When Apple Computers spent its entire 1984
advertising budget for that year, Ridley Scott
directed the momentus event...

Desktop publishing had arrived.

For designers and art directors the impact was
phenomenal - everyone now had to embrace
this future or, as in way of the dinosaur - die out.

In a very short period of time our traditional
typsetting technology was jettisoned, systems
costing up to half a million pounds were replaced
by a b/w nine inch screen and the Graphic User
interface - thanks to Steve Jobs and
Steve Wozniak at Apple.

It seemed anyone and everyone could set up
and call themselves a designer, a typsetter
or a publisher.

It was of course, to come at a price.
 

Clients soon noticed a swift deterioration in
typographic standards. Designers without
the traditional skills of the typsetting industry
became sloppy with line breaks, word spacing,
character tracking and kerning being the first
casualties. All the disciplines of our traditional
typsetting industry were gone for those with
a computer.

At Phil Thomas Associates the traditional skills
of the typesetting industry have been retained
and integrated with the new and emerging
publishing technologies.

Our art director John Goodinson has a
background history of working with traditional
typsetting systems. From Citex, Dainippon
and Crossfields, to Apple and Adobe.

We have an inherited discipline that is now
applied to our new technologies.