adam savage here in my cave with a tool tip that goes back to the origin of the origin of my gear
obsession yeah i mean with any discipline there are some people that are into the discipline
because of the philosophy and some people that are into the discipline because of the gear
and most of us are into it because of a combination of the two things um
but the very first time i was doing work that required specialized gear
was when i was a young budding graphic designer in new york in the mid-80s
and back then we weren't using any computers to do graphic design it was all by hand
and that meant that i mean to do a piece of graphic design you'd literally
you would lay out your printing master by hand on a piece of mat board and you'd add your crop
marks and your process information you'd use blue for diagramming out where stuff went because it
doesn't reprint you'd use red for doing ruby lift masking um it was very labor-intensive graphic
design was before computers and you needed some specialized gear you could do it without it but
it made it easier if you had some specialized care the very first piece of gear i bought were
scheduler rulers which were expensive they were like 30 30 some odd dollars for a pair of these
rollers this isn't the tool tip today um but i remember like in the ad copy for the rulers it
was like these are traceable to ansi standards and like the word traceable is the first time
i'd come across the idea of something that was i mean these rulers were printed on a stable
plastic that didn't expand and contract more than you know two ten thousandths of an inch etc
but no the specialized piece of gear that i want to cover today is the first piece
of graphic design equipment i fell in love with and it is this it is the clear triangle
but it's not just any clear triangle and anybody who does any kind of making or layout should have
some of these in your collection you should have some rulers and some various sizes
of triangles because they're super useful um but this one specifically made by see through
c through this was a game changer for me because of several things one it has these beautiful grids
printed on it highly accurately uh in tenths of an inch and because of the grid you can draw a line
and then you could draw another mark uh say let's say far away from the line and you could go up to
it and you can make sure because of the grid and the line you can see below it that you're really
within a tiny amount perfectly parallel and then you can make a cut and know that that cut
is perfectly parallel to your first line so that right there is huge and remember don't ever try
and cut through everything on the first try yep um that right there is worth the price of admission
and there are knock-offs for these see-through rulers um i'm not going to name them right now
because i just love these guys and i want them to get the purchases from this tool tip um
the see-through rulers the see-through system has one extra aspect that makes it like 50
times as good and that is along one edge they've embedded a little bit of metal a little bit of
stainless steel and that means that i can make cuts and i am not going to cut into the ruler
and anybody who has made extensive cuts using x-acto blades and rollers
you've discovered that it's pretty easy to cut into your ruler and when you're using
it professionally you can't have a a divot in your professional equipment when you're going
out and doing graphic design for other people on their clock so that metal edge is humongous it's
yeah i was so ecstatic when i saw it when i realized that someone was like making this tool
to supply it for the things i needed it for yeah that's it see-through ruler man
see-through triangle uh get yourself one or two of these it is a it is a great look i mean
you can't spend too much time learning about and executing some graphic design
the practice of doing it is a really important practice and everything else
that i've done since i since i was doing graphics being a little bit of a font nerd
being a designer graphic design is a fantastic discipline uh
to just wrap your head around the better you are at it the the the better you're able i think to
tackle other aesthetic challenges i think the idea of like trying to lay out a design on a piece of
paper and looking at the formal aspects of it the informational aspects how does it communicate how
quickly how easily where does my eye go all of those are really awesome questions and i
i i really like talking about my days as a graphic designer because that knowledge uh has
been one of the things that i've carried with me and it's it's come it's become useful in so many
countless ways since then um and it all started with things like the see-through ruler all right
thank you guys for joining me for this quick and dirty tool tip and uh i will see you next time