History of SoftSymbols™

The 90's

Shortly after the first series of plastic templates were produced, Shelley was encouraged to sell collections of symbol outlines for basic drafting, but Shelley wanted none of it. Shelley had witnessed his friend Ted Mather field phone calls and act as technical support for Ted’s product, Advantage Symbols. What Shelley saw was a  project that would not only require a significant time investment to create, but additional time to provide technical support as well. 

In 1993 Shelley created a small collection of symbols and flyers trumpeting ”Soft Symbols in MacDraw.” They were distributed at a USITT convention. This resulted in one sale (thanks Anne!), and Shelley shelved the project.

In 1997 Shelley signed the contract to write what would become A Practical Guide to Stage Lighting. This sucked his brain for a number of years; eventually he would re-write the book five times.

USITT 2003

By 2003 Shelley had switched to Vectorworks as his graphic application. At the USITT conference that year, he finally agreed to examine Spotlight lighting symbols. 

In his words: ”I had presumed that the Spotlight symbols would be comparable, if not better, than anything I had created. To my surprise, the symbols were shockingly different than what i expected. Although many of the symbols used the same nomenclature as Field Template symbols, they were constructed by a team of folks, not all of whom were lighting designers. As such, the symbols had a variety of line widths, shading, colors - and some amount of data was missing. Overall, they were a good start - but in some cases the data was incomplete, while in other cases, the graphics were not very pretty.”

”From a practical point of view, many of the ERS symbols had internal lines that were placed precisely in the symbol where a lighting designer would indicate templates, irises, and so forth. In other cases, the symbols had so many additional lines and shades, it would inevitably impact the amount of ink required to print any light plot. On top of that, when you opened any Spotlight object library, the document was blank. There was nothing on the page. In order to see any symbols in a document, your were forced to paste the symbols, one by one, into the document.”

By the time they left the convention, Shelley had decided take the plunge. He set LDI 2003 as the target date to launch the new product. After completing his contract as the Lighting & Scenic Coordinator for the Spoleto Festival USA, Shelley sat down and submerged himself in Vectorworks, Spotlight, and how to make symbols. He then created SoftSymbols Version 1, duplicating the Spotlight object library structure, but replacing all the 2D graphic symbology. Gradually he added new symbol libraries for ancillary symbols, including generic foggers and other hardware, as well as imperial and metric scales.

Shelley's SoftSymbols™ are constructed with a universal set of line weights and shades, without using color as an identifying feature. This tactic was employed so that, in the absence of color printing, information would not be lost; plots could be printed or faxed without the potential loss of information. All SoftSymbols were designed so that they could be traced from a plastic template. Not only do they have a cleaner look, it allows for more alphanumeric data to be contained in each symbol, it uses less ink, and allows the light plot document easier to read.

At the same time, Shelley was also writing the additional html pages, showing SoftSymbols on the Field Template web site. And there was still the question of how best to deliver the product to the end user. While the common transfer process was physical CD’s, Shelley saw the implied need for additional product design, not to mention the headaches and costs of shipping. After some consideration, Shelley designed the delivery system so that SoftSymbols™ was a download-only product, thus eliminating costs and the need for additional CD cover or direction designs. By November, shopping cart appeared to be ready in time to accept download orders from the 2003 LDI convention.

LDI 2003

LDI 2003 was a fiasco. Shelley arrived in Orlando thinking the web site would be able to launch before the show floor opened, but it was not to be. Some say there were technical difficulties. Others claim that basically the webmaster had a nervous breakdown. Shelley ended up in the wrong hotel, couldn’t get internet service in the room, the shopping cart didn't work, and he spent the entire convention handing out flyers while saying: ”No, not yet, but we hope you should be able to download it soon”.

By mid-December, a new webmaster had been retained, and the shopping cart was soon up and running. Then the flood of downloads came pouring in! [If by ”flood”, you mean ”two”.]

2005

In 2005 Shelley released Version 2. This included new LED manufacturers and Shelley’s Section Collection.

2006

SoftSymbols added 7 more manufacturers.

As 2006 came to an end, Field Template and SoftPlot came to an agreement. Shelley provided Bill Kirby with exported symbols, which Bill then included in SoftPlot 9. Shelley reviewed all of the manufacturers that Bill had requested, in order to be sure that the symbols were accurate and up to date.

2007

SoftPlot 9 was released at the 2007 USITT convention in Phoenix.

Boy, the dollar was weak. The boys ran through money like water. But the software was a hit, and continued to sell well.

2008

Shelley released the Ocean Optics SeaChanger object library. Then he descended into writing the second edition of his book A Practical Guide to Stage Lighting. That ate his brain through 2009 and into 2010.

2011

Once the second edition was released, Shelley returned his attention to SoftSymbols. Nemetschek had released Vectorworks version 2011, which contained the new Parts Record. When the 3D components were properly assigned to to the Parts Record, a Spotlight Lighting Device could now automatically aim and rotate towards an assigned Spotlight focus point.

Shelley decided this was a serious improvement to Spotlight, and dubbed it "Focus Functionality." Figuring out how to make it work flawlessly, however, was another matter. It took Shelley months to perfect the recipe - and it meant editing every single 3D lighting component contained in every lighting symbol.

2012

By the spring of 2012, Shelley had converted and updated some number of object libraries, but had signed on to write another edition of the book. He decided to convert the SoftSymbols shopping cart to individual purchases that could be selected in a "chinese menu" approach. In this way folks would only need to purchase the inventories they required, rather than buy entire collections containing thousands of symbols that might never be used.

This collection of object libraries were named the "3.5" series, since he only got about halfway through the entire SoftSymbols collection. He finished this series in the fall of 2012, when the book deadline was fast approaching.

2013

The final drafts of the book were finished by May, and Shelley returned to updating the 3.0 libraries. Once again, it took much longer to update and upgrade the libraries than he had imagined. This time, the series he completed before LDI he dubbed the "3.6" series.

In October, A Practical Guide to Stage Lighting, Third Edition was published. It’s now available at Amazon.com.

2014

Shelley continued to add and update new libraries, when not distracted by other productions or contractual limitations

2018

Shelley released the updated 3.9 series, as quickly as possible. Plans continue to evolve, and it's become a yearly process to update all of the packages to keep up with the new yearly application structure initiated by Nemetschek. Hopes are high that he will continue to add new and updated product.

SoftSymbols™ are designed by Steve Shelley, and distributed on the SoftSymbols™ pages.