Traditional instructions. A great long parts list which you are supposed to check through before starting - and never do. Well I don't anyway and even if I did, it wouldn't do me any good here. It's not like I can ring the manufacturer up for spare parts. Not unless I have a special old telephone anyway.
After the list, lots of words in great big slabs of text. The sort of great big text slabs that people tell me they prefer in magazine article rather than all those new fangled pictures and boxes and stuff. The sort of thing that every other type of magazine outside toy trains has. The ones that sell in any numbers anyway.
Sorry, moaning. Seriously though, I hate digging through this stuff. At least give me a bulleted list so I can tick stages off as I work.
This is more like it. A great big exploded diagram. All the parts shown and clearly enough that I probably won't bother reading the words.
Sadly, producing this sort of diagram is horribly expensive now. Draughtsmen aren't easy to find and those you can hire want hundreds of pounds per day to draw simply because they know they are worth it. Why can't people work for three shillings, a bowl of porridge and a day off being horsewhipped? The good old days have certainly gone...
Speaking as a draughtsman those type of illustrations used to be nightmare'ish, but with the advent of CAD are relatively easy to produce nowadays.
ReplyDeleteI thought traditional instructions comprised of scant text and a poor hand drawn diagram done by a 6 year old in the dark, all reproduced on a wonky photocopier thats out of ink...
ReplyDeleteThe good old days certainly haven't gone, Phil. Apart from being a modelmaker, I am also an old school technical illustrator, who can still do a cutaway or proper perspective exploded view with a Staedtler pen and a set of ellipse guides. And that coach drawing could be done in about four hours, for which you'd have to fork out a "monstrous" £70. If there ARE draughtsmen who can get more, I 'd love to know from whence comes their work. Also, that coach drawing requires an illustrator. Yer average draughtsman wouldn't know where to begin! Most illustrators can draught. Few, if any, draughtsmen could ever illustrate.
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