kiev where an art teacher noticed my drawing ability and suggested to enter to a State Art High School. Passing exams, I studied to draw and paint with different techniques like watercolor, oil, pastel, crayon and others. We drew and painted with our hands on canvas and paper, we felt the smell of oil and texture of watercolor paper and were ready to live with our art. However, everything is finished, and our artistic school years passed.

The next step that time like today was to graduate a university. Having the high level at State Art High School, I chose one of the most famous universities in the USSR among only two in the whole country. It was Moscow State University of Printing Arts. That days it was common to read, produce, and illustrate books, and the university prepared the specialists in this sphere. At university we did etching, lithography, linocut, and wood carving. We felt a smell of painting colors, touched wood and metal, used publishing equipment. That time artists who worked in publishing production or cartoon sphere designed everything on paper using paintbrushes and colors. It took time, but for people who fell in love with art the process was exiting.

 

However, the 90-ties turned over not only political system, but also the approach to work because computers started embedding in our life, and it meant that the learning process was in the very beginning. It was obvious that computer programs were able to make our work faster and easier. The programs that I needed that time and now were Graphic ones like Adobe Photoshop firstly in raster graphic, we used Corel Draw for vector graphic and lay out because Adobe InDesign was not invented yet, and we did not know about Adobe Illustrator or, maybe, it also did not exist that time. That is why we used Photoshop and Corel Draw. Thanks to inventors of Photoshop because it changed our life dramatically. It gave opportunities to correct and change the mistakes on pictures fast and easy. The basic computers that we had that time were so weak that we repeated one operation several times waiting the saving that was giving us opportunities to remember the steps in the program and keyboard well because all of us were totally less than beginners. That time I had a copybook named ‘the copybook for fools’ where I wrote down the order of every step that I had to do to achieve the exact result. 

 

Time went on, computers became better and faster, new programs and new apps appeared almost every year, then every month. I understood that learning is long life process because at the time when you have learned how to use a new version, the newest one is developed. Corel Draw made a lot of mistakes, QuarkXPress came after it that was more reliable, but like Corel did not relate with Adobe. The finishing touch for today was development Adobe package that includes raster, vector and lay out abilities which have excellent mature understanding, Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign. For now, we do not have one program with the all functions, but we have AI that makes the work of publishing designers easier because even in digital process we have a lot of routine yet.

I have made a hundreds of books for tourists, ministers, UN programs, for kids on national and world level using digital programs and computers. Without computer and technologies the number of my publications would be much fewer.