The project that I engaged in was creating a non-computerized piece of work. This could have been about anything, but it was to be done using old school writing equipment such as a typewriter. We were not to use any computers or computer generated software to assist us in this task other than the typewriter simulator, as many do not have access to typewriters.
I decided to create a brief pamphlet with an overview of Zion National Park. I chose this topic because my older sister recently moved to Utah and lives and works at the park. I am taking a trip to visit in May and wanted to explore everything the park had to offer before I went. I wanted to highlight the different aspects of the park and what the park offers to learn more about it. I chose to do this in the form of a pamphlet to give a clear layout of these different different aspects.
The first step that I did in this process was gather my research. My sister had sent me some information regarding the park both verbally and through different educational material. Once, I had a good understanding of the information that I wanted to cover, I began to type. I did not have access to a functional typewriter, so I used the typewriter simulator named OverType. This definitely was a learning curve because you could not simply backspace when typing. It took a lot of restarting and reworking my writing in order for it to appear correctly on the typed page. After I had my material typed and spaced out the way I wanted I printed it out. I had some pictures of the park as well and left some spots for where they could be copied onto the typed information sheets. After I copied the pictures onto my typed out page my information pamphlet was complete.
I would be lying if I said I was not frustrated while working on this. Having no previous knowledge of using a typewriter I had no idea what I was doing. I was having a lot of trouble figuring out how to make a capitol letter because there was not a modern "caps key". My mom was actually the one who told me that I needed to use the shift key while typing the letter to produce a capitol. She continued to describe how she often used a typewriter while she was in school and gave me some other pointers to help me through the process. A thought that often popped in my head while working was "I can't believe people had to do this all the time". It was very challenging to make the pamphlet look well put together because I was manually putting it together.
I could not image having to type something out on a typewriter and how challenging it could be to correct an error. In my life, the backspace and delete button are my best friends. In addition to spell check and other resources, I have now realized how reliant I am on these tools and that I have taken them for granted. This experience has taught me a lot. Pre-computer publishing was a lot of work and involved a lot of different steps.
