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Positronic Design owner and founder, David Caputo, started out
in the computer industry in 1982 with such companies as Digital
and GTE. He had an e-mail address in 1984, Caputo::Psyche, (no @
back then) and worked with "Decnet", then the world's
largest nonmilitary computer network, a precursor of today's Internet.
At Digital, he was one of the first ever laserdisc multimedia programmers,
utilizing DEC's IVIS system and large format Phillips LaserDisc
players. At Digital he met graphic artist George Wisnowski, who
was to create posters, album covers, and other visual materials
for David's first company, Verge Productions.
In 1984 he started Verge Productions with Laura Tilsley to sell
records and promote events and media appearances for such bands
as New Man, which featured Greenfield, Mass native Scott Gilman,
later of Foreigner. These included distribution through Strawberries
Records, winning the MTV Basement Tapes competition, radio appearances,
a feature on Evening Magazine, and T-shirt sales at concerts opening
for Bryan Adams, Culture Club, INXS, ELP and others.
In 1985 David hitched up his wagon and moved west to the Happy
Valley, where he has remained ever since. In 1987 David teamed up
with Ramon Olivencia and graphic artist George Wisnowski to create
the board game Go To Jail, which was featured in local specialty
stores.
Through the late 1980s David worked as a consultant in the Boston
with such companies as DEC, TJX, and Lotus, and held several other
programming positions with local valley companies. This was while
David was attending the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where
he was a STPEC (Social Thought and Political Economy) major.
In 1989, David started "The Weekly News" with Mykal Ostapovicz,
B.J. Cummings, Ralph Reed, Stacy Adams, Ramon Olivencia, Michael
Levine and many others. The Weekly News was an independent journal
of opinion sponsored by STPEC and distributed free in the Happy
Valley and sent by subscription nationwide. It published 19 issues
over 2 years and saw its circulation expand from 200 to 5000 over
that time. The Weekly News was mostly supported by small business
advertising and benefit concerts by the band Phish.
David produced four Phish concerts in all, two at the UMass Student
Union Ballroom (2/90 and 9/90), one at John M. Green Hall (2/91)
at Smith College, and one at the Greenfield Armory (12/91). Tapes
of these concerts are available, e-mail for details.
It was during the production of The Weekly News that David became
fully conversant with the Computerized Graphic Design process. Initially,
columns were typeset in a 38 character per line format on various
PCs and Digital Vax terminals. DEC had the best laser printers back
then. Then the columns, cartoons, artwork, etc. were all pasted
up with scotch tape in midnight Kinkos sessions. Then an event happened
that forever changed David's life. He bought his first Apple Macintosh
computer. It was an SE/30 with a 16 MHz 030 processor, 1 MB of RAM,
40 MB Hard Drive, 9" b/w screen and a 90 day warranty for $3,500.00!!!!
But it was the greatest thing since sliced bread, and it gave David's
housemate, Robert Llamas, a case of Mac Envy since his formerly
wicked-cool SE was now rather pokey by comparison. So he went out
and dropped a cool 8 Grand on a Macintosh IIcx with a 19" Radius
greyscale monitor, LaserWriter IIntx, and 4 bit greyscale scanner.
Now they were in business!!! The Weekly News switched to this new
production method and they got pretty good at it. They used PageMaker
and Photoshop and Illustrator and cranked out some pretty good stuff.
Graphic Design Guru Ralph Seaman turned them to the true path of
QuarkXpress and markedly increased their graphic design technique
and sensibility. For this David is forever in his debt.
David and Robert decided they could compete in the then embryonic
desktop publishing market and Radical Solutions was born in March
of 1990. Business built up so much working from home that a storefront
in downtown Amherst, MA was opened in September, 1990. Radical Solutions
featured graphic design, print consulting, specialty product printing,
multimedia programming and web site design, maintaining a downtown
storefront presence for six solid years. Radical Solutions served
such prominent local clients as The UMass Mullins Center, Dar Williams,
the Amherst Chamber of Commerce, Yankee Candle and Mt. Holyoke College
in addition to national clients like L'Oreal and ITT/Hartford.
In January 1997, David closed Radical Solutions and moved his base
of operations to David Caputo Graphic Design at Studio 11, 140 Pine
St., Florence, MA which transformed itself into Positronic Design
with the turning of the new millennium in February, 2000.
Positronic Design has grown and evolved from the original collaboration
to become a dynamic team of independent business entities that work in
concert to take advantage of the profound benefits of collaboration,
both professional and personal. See our Current Team page for a complete
list of our active collaborators.
In 2005, Positronic Design moved its headquarters to Holyoke, MA, and in
April 2006 we moved into our permanent home at 903 Dwight Street, on the
edge of historic downtown Holyoke by the banks of the Connecticut River.
Please call and arrange a visit if you'd like to see what we're doing to
help Holyoke's transition from a once-glorious-now-rundown industrial
city to a modern knowledge-economy powerhouse with the location, skill
set, and cultural advantages necessary to thrive in the twenty first
century.
We can be reached at 413-587-0011 or 800-472-3765. References are
available upon request, please call or e-mail for more info. Obviously
things have been left out. Send e-mail if you think an important
detail has been omitted. ;-)
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