Tim Carrier

ASAP

The Association of Student and Administrative Publications, also known as ASAP Media Services, is an organization of students developing digital publications and presentations under the guidance of administrators. The program encourages students to research, explore, develop and participate in real projects designed and produced for clients. Projects are learning experiences applied to in-context products for the academic and local communities. This most recited phrase from the founder Mike Scott became the program's unofficial mission statement: the dissemination of information designed by students for the community. That was the goal: to use technology to communicate information.

I was part of this group during the 1990's where we learned the then-innovative programs such Adobe Illustrator version 88 (greys were designed by screen patterns), pre-layer palette Adobe Photoshop, Macromedia Director (when it was its own company before purchased by Adobe) and its magical Lingo language, Quark Xpress, Aldus Pagemaker (now non-existent), various 3D sculpting and animation programs and television broadcasting. We were also involved with our own network, hardware and office maintenance which essentially made us responsible for the functional performance and the inviting atmosphere.

While learning programs for art production, I demonstrated my understanding by presenting and teaching the software during workshops. These workshops would be attended by professional photographers, illustrators, desktop publishers and art instructors who wanted to learn the digital tools of the trade. What an amazing experience to teach digital art production to my instructors who simultaneously taught me traditional art techniques.

Projects:

• Maine Center for the Arts Funding Drive - an interactive digital presentation providing sound clips, movies, and contact information requesting funding to construct the facility
• Various illustrations for on-campus concerts, theater productions, and information publications
• Broadcast title art
• Group animation production for a gallery presentation
• Game prototype to learn American Sign Language - a project collaboration with the Governor Baxter School for the Deaf

In the spirit of demonstrating creativity, I prepared my portfolio as an interactive presentation similar to a website, but fitting all within a three-and-a-quarter-inch floppy disk in a custom pocket. Just to put this feat into context, trying fitting ten pieces of design in a presentation to fit on a flash drive of just 1.4 megs — that is one-point-four megs compared to the now common 128GB flash drive the size of a stick of gum. As one result of using this now-obsolete hardware, there are no surviving assets for the projects produced at that time. Such is the nature of digital history —as technology advances certain data becomes lost.