entries Tagged as [education]

Advice for graphic design students  . . .

‘The things your teachers tell you in class are not gospel. You will get conflicting information. It means that both are wrong. Or both are true. This never stops. Most decisions are gray, and everything lives on a spectrum of correctness and suitability.’

‘Realize that you are learning a trade, so craft matters more than most say.’

‘Libraries are a good place. The books are free there, and it smells great.’

‘Don’t become dependent on having other people pull it out of you while you’re in school. If you do, you’re hosed once you graduate.’

‘Everything is interesting to someone. That thing that you think is bad is probably just not for you.’

‘Think of every project as an opportunity to learn, but also an opportunity to teach.’

A few pieces of good advice for design students from the Office of Frank Chimero.

Read all of his advice here.

Found via Saawan Ebe

‘Shitty piece  . . .  It is very bad history’

‘It was Benjamin Franklin’s favorite typeface, and the first printings of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution were set in Caslon.’

I am a history junkie.

And I loved the scene in HBO’s John Adams miniseries when Adams disputed the accuracy of the above painting (video, below). And how Ben Franklin’s approach to French diplomacy was more  . . .  ardent, than formal.

(I also loved how the miniseries used titled camera angles – like the United States was founded by villains from the old Batman tee vee series)

William Caslon’s fonts were the typefaces of the American Revolution.

Here’s some great reads on early American documents – as handy PDFs.

And here’s a link to John Adams on DVD.

Caslon ‘g’

Student and Caslon g from my Spring typography course [artnm 303] at American River College, Sacramento.

Class starts up again this Friday August 28, 2010. Waiting list is full. Can’t teach everyone.

It’s gonna be an unavoidable ‘that teacher’s an asshole’ session.

Self portrait by Samantha Costanilla

‘hy’ ligature

New type concept: The ‘hy’ typographic ligature. Developed by former student Holly Rabayda-Wickland.

Drop cap(puccino)

‘Hand sprinkled cinnamon’

Snapshot by student Rikki Morehouse. She went thru several cups of coffee til she got them serifs right.

(Hedline written by former student Devon Cloutier)

Metal Spiekermann!

Isla Waite’s extremely heavy, laser cut student final from my most recent experimental typography course. Her research subject was Erik Spiekermann.

No digitally-made drop shadows here.

Type Munching Dinos by Tiffany Valdez.

Stephen Fry and the Guttenberg Press


Part one

‘Fry travels across Europe to find out how Gutenberg kept his development work secret, about the role of avaricious investors and unscrupulous competitors and why Gutenberg’s approach started a cultural revolution.’

Stephen Fry loves design. That’s one of the reasons he’s really cool. [Read more →]

Me give talk: Being a teacher, the ‘idle youth’

So I’m pretty much out the door right now – driving down to TypeCon.

And this Thursday morning I’ll be speaking as an ‘icebreaker’ in the Type & Design Education Forum. I’ll be going over a bunch of things I’ve learned while teaching; things that I’ve discovered work very well in a creative classroom. [Read more →]

‘Tower Bawher’

‘The film’s title is an allusion to Tatlin’s Tower. This animated short by Theodore Ushev is like a whirlwind tour of Russian constructivist art and is filled with visual references to artists of the era, including Vertov, Stenberg, Rodchenko, Lissitsky and Popova.’

Brilliantly done! From 2006.

TypeCon next week, Wood Type today

‘We’ll explore the hot button topic of web fonts; antique type and lettering of the textile trade; the typography of Disneyland; making smart fonts even smarter; the influence of Charles Eames; liquid typography; west coast ‘Cholo’ style graffiti; and so much more.’

typecon 2010: babel
Big typography conference next week in Los Angeles. Wood Type preview in Carson today. Designer talks, workshops, dealer room, font makers, stuff.

and me
I’ll be giving my first ever TypeCon talk as part of their Type & Design Education Forum. My title is Tell Lies in the Classroom and Get Away With It. It will be as weird as what I normally do in a classroom.

Promise. [Read more →]

Arial: ‘Bullshit’

Did Arial kill Helvetica? Or is it just bullshit?

Australia-based Hungry Beast correspondent Marc Fennell thinks it’s an ‘usurping bitch.’


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