And so it begins...

"If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants" ~ Sir Isaac Newton

And there we have it. Throughout my career, I have seen many significant changes in marketing practice and execution. In some cases, I often felt like I was in the pioneering wave. While this may have been true to some degree, I also realized early on that the leading edge I was experiencing was built on the accomplishments and work product of those before me. What I was involved with would have had no basis without what came before. Even seismic changes are based on being the counterpoint to something previously thought to be the standard.

There were many examples, but I'll share just one. When I was teaching the Graphic Arts Survey course a number of years ago for Philadelphia Community College, we had a section of that course related to typography usage and history. Many of the students in the class had never known more than point and click, choose a font or size, make a change with little effort. When we went over how typography had been practiced a mere decade earlier, the class could not believe that people worried about such things as leading, kerning, etc when constructing printed documents. Yet it became clear that these concepts were the basis for the fonts and layouts they were using that day.

So the past is past, but hopefully we benefit from those efforts. Having seen the early days of internet advertising, email advertising, web site development, and the like, I can assure we are much better today. But I never forget that we all had a little help from our friends...