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dreambigwrkhardtoday at 12:10 PM2 repliesview on HN

I was the person who "had to bother dealing with it" many years ago before we had AI, Canva, or even Adobe cloud.

I volunteered and designed a good amount of posters for student organizations.

Don't enjoy it but did it to help my peers and friends out.

I find it ironic that back then we had a lot of trouble finding people who were willing to design posters and promo media on print.

Now the comment section on this post has people mourning AI taking over poster making in 2026. Where was the help back then?

From the perspective of someone who had to burn the midnight oil to do it for years, trust me, I would rather not do it and spend that time with my family and friends. And judging from how hard it was to find others who were willing to do it, I think its a reasonable argument that most people were not actually willing to do the work either.

So mourn away but I wouldn't cry if I "missed out" on making posters. If we had AI back then, I would not take on any of those poster making requests.


Replies

dgacmutoday at 12:46 PM

One of my best memories from an art class in high school was that a student organization came into our class and asked if any of us would be willing to design a poster. I ended up designing and silk-screening their poster for them and it was a fantastic experience.

I can totally see how doing more than a couple would start to feel like work, but having one or two experiences like that was awesome.

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breezybottomtoday at 12:19 PM

Back when? The 1970s? I don't believe that you couldn't find poster making services in the last 10-20 years.

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