State College was where I had spent the last four years in school at Penn State University, first as a student of architecture and then as an art student.
Now graduated, friends and college classmates were showing me a wonderful time when the conversation turned to what I had planned to do now, and then a good friend told me about the job that had just opened at wpsx-tv (an affiliate of PBS), a public television station where I had interned while attending Penn State. The next day, I stayed over to interview for the job, and shortly afterwards I was offered the job as a designer. Perfect, I could stay in State College, be with all my friends, I wouldn’t have to go back to New Jersey, and I was going to get paid. What could be better?
Over the next two years in the design department at wpsx-tv, my work included on air promotions, set design, and various support and printed materials. The following pages are some examples of the on air promotional slides I did during those years.
In the early years of public television, small stations, because of financial constraints, would promote up coming shows with a single 35mm graphic image and an audio voice over telling the times the show would air, as in “Masterpiece Theatre, Upstairs Downstairs,"and "Sunday night at 8 o’clock.”
In the time before computer graphic programs, the artwork for each on air promotion was done by hand using photostats, color films, press on and hot press type,and photographic methods, to produce 35mm slides that would air for approximately 30 seconds.
Like the test pattern cover, this first job as a designer was a test for me: I was in control of the vertical and the horizontal on my TV set of life, and it was the beginning of a 40 year career in design. For me, this book is a walk down memory lane and a small way to document two additional wonderful years of good times at Penn State.