We went up to Syracuse to visit my folks last weekend and check out their new house, which is lovely. It’s the first time we’ve seen them since Finn’s christening. They bought in a 20-year-old development, so everything is modern, well-kept, and easily accessible, both in the house and in the town. The house itself isn’t huge but the floorplan makes it larger than it is. The basement is easily twice the size of ours. They are happy and comfortable, and that’s the best thing that could have ever happened to them.
The weather has finally broken from Seattle-like rainfall and temperatures to a balmy mid-80’s heat, and the Mid-Atlantic humidity is creeping in as I write this. I’ve got a list of summer prep chores to get to over the long weekend–A/C units in the windows, humping summer clothes around the house, setting up an attic fan–and pulling the top off the truck, which I’m looking forward to.
I’m about 300+ pages into The City Of Mirrors, the final book in the Passage trilogy, and I’m enjoying it so far. The first two books were engrossing and written much better than the standard post-apocalyptic/vampire novel, and I savored re-reading them slowly last month to prepare for this book. That’s about all I’ll say without getting spoilery.
I’m beginning to write down syllabus ideas for next semester’s class, and basing the structure on a couple of books: Alina Wheeler’s Brand Identity, David Airey’s Logo Design Love, and Debbie Millman’s Brand Bible. I’ve got a couple of old syllabi from previous classes and a handful of notes and ideas I’ve written down during the last year. This semester is going to involve a lot more workshop-style learning and hands-on work, which seemed to be the thing that made the light bulbs go on.
Jen and I are at the end of our semester, and making plans for the fall term. The final crit went well, and the work everyone showed was strong compared to where we started. We had a good discussion at the end on how to make the syllabus better for the next class, and I got a lot of good general feedback that will help in the future.
The syllabus we developed was very strong, but we’ve found places where we can make it better and add detail. Through the course of the term, we found our students need more background on conceptual thinking and a refresher on how to write. Conceptual thinking is a hard thing to describe and an even harder thing to teach. Knowing what not to say is more important than giving specific directions in order to point a student in the right direction. It came as a surprise to everyone in the classroom that the outline we had them develop was the single most important part of their assignment, and the process of synthesizing and organizing information was met with resistance at first. Jen and I developed a workshop where we split the class into groups and had them develop outlines together, which helped them deconstruct the problem and arrive at solutions together.
I was scheduled to teach the same class again, at the same time, until last week, when they offered to switch it with a senior level branding and identity class. Jen and I talked it over, and I accepted. It’s offered once a week on Wednesdays for four hours, which could be a nice change in schedule from the previous three semesters. The syllabus is very old, apparently, so I’ll be spending time updating it over the summer to include modern requirements and concepts.
Meanwhile, I’ve been focused on launching the first online report for WRI, which has spent a long time gestating and a short time birthing. I’ve been working on the template since last fall and revising the online workflow to complement our print workflow, but actually building something always highlights the flaws. It goes live tomorrow, and I’m pretty confident in the state it’s in.
Here’s the cold, hard truth every prospective student, and every parent, should know: In the vast majority of subjects, when you have an adjunct professor instead of a full-timer, you are getting a substandard education.
I’d have to respectfully disagree in my own case; I’ve knocked myself out to give my students the best possible bang for their buck. But I’d wager there are plenty of contract teachers who punch the clock and nothing more. It’ll be interesting to see how things are when Finn is looking at colleges.
I took Finn across town to a playdate yesterday, and used the opportunity to finish up my grading for this semester’s class. Finding myself down the street from Zeke’s, I grabbed a table, a decaf, and a sandwich, and went through projects piece by piece. I’ve been waiting for some downtime to get that done, and it does feel great to be finished. Then I started outlining the syllabus for this spring’s class, which we’re writing from the ground up. I’ve got a fair bit of research to do, but I think it’s going to be a good project.
I’ve spent the last week preparing for today’s class lecture on grid systems. Actually, longer than that: I started it on vacation, after Finn and Jen were asleep and I had a beachside couch to myself and a fresh bottle of Corona. This one has been a challenge, because there’s a lot to cover and I want my lectures to be more exciting than the Whaaaah-whaa-whaa-whaaaaa sound that Charlie Brown’s teacher made in the animated specials.
I’m on the third and final draft, having originally started with an explanation of the Swiss Grid, the Golden Ratio, and then a bunch of boring pictures of page layouts. Instead, I rewrote it last night to include a mention of Adrian Frutiger, who passed on Monday, then an introduction to grids with a real-time demonstration in InDesign, and then back to the deck for a case study.
The example I’m using is inspired by the cache of vacation materials from our family’s trip west in 1981, which included a handful of original brochures from the National Park Service using the Unigrid system designed by Massimo Vignelli in 1977. After doing some extensive research, and being lucky enough to have a coworker bring me back some updated brochures from his vacation this summer, I was able to put together a solid 45 minutes on the utility and flexibility of strong grid systems, biographies on two important design figures of the 20th century, with printed before-and-after materials to show the class.
I also dug up a PDF copy of Vignelli’s design manifesto, a scanned PDF of the original New York Transit System design guide, and a fantastic reference site on the National Park System’s publication history, featuring a ton of pre-Unigrid brochures available as PDFs.
The class itself is going pretty well, but it’s challenging. Typography is a tricky thing to teach, because it’s made up of a couple of loose rules and a lot of individual feeling and opinion. If a student doesn’t have a natural aesthetic for choosing and setting type, how can I teach it to them? My solution has been to review the history of type, try to describe each of the categories and where their influences came from, and then help them learn what to look for and what to avoid.
