Creative Arts Building Architectural Rendering (Kodalith Reproduction), San Francisco State College (Alternate View)

About This Item

A heavily contrasted Kodalith reproduction of an architectural rendering shows the proposed Creative Arts Building at San Francisco State College. The stark tonal treatment reduces the design to strong geometric forms, typical of materials prepared for publication or graphic reproduction in mid-20th-century architectural presentations.

Identifier
TP-ATA-1956
Context

Kodalith film is a high-contrast, orthochromatic black-and-white film produced by Kodak, originally designed for graphic arts, line work, and reproduction processes. It was known for rendering images with extremely high contrast, meaning it reproduced only pure black and pure white areas with virtually no gray tones.

Key features:

  • High contrast: Ideal for reproducing line drawings, text, and halftone separations.

  • Orthochromatic: Sensitive to blue and green light but not red, allowing darkroom work under red safelights.

  • Used in: Photomechanical printing, layout work, masking, and plate-making processes.

 

Credits:

Some technical descriptions and historical interpretations were developed with the assistance of ChatGPT, an AI language model by OpenAI.

Geographic Coverage
San Francisco, CA
Type
Still Image
Format
Negative
Source
San Francisco State University Archives
Rights
Public
Views
397

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