Welcome to Room557

Ode to a pencil

Most of my students know that the Papermate Sharpwriter is my favorite pencil to sketch with — so much that I hand them out in my onsite branding classes. I ran across this video today — apparently other folks share my passion... Adam and I love this tool for exactly the same reasons. And the last box I bought I thought the same thing about the color (see video). It's also nice to see other folks go on tangents on screen.

It's still the best pencil out there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLwo1kOcwxs

When the train is leaving the station

It's past midterm — are you keeping up with your schedule? Sure, you might be running at full-steam, but are you set to reach each station (module) on time? Time management is a crucial part of the educational process.

Remembering that education is a process — not a destination — is a crucial element to keep in mind.

If you're behind on your assignments, what do you do? If the train is leaving the station, but you're late to arrive on the platform, is it reasonable to expect that you'll be on it? We're here to help, but it's crucial that you keep a few things in mind — and be flexible with your expectations.

[If the train is about the leave the station, but you're late to the platform, is it reasonable to think that you'll be on it?]

 

Selecting Type (vs. Dying)

When I moved to San Francisco in the late 90s, I thought it'd be cool to buy — and drive — and old pickup... a 1953 Ford F-100. It was cool and all, but it almost killed me.

Take a look at the below video in which I compare that old truck to Futura and try to convince you to start to look at typefaces made during your own lifetime. While there's nothing wrong with old typefaces (and we should celebrate them for their historic value), there's likely been something designed more recently that might work better on screen, or over a wide range of deliverables.

link: https://vimeo.com/877641030

Areas of Concern + Clauses of Causation

One of the most useful tools in communications design is an Audience Profile exercise — defining who you're talking to is an important step in reaching them. However, too often, these personas are hollow and mostly meaningless.

Who cares if you like to buy organic produce or have three credit cards if (1) it has nothing to do with your brand and (2) we have no context for why you have three credit cards. For instance, you might have three credit cards because (a) you got a promotion at work and are flexing your spending power ... or (b) because the first two cards are maxed out and you still have to feed your kids even after you've been laid off. These are very different things here, but both from the same hollow trait.

In my classes, I'm prototyping two ideas to help alleviate this: Areas of Concern and Clauses of Causation (CCBYNC).

I've cut a video explaining it all here

Week Sixteen

We run fifteen week semesters. Week sixteen is always interesting. Week sixteen is when final grades are due — and it is when students who haven't paid attention all semester get anxious about why they're not receiving a passing grade in a class. The good thing is that there's never a lot of these instances, but they're always the same. "I tried hard" ... "I made just one mistake" ... "It's not fair for you to punish me" ... "But I need to graduate next semester".

I've written a lot about grading and the idea of results versus effort, but I've begun to describe grading a bit differently.

Grades are not something an instructor gives to you — they are something that a student earns. Assessment (grading) is a very objective measure against known standards — including following assignments; timely participation; and, submitting complete materials by the stated deadlines.

This semester, Sylvester Stallone dropped some additional wisdom via his show Tulsa Kings.

Fund your bliss...

[Update: 09/22/2022 ... 7 years later!] ... Apparently Mark Cuban agrees!

[Screenshot from the inbox this morning ... Thanks, Phil!]

[Originally published 12/09/2015] We've all heard the mantra: Find your bliss ... the missive that commands you to find your passion, chase it down (and -- generally -- find a way to make it your job).

In a lot of ways, this is a bad idea, and I've recently been counseling my students to, perhaps, fund their bliss instead. Find a job you like and that you're good at. It should be one that pays you enough in one way or another so that you can afford to chase down your passions after the 9-5 job. This has a few benefits:

Everything has a name

One day, my kid goes to step on a bug. I said: You can’t smash Randy!

… and he looks at me with some quizzical stare. Who’s Randy? he asks. I reply: The bug! Everyone knows Randy. Randy, why are you out of the garden? You should go back! Do you need some help? … and my kid picks up the bug he was going to smash and escorts it to a nearby leaf.

[File under: Things that make me happy as an Instructor... in this case Heather's graphic avatar, Sgt. Twinkle]

The Wine Mom Font

It's no secret that your instructors — including myself —have a value-based point-of-view about aesthetic things that surround us. That's our job: to maintain a level of aesthetic and functional appropriateness and pass that along to our students. We are in one of the professions where "being judge-y" is part of the job. That's what you're paid to do: to have an experienced point-of-view and hopefully charge handsomely for that.

To that point, the ubiquity of things on the internet — whether it is free mock-ups or free typefaces come into play... enter: The Wine Mom Font. I did not name it, but was keenly aware of it even before it was parodied on national TV.

Can you separate the art from the artist?

It's no secret among my students that I'm not a fan of Gill Sans.

I speak openly about the topic to my students, but this semester, I had the time to codify it. My ire for Gill Sans is three-fold:

How can I improve my grade?: 10 steps to improvement

We often get the "How can I improve my grade?" questions at at grading periods. It's not that hard for the most part:

1. Submit your assignments on time.
2. Submit your participation elements early.
3. Ensure your assignments are complete.
4. Ensure your assignments meet the assignment parameters.
5. Review at the examples provided — learn from them: be inspired, but don't emulate.
6. Listen to your instructor critique: "applying feedback to improve your work" is a grading point. Get on that.
7. Listen to all of your peer-