Among graphics software packages, Photoshop is king. The design program first appeared on Macintosh computers in 1990 and sold for $895. These early versions were shipped along with a piece of hardware to get folks to buy the gadget as an incentive to purchase.
Still ahead of its time, Photoshop neatly organized computer workflow and virtual tool selection, reproducing manual effects on a computer screen and allowing designers of all stripes to engage their imaginations endlessly.
So much more than just digital photo editing, even Photoshop’s trademarked brand name has become a catch-all verb for any work done on a digital content editing platform.
But Photoshop in the early 90s was not the fully automated software package available today. And there were no internet video sites with free tutorials instructing viewers how to make stuff.
PIONEER DAYS
Mike Schmalz was first asked to share his design ‘how-to’ tips for Photoshop in 1995, and while many more industry publications have followed, Photoshop Masters was the deserved first.
“Japanese publishers saw the Spin Control dancers – a radial blur effect I created first in Freehand to imagine dancers twirling in space – that I did entirely within a computer environment for Dubuque’s ‘All That Jazz’ summer concert series,” Schmalz said.
In order to teach Photoshop techniques to its first commercial users, editors and publishers collected and curated expert user tips from the design industry and put them out at regular intervals in magazines and books.
Since its release, the first power users of Photoshop were intergenerational designers who straddled two art production worlds comfortably: digital and analog. As software versions matured, the popular early features painstakingly script under Mike Schmalz’s design acumen were transformed into automated software features and tools for the common user.
In these annually updated ‘How-To’ manuals, final images were published along with written instructions. Invited designers detailed the technical steps and tools they used, and broke down their keyboard selection sequence.
“And Spin Control opened a door to a conversation,” Said Schmalz.
The publishers wanted to know how he did it. They liked what they saw and solicited Schmalz as one of just a handful of global Photoshop experts to share his acumen and influence.
“Nowadays the software is so robust and can do so much more that nobody doubts its capabilities. But back in the pioneer days of Photoshop the publishers also had the task of convincing users that computer software was worth buying.”
Photoshop and the point-and-click features that distinguished early Macintosh computers put dramatic power in the hands of users, allowing wholesale change with the swipe of a mouse. Photoshop Masters taught buyers how experts used these tools.
“Photoshop was a boon to artists who had already always been on computers, because it was helping to create art with a computer and replicated a lot of the manual tools on screen,” Schmalz said.
VIRTUAL FRISKET
Schmalz had grown up with an art brush in hand, applying paint and decals to metal automobile body surfaces for the lettering and logos he drew on the fleet of Schmalz Precast Concrete vehicles from his backyard days in middle school.
Work done by hand for the challenge presented to a 12-year old in organizing the masking and drafting tools and supplies needed to mark out a truck door professionally, with provisions in place to minimize do-overs down to zero.
On Spin Control Mike replicated tasks he had been using since childhood, honed in Dubuque’s AP Art Program for high schoolers and then certified in college at the Kansas City Art Institute before a career in graphic design.
“The radial blur effect in Spin Control would be done with an airbrush and friskets if done for real. It’s meticulous busywork. You set a clear film over the image, cut masks to measure and spray different parts with colors. If it’s real.”
Schmalz began collaborating with Dubuque Main Street to promote All That Jazz and first drew a poster for the summer concert series in 1995. Each year Mike’s poster becomes a minor sensation in and among the Dubuque circles that administer and enjoy the city’s historic central district events calendar.
Dubuque Main Street’s All That Jazz Concerts on Friday evenings in the summer feel great when the weather is just right. The streets are jam-packed and the guests are seated in the shade on collapsible lawn chairs they brought from home. The bands play under the Town Clock and Dubuquers dance along in the evening light.
Friends who get involved and attend buy prints for Dubuquers who have moved away. A framed and signed All That Jazz Dubuque print is a collector’s item on prominent walls in Iowa homes. The food is delicious and spicy. The music is melodic and divine. The poster is designed with a virtual frisket.
“With a ‘virtual frisket’ I built a replica of the art effect I wanted inside a computerized digital environment – and because I had experience in the handicraft of design I was able to replicate the whole process in Photoshop,” Schmalz said.
SPIN CONTROL
Dubuque All That Jazz is now 25 years old, and exists in recoverable financial shape after pandemic economies resharpen and adapt. Meanwhile the limited-edition posters have turned into collectors items and conversation pieces. Each of the 25 is alive with the sounds, sights and smells of Fridays in Dubuque as the sun goes down in summer. Schmalz is right when he calls it Commercial Impressionism.
“These technical articles in design periodicals have a reason to put things in their publication,” Schmalz said.
“Back in the Mac 2 era, publishers were influencing software sales on two planes. First, as giant annually-updated ‘How-To’ instruction manuals, but also as a sales point for the cost effectiveness of the software,” Schmalz said.
“There was computer graphic design software before Photoshop, but it used to be if you made a mistake or changed your mind then you had to start all over from the beginning. The cool thing about Photoshop was that the design was done in a way where you don’t destroy the original, and you can take chances, reverse and start all over if needed.”
