On our neighborhood mailbox stand, someone has posted a flyer with a $10 reward to anyone who can affect the safe return of a lost cat named “Hanley” to her rightful owner. The owner’s good intentions notwithstanding, the flyer looks more like a WANTED poster with a fuzzy photo of the prized feline and “REWARD” printed in 96 pt bold at the top.

There’s no excuse for this. With or without artistic ability, any computer owner should be able to crank out a professional-looking flyer these days in less than 30 minutes. And what’s with the chintzy reward? Does the cat owner really think people are going to scour the neighborhood for ten bucks? I’ll say this: if Hanley can read, she might just stay lost out of sheer pride until the reward is bumped up a bit. Ten bucks. Please. It’s enough to make you choke on a hairball.

When I was doing hard time as a typesetter in the 1980s, people paid me to design business cards, letterheads, brochures and such on my world-class Merganthaler Linotype machine with “16 different fonts - one to fit everyone’s needs.” That went well for a few years because desktop publishing with a personal computer had not yet caught on. In fact, the PC itself had not really caught on. Then Windows 3.0 made “GUI” a household word and the end was in sight for me as a typesetter. The writing was on the wall: I needed to get my five dollars an hour from somewhere else. Thankfully, I owned a red tie because that helped land me a job running an IBM AS/400, which included a more comfortable chair and a SWEET bump to $5.75 an hour.

Not that Windows held all the answers for the desktop publisher wannabe. Trying to do arty stuff on a PC was slow and awkward. You couldn’t do much in Word or WordPerfect except insert some simple clip art - and that minor operation usually sent your entire paragraph into convulsions. But if you worked with it, you eventually created something like a flyer or brochure, and you didn’t mind all the hassle because you could show off your creation to all your friends who didn’t think they’d ever need a computer. Those are the same friends who, today, live on the Internet and insist on forwarding you every bleedin’ email that that they find remotely interesting. (Here’s a hint: set up a rule that automatically deletes any email that begins with “RE: RE: RE: RE: RE:”)
My foray into the AS/400 world didn’t end my typesetting career completely. Because Sweetie was a music major at the time, I’d use WordPerfect to create programs for her college recitals. Darn impressive when the other recitalists were still using typewriters. But people eventually saw the worth in using PCs as desktop publishing devices, and began to experiment. Recital programs, birthday cards, award certificates, party invitations. We tried it out on everything. Suddenly, instead of a handwritten “FOR SALE” on a piece of cardboard in a car window, it was a nicely designed sign with Arial Bold on white bond paper.

The next versions of Windows and Word were even better. You could actually place logos and photographs into your document and watch the words magically wrap around them. Routine stuff today, but back in 1992, watching Word do wraparound text was enough to make you drop your keyboard and dance the Macarena.

Today, the Web has pushed the desktop publishing door wide open. You don’t even need to know what you’re doing anymore because the software contains templates with pre-set artwork. If you don’t like those templates, just grab one from the Web. For any Microsoft Office program, you can get a ton of free stuff - templates, clip art, photos - at office.microsoft.com. And if doing everything in Microsoft is against your religion, you can find all this stuff on other platforms. I’m sure you can. (Well, pretty sure.)

The point is that for anyone doing any kind of desktop publishing these days, it’s all available and most of it is pre-done for you. You just plug in the words. If you want a special logo or picture, no problem. You hear what I’m saying? It’s all there for you. You have no artistic responsibility here. Just run the pattern and the ball will be in your hands.

As far as Hanley goes, cats are pretty perceptive. If her owner was as haphazard about pet care as she was putting together the Lost Cat flyer, it’s no wonder Hanley’s out looking for new digs.