Western National Banks loved the results. And when I talked to Glesener, her agency was about to unleash another Mac-drawn ad—the machine’s “self-portrait”—for an Apple dealer.
“We have several clients in the computer business,” Glesener said, “and we thought we should be aware of computers.”
Of course you don’t start instantly doing first-class graphics work on Mac-like machines. Take the man drawing the Western ad. He had “no computer skills” in his background, and he toyed around with the Mac for some six hours or so before he did the numbers heads for the bank.
With the art stashed away on computer disks, though, the Heisley agency could more easily crank out different versions of the same drawing.
It’s like word processing. Once you’ve stored your material on your computer disk, you needn’t start over from step one.
Mac-like machines may also streamline ad agencies’ mock-up work. Through the marvels of graphics an art director can more easily figure out the best location for Brooke Shields’s derriere in a jeans layout.
In fact, the Heisley people said they had used Mac successfully on drafts of a sales brochure and an ad for the U.S. Amateur Hockey Association.
Even so, Don Pierce, the artist behind the bank ad, warns: “Inexpensive machines like the Mac can’t come up with drawings good enough for final ads without a deliberate computer effect. A line other than a forty-five-degree line can be pretty ragged because the machine makes them in steps.” And they lack a good-enough resolution to downplay the roughness.
Eventually, of course—through high-quality graphics made on laser printers—cheap machines may turn out slick ads that don’t scream, “A computer made me!”
Meanwhile, Mac-like computers will do fine for drafts and nonpublished work. Already, when hooked up right to some Compugraphic typesetting machinery, Mac’s sister computer Lisa II can turn out seamless charts for publication.