An Interactive Terminal for the Design of Advertisements

An Interactive Terminal for the Design of Advertisements By B. E. CASPERS and P. B. DENES (Manuscript received July 9, 1979) The advertisement below was created on the experimental graphics terminal described in this paper and demonstrates its features. ABCDEF a & c d ^ ABCDEF abcdef YELLOW PAGES ^teifiAlcA text, art, logos one stage composition special effects sizing - screening outlining - drop shadow instant proofs decorative borders many type faces ABCDEF BELL LABORATORIES MURRAY HILL, NEW JERSEY 555-3881 BelLabe BELL LABS serving the BELL SYSTEM 2189 The terminal is intended for the interactive design of advertisements. The work is part of our research on replacing photographic by digital methods of picture handling in typesetting; the results may help reduce the cost of producing Yellow Pages directories. Controls of the terminal were planned with human engineering in mind and thus are easy to learn and use. The experimental terminal consists of a color TV display, a keyboard, a lightpen, a facsimile-type hard copier, and a fast picture scanner/digitizer which are all connected to a minicomputer equipped with disk and tape. It enables the user to interactively position, size, crop, and edit pictures as well as text; pictures can be scanned and digitized in a few seconds, corrected, and stored for future use; easy-to-use commands are provided for enhancing the appearance of text or pictures by automatically "outlining," "shadowing, " or "screening" interactively selected areas.