I recently celebrated my 12th anniversary at Columbia Metropolitan Magazine and went to lunch at Mr. Friendly’s with the rest of our staff to celebrate. While we dined and enjoyed the first hint of cooler weather, we reminisced about the growth of our magazine since its inception and of the publishing industry in general.
Prior to the technology boom in the 80s, publishing was a very “hands on” discipline. Graphic designers spent countless hours cutting and pasting (literally), and more manpower was required for typesetting and color separations. That level of labor intensiveness and tedium, which is largely absent from present-day publishing, makes it difficult to fathom how any publishers ever completed an issue on time before the advent of computers.
Columbia Metropolitan took flight at about the same time as the Internet. The first issue of the magazine was designed on an Apple SE, which was cutting edge technology at the time. The screen was about six inches across, and the publishing program was a very basic PageMaker. In 1995, when I began at the magazine, Columbia Metropolitan had been up and running for five years, and it was a steady quarterly publication. I remember many late nights spent rushing to get an issue out the door and to the printer by deadline. In those days, scanners were enormous and expensive – no one owned a personal scanner, and all of our photos had to be sent to the printer to be scanned. Companies sent ads to us by snail mail, and when they arrived, a film house had already separated the ad into four-color film.
Today, the programs we use are much more advanced. Everything is digital — from the photography to the prepress work. We rarely have to leave our desks to lay out the pages of an issue. We talk to each other and swap ideas through electronic messaging. We work with people every day who we only know by their email addresses. We have the same number of people on staff but are publishing almost triple the number of issues per year. The advancement of technology has simplified much of our process, enabling us to be more productive.
Not only has Columbia Metropolitan Magazine grown, but our city also has grown, and the world seems to have shrunk. Computers and networking have increased our productivity by allowing easier access to resources we need. When I stop and think about it, I find the pace of these changes staggering and almost overwhelming.
I hope that as technology continues to evolve, this magazine will continue to improve and remain a relevant, important part of life in Columbia. Who knows … perhaps one day you may sit down with a cup of coffee, open your issue of Columbia Metropolitan (or your laptop, iPhone, etc.) and each story will include live action jumping off the page.
While I can’t promise you that this time around, I hope you enjoy this issue.
Sincerely,
Emily Tinch
Editor
This Issue