I’m definitely doing a lot more prep work this semester than I did for Type & Image, and if the students don’t feel like they’ve gotten a decent education out of this class, I sure feel like I have.
I’ve been quiet around here lately because life, work, and teaching are eating up every second of my day. Work is going very well–so well, in fact, that I’m exhausted at the end of each day. Management is a whole new set of problems and challenges that it’s taken me time to understand and adapt to; it’s like running my own studio with ten times the client base, plus a lot of bureaucratic busywork I’d be happier avoiding. It’s been rewarding having my own little department, though, and I’m very happy with my design team.
I’ve taken what I learned in my first full semester of teaching and expanded on my syllabus, projects, preparation, and class interaction. When we were at the beach, after the girls were in bed, I roughed out three lectures–on typography, grid systems, and paragraph/character styles in InDesign. While most people were outside enjoying the idyllic weather this Saturday, I was inside finishing the typography lecture, splitting it into separate decks on history and pairing and setting type. The lecture on Monday went pretty well, and I enjoyed the refresher. This class is smaller than last year’s group so I’ve got more of their attention and time per student during critiques. Strangely, four students registered for the class still haven’t shown up yet.
We’re all back in the groove after vacation, and Finley is in her second week of school. She really likes her teacher, which is great news, so we have high hopes for the First Grade.
This weekend I’m headed to my friend Brian’s house to help swap an engine out of his Wagonmaster, which should be lots of fun. I’m bringing my Hydroboost setup in the hopes that we might be able to install it in an afternoon; I’ve got to ask the experienced members of the group what supplies I’m going to need besides the basic hardware (brake fluid, etc.)
I got my paperwork in the mail from UMBC today, which means I’m officially teaching another class in the fall. I’ve been working on the syllabus for this one for a while, but now that it’s set I’ve got to finish it up and develop about 6 lectures: an overview of concept, a refresher on grid systems (I’ve got some before and after National Park Service brochures for that one), a primer/refresher on paragraph/character styles in InDesign, a primer on typography, maybe some modern typographic history (I’ve got the inaugural issue of Bikini magazine for that one), and whatever else I can cook up. I have no idea how many students I’ll have this semester–last spring I had 18, which was 5 more than I was supposed to–but I’m not afraid of a challenge.
When I was an innocent freshman at MICA, I was lucky enough to have a teacher who cared enough to blow my little mind. We had a class called Fundamentals of 2-D Design, or something like that, which was supposed to be about concepts and methods of using space and color and form to express ourselves. In actuality it was a calculated mindfuck. We’d all been programmed by our public and private high schools how to use pencils and markers and oil paint (well, not my public high school, we made do with tempera paints) and the fundamentals of what art was supposed to look like. So, we applied that to the first assignment we were given.
Our teacher, a vibrant, boisterous woman named Mary, had us put our stuff up on the wall and present it, and we did, in halting sentences amid shuffling feet. Then, she stood up and started ripping parts of our designs up. Literally ripping sections off and moving them around. “How about doing this?”
I think the first student she did this to almost started crying. The second got mad. The third might actually have cried. And on and on. We had worked hard on this shit, and here she was, tearing bits and pieces off, moving things around, questioning us. I was shocked–and intrigued. Because she was right. Her suggestions were spot-on, of course. She was fearless. And she scared the shit out of all of us.
Next week, we got into the gouache. Gouache is a painting medium somewhere between tempera, watercolor and Satan’s ballsweat, deviously simple and devilish to control. It mixes quickly and dries out in seconds, so skill and patience is required to work with it. We had to color-match squares of specially-purchased colored paper, a package of which was expensive and irreplaceable. We had to cut out squares of the colored paper, glue them to bristol board, and then draw a square next to it the same size and shape. Then we had to mix gouache to match the size and color exactly. Points were given for accuracy of color, execution, and cleanliness. Doing this exercise perfectly was next to impossible because the fucking gouache was, well, gouache. It was like smearing poop around on the wall: it’s only ever going to look like poop. We all tried, lord above, did we try.
More assignments like this followed, and students began dropping out. Not because they weren’t doing the work, but because they didn’t get it. They argued with her, they reasoned with her, they spent hours after class trying to make her happy. And she tried to get them to open their minds. They didn’t understand.
The first lesson taught us: Nothing is precious. Everything is game, and be prepared to give it up for something better. The second lesson was that sloppy work wasn’t acceptable. We needed to strive for perfection. Further projects taught us that it wasn’t about what the finished products looked like, really; it was about how we approached the solutions and what we learned getting there. The dropouts had been conditioned to do the assignments but not to question the ideas or develop a concept or think about what any of it meant. They couldn’t process this, and gave up.
For those of us that got it, it was like a door had been kicked open, and we started thinking with our own brains. It led me to consider unconventional ways to solve problems that I still use to this day. None of the assignments we completed were portfolio pieces, but they made the few of us that understood better artists, designers, and communicators.
In the class I’m teaching, I’ve been reaching for that same kind of impact. I’m winging it this first semester because I’m not familiar with the syllabus or the organization of the department or the grading standards, but I’m getting the hang of running the class and offering input and guidance without solving problems for the students–I’ve got to know exactly what to say to get them to think of things differently without giving them the answers. I’ve got students who do not understand conceptual thinking: They just want me to tell them what to do instead of thinking for themselves. I’ve also got students who are killing it, coming up with brilliant, elegant concepts and layouts that make me smile to myself. I can’t take credit for that, as the hard work was done by someone else before me, but I can at least help them get ready for the real world.