affinity designer MEAT BOIST

[Dazmondo77]

Years ago, around 1997 I used to work for a repro company based in Nottingham as a graphic designer, illustrator, photo retoucher, drum scanner operator and loads of other stuff. Occasionally we used to output all the film separations and run match print proofs for the Serif Page Plus box artwork, as Serif where apparently based just around the corner from us (I never found out exactly where. we where on St Peters street in the Radford area) one of the Serif team would drop round a floppy disc with a PRN file??? - we where Mac based although we did have an artwork PC which prob got switched on twice a year, but Serif would always pop a floppy with a PRN file over to us and one of the repro guys would run it straight to the Hyphen image setter, to film and then make Matchprint proofs - I remember one time when we where a bit under staffed, I was on match prints and making Page Plus box proofs - I had a PC at home and did have page plus which compared to QuarkXpress 3.1 which was the industry standard at the time, was really deep whereas quark was very bare bones and super expensive but rock solid - One time my boss wheeled in the artwork PC and said "got a little job for you" and explained that the folk at Serif where thinking of doing a vector artwork package similar to Xara which he handed me to install on the PC - Serif wanted to know what we thought of it - once I had a play around I thought it was brilliant, and the first thing I asked my boss was if they would do a version for the mac, which he said that he asked the same question and they said they had no immediate plans but there may be a possibility in the future, I said they'd make a killing as at the time, we where using Macromedia Freehand 7 for all vector artwork which didn't do a few things that xara did - anyway I went out and bought xara a few days later and the first thing I had a crack at was this MEAT BOIST t-shirt design and shortly after I moved over my home setup to the Mac and have never found a way to open the few xara files I'd worked on - tried again today to find a way, and gave up so thought I'd have a go at re-creating a similar design Designer (see attached all vector)

One of the first things I did when I found out that Adobe where moving over to the subscription model, was email Serif saying they'd make a killing if they would port the Plus suite over to mac, they did reply with thanks for your interest... we have no plans to port over to the mac - I was left with nowhere to turn but use old Adobe stuff until - DESIGNER - what a set of fibbers, they must have been working on designer at the time!   

[Patrick Connor]

What a great example. Thanks particularly for the outline view. Despite the Publisher screenshot I have tagged it with Designer, I hope you feel that's OK

 

16 hours ago, Dazmondo77 said:

. we have no plans to port over to the mac - I was left with nowhere to turn but use old Adobe stuff until - DESIGNER - what a set of fibbers, they must have been working on designer at the time!  

Until we launched the Affinity Designer public beta, this project 2-3 years in the making was very hush hush. Fibbers is probably fair other than the fact that this is not a "port to the Mac" and Affinity shares little to no code with the legacy Plus range.

[Dazmondo77]

So glad it all worked out Patrick as studio link is next level, as 95% of the time I only need Publisher as it covers most things, it's only really export persona really that I occasionally miss.

Just out of curiosity whereabouts was the previous Serif HQ - I remember one of my colleagues, Bob mentioning Bobbers Mill? I'm guessing this was way before your time?

[Patrick Connor]

28 minutes ago, Dazmondo77 said:

Just out of curiosity whereabouts was the previous Serif HQ...

I understand that the company started in a porta-cabin as a spin off of a project at the Computer Science department at Nottingham University, and in my 20 years I have heard this story of what happened next but to be honest do not remember the details and will try to find out.

[Dazmondo77]

On 10/30/2019 at 1:49 PM, Patrick Connor said:

I understand that the company started in a porta-cabin as a spin off of a project at the Computer Science department at Nottingham University, and in my 20 years I have heard this story of what happened next but to be honest do not remember the details and will try to find out.

I was just thinkingt about this today, as I was just reminiscing my first job at Commercial Resources International (if that rigs a bell?) CRI on st Peters Street in Nottingham, and I'm sure I remember my boss mentioning Bobbers Mill being were Serif where based in the mid to late 90's, which is just five minutes walk from where we were based - I can't find any information which confirms this but was it one of these buildings?

[Patrick Connor]

51 minutes ago, Dazmondo77 said:

I can't find any information which confirms this but was it one of these buildings?

I have heard that too, but before my time.

This google search my 5th result down (ymmv) gives this result (don't bother downloading it) from Nottingham City Council that says the address was indeed right next to Bobbers Mill. 

Suite 1, Adco Business Park, Plantation side NG7 5NR. Seems to be all new build round there now  

[Dazmondo77]

Thank's Patrick - I remember hearing it was around Bobbers Mill - as I'm sure I remember Bob (head Mac operator) always shouting out if there was anything to drop off at Serif, when off on the Friday morning beacon cob run,  at a cob shop round the corner at Bobbers Mill.

Thats put my mind at rest 👍