The Charrette Catalogs

Comments

• Mary Lou Supple 1 year ago

  I started at Charrette in Porter Square, Cambridge in 1977, just before the move to Woburn, and worked designing, art-directing, copywriting, etc., Charrette full-line catalogs from then through 1992. I probably have press sheets showing many of the covers (unless I've been better at de-cluttering than I think I have). I can take a look if anyone is really interested. I believe we produced them every 12- 18 months. A lot of people in the company put in a lot of hours building those books. When we made the frighteningly big change from typesetting to designing them on the Mac (little, tiny screens) in 1987, we were just stunned at the amount of data that had to be converted. I remember we printed out a report on one of the later catalogs showing the book was composed of well over a million or two keystrokes, 2500 photos, and more than 20,000 item numbers. We saw the reality of the "paperless" office as printers spewed thousands of pages to be proofed by almost every department in the company – no less than 5 full iterations, and hundreds of "last minute edits." The true magic of the process was that by the time the trailors full of cartoned books pulled up, item numbers had changed; prices had increased; products had been discontinued; manufacturers had changed specifications, and –insult to injury – a giant looseleaf would have been produced, entitled, "CATALOG ERRORS". Good times . . .

  • reply
  • Report