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Editor:

You need to pay your artists a little bit more and maybe the front cover of Graphic Arts Monthly won't look the same issue after issue.

John Scarano, Luckyx26@comcast.net

We couldn't disagree with you more. First of all, since the first of the year, we've had seven photographic covers; five have appeared just as the photographer shot them, without an artist's hand applied. We did color-retouch the other two, using Photoshop to stylize the June cover and to posterize the September cover.

The remaining two covers, an illustration in February to accompany a report on "Pricing Warfare" (difficult to photograph) and a white-background cover for our special 75th anniversary issue in May, are in keeping with GAM's cover style, we think, while departing for special occasions from the customary photographic treatment.

In case you might be referring to the cover subject, you have to concede that print production equipment is mainly characterized by cylinders and rollers. Here again, we think there's a lot of variety so far this year: air bars on a web offset press, a blanket cylinder in a sheetfed press, rollers in a computer-to-plate system, sheetfed press rollers and cylinders, the feeder unit of a DI press, the delivery cage of a digital color press, and a sheet-transfer cylinder of a sheetfed perfector press.

We're not sure how you think these covers look the same. Perhaps other GAM readers would like to weigh in with you.

Editor:

Your Web site, gammag.com, is a great asset to my classroom instruction. Please keep reporting as you are doing. My students, who are enrolled in our graphic arts/communications technology curriculum, are getting very valuable information from you about their future in the graphics profession. Not long ago, we looked at your Salary Survey posted on the site and discussed various employment possibilities.

I also often refer to articles and advertisements in Graphic Arts Monthly to keep students and myself abreast of trends and technologies.

Our curriculum combines theory and practice in such areas as digital graphic design, photographic editing, and duplication, plus desktop publishing, offset and screen printing, and finishing operations.

I've been in printing for 25 years, 17 years as a teacher. I'm a member of the International Graphic Arts Education Association and the Graphic Arts Education and Research Foundation.

Steve Whalen swhalen@wtps.org, Teacher/District Printing Coordinator, Washington Township High School, Sewell, N.J.