In the era of smaller computer processors, with no internet resources like now and less randomly available memory, software that simplified its user interface and generated a file with maximized printing resolution and minimal memory size was the carrot everyone chased.
Photoshop saved time and money. This fundamental shift in labor gave more flexibility to designers and increased business availability for more creation. Users and clients alike sought Mike Schmalz’s guiding light in discovering new ways to create.
“Even in the days of the Mac Classic, this kind of art would take weeks to do, because the processing power of computers was slow and also because the files were so large. With Photoshop dramatic changes could be done with just a few clicks.”
HAND-PAINTED EFFECTS
Japanese publishers soon gave way to more international publications, and in time Mike Schmalz was featured repeatedly in the pages of industry How-To manuals and prestigious title series. Over the years he shared fundamental tips with his colleagues to great acclaim.
Adobe, the company that came to publish Photoshop and its suite of design software, revised its product versions with work tools that could replicate cumbersome technical sequences. Small things Mike could do with an early Photoshop interface gave way to custom tools and discreet shortcuts that could be reproduced by other designers on their own.
Mike’s Spin Control drew praise and attention, and soon a flood of Mike’s work filled pages on shelves around the world. More All That Jazz posters and other projects came out in more books and magazines as American and European publishers discovered these hidden gems.
Harley-Davidson cooperated with Mike in providing rare production photographs of a 1955 Model FL that Mike incorporated into a commemorative poster for the 50th anniversary of America’s largest motorcycle rally. The iconic faces of Mt. Rushmore gazes down on hand-painted effects that capture the open roads and mountain air found in Sturgis every August.
This caused still more industry magazine publishers to come after Schmalz, with users eager to learn his tricks. His bold and bright Photoshop images captured design imaginations and propelled software sales.
Mike showed them the vintage movie marquee drawings repurposed to advertise a community credit union. He showed them bold, metallic logos that seemed stamped in 3D relief for an environmental mitigation company.
He showed them images from giant North American retailer Radio Shack for their launch of a national Satellite-TV dish sales campaign, with Schmalz’s bright commercial impressionism leading the visual marketing charge.
PETROLIANA CUBBYHOLES
Not all Schmalz designs stopped at Adobe’s Photoshop front door. In the case of die cast metal vehicles he went on to produce and package collectible items with detailed packaging and a functional toy car with moving parts.
For a project sparked by the Texaco Oil Company and its service stations, Schmalz dug back into the history of America’s fascination with automobiles and the culture of professional service stations that sprung up across the country with the advent of motorized travel.
The 1934 Texaco Diamond T Tanker, affectionately known as ‘The Doodlebug’, was a small fuel tanker for petroleum deliveries to private storage tanks on farms and job sites. It was the shape of a round bullet on wheels and resembled the hybrid cross of a VW Bus and the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile.
Schmalz lovingly recreated the Doodlebug for Texaco’s series of collectible die cast vehicles. In 1994 the red and white painted model was their 11th in a series of rare, vintage automobiles from the heyday of Petroliana.
In addition to the vehicle, Schmalz designed the collector’s edition packaging that all Doodlebugs came in. This graphic design work fascinated publishers who were quick to summarize and display the Photoshop techniques he used in designing the whole product for Texaco.
A subculture of die-cast miniature vehicle collectors exists, keen to the tides of supply and demand, and they quickly snapped up Doodlebugs still in their valuable original packaging. Sold only through Texaco distributorships just once a year, these highly detailed originals shot to the top of collectible catalogs, fueled by fans who perhaps could not afford a restored original, but were drawn to the unique design and function of such vehicles.
In 1997 Schmalz designed a vintage 1917 Maxwell and all its packaging again for Texaco’s die cast series. This iconic roadster was America’s first coast-to-coast automobile, and Schmalz captured the spirit of the touring car’s trans-American crossing from New Jersey to California in 10 days and 16 hours.
CIRCLING BACK
German and Irish settlers in Dubuque came to work in Iowa’s burgeoning millworks along the Mississippi river, supplying finished wooden pieces for most American homes during the better part of a full century.
They lived and they died, they built houses and raised families and concentrated their settling in the familiar-looking parts of America, in places where the excellent water quality made for good beer and the climate felt livable.
A new century later and Dubuque remains deeply imprinted by its architectural heritage, and the descendants of those and other immigrants are now committed to preserving the town’s unique culture and history for the burgeoning future.
A new concept for live-work districts reimagines old buildings in a way that eclipses the mistakes of Urban Renewal. Shops and commerce occupy the ground level in Dubuque’s historic downtown, with residential density on top in retrofitted apartments, condos and townhomes. Fittings and details are recreated and restored, lovingly crafted to adorn and decorate the unique streets of Dubuque.
Dubuque Main Street has pioneered this shift. The town’s progressive engineering of a federally funded floodwall in 1969 has earned back its cost multiple times over in preventing the repeated devastation of floods that previously culminated in 1965 with most of the Historic Central District inundated and under water..
Mike Schmalz and partners at Fab + are doing the same woodwork their pioneer forebears did, and so much more in the realm of manufacturing and design. The legacy of the past is neither old nor forgotten in Dubuque, but instead preserved and even improved with restoration and repurposing.