Author Archives: Brian Lawler

About Brian Lawler

Brian Lawler is an Emeritus Professor of Graphic Communication at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo and was a Guest Professor at Hochschule München from September, 2021 to September, 2022. He writes about graphic arts processes and technologies for various industry publications, and on his blog, The Blognosticator.

An obsession with words

Posted on October 19, 2021 by Brian Lawler

Though it has nothing in common with my usual posts, I want to say a few words about my obsession with the New York Times’ Spelling Bee puzzle. It’s fun! It’s cause for insanity. It’s enough to make you either … Continue reading →

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A refined approach
to repositioned panoramas of Munich street art

Posted on October 16, 2021 by Brian Lawler

Four years ago I was teaching in Munich, and during that time I photographed a number of pieces of street art on Tumblingerstraße in the city. You can read that story and its associated comments here. The photos were taken … Continue reading →

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AppleScript solves my grid mask challenge in Adobe Photoshop

Posted on August 21, 2021 by Brian Lawler

I pride myself on being a competent user of Adobe Photoshop. I know how to make my photos look good by sliding sliders and pushing buttons and applying filters and adding Layer Effects and all sorts of visual things. Occasionally I need … Continue reading →

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Illustrator graphs show me how my solar system is working

Posted on January 9, 2021 by Brian Lawler

Greetings Blognosticator readers! I (sort of) apologize for my long absence from this blog. I retired from my teaching position at Cal Poly in mid-June, and have been relaxing since then by not contributing essays to this forum. Instead, I … Continue reading →

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Saved by the wire (and the fiber-optic cable)

Posted on May 3, 2020 by Brian Lawler

You would never think that a wire could slow Internet speed. Well, perhaps you would think of that, but I hadn’t thunk about it much. I was once warned by my friend Eric that the wrong kind of wire could … Continue reading →

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My good friend Ray Prince has died

Posted on May 2, 2020 by Brian Lawler

Ray was a man among men in the graphic arts industry. He worked tirelessly for decades to make our lives better through technological advances in printing and publishing. Though I had known him casually for many years, Mr. Prince became … Continue reading →

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Excellent typography in web pages

Posted on April 19, 2020 by Brian Lawler

In a previous post I wrote about the differences between typewriter quotes and real quotation marks, and how to do it right. I have received some nice feedback on that post. One person suggested that while it’s great to use … Continue reading →

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Saved by the RAID

Posted on April 11, 2020 by Brian Lawler

I’m in my second week of online teaching. It’s particularly difficult because my class is a hands-on course in digital photography and color management. But this quarter it’s all hands-off. And that is making me crazy. The announcement that I … Continue reading →

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From variable-frequency drives
to hand-bound books

Posted on March 20, 2020 by Brian Lawler

It’s been about a month since I wrote my last blog. It was about variable-frequency-drive high voltage motor controllers and a 1935 book sewing machine. The relevance of that is cloudy, but suffice it to say that I have been … Continue reading →

Posted in Art, Bookbinding, New technology, Printing and Printing Processes, Typography | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Electronic motor control
and my obsession with a 1935 bookbinding machine

Posted on February 25, 2020 by Brian Lawler

This is the second part of my obsession story. To read the first part, please click here. And that’s where my odyssey began. Alternating current induction motors use the frequency of the line power (60 Hz in our case) to … Continue reading →

Posted in Bookbinding, Education, Imposition and Pagination, New technology, Printing and Printing Processes, Technology | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment