Always going back to the drawing board

With regard to Ms Kirkpatrick’s piece (DW 16 February) readers may be interested to know the following.

We have been a graphic design company for over 35 years. We have modern technology (Macs and so on) but still have drawing boards, layout pads, and markers and, as far as we are concerned, computers are just another artist’s tool to be learned and used to the full.

Design comes from the human brain, especially one that has had good basic training, including typography. The number of times we see poor character spacing, with the excuse “that is how it has come off the computer” is phenomenal.

We have a rule in my company that no design is done on computer. It has to come from the head, via a pen, on to a layout pad, and only then can it be fine-tuned on computer. As for marker visuals, computer-generated visuals are too good and lose that creative effect (unless you are trying to produce a design that can only be computer designed), which is still liked and understood by many clients. Also, clients don’t start nit-picking marker visuals for accuracy when you are trying to put over a design concept.

Roger Rolfe (DW 8 March) may be interested to know that we recently had two positions open and we certainly did request “traditional skills – Mac experience an advantage”. We had over 60 replies and very few came from a Sixties art college.

John Temple

Managing director

Douglas Temple design

Bournemouth

Dorset BH5 1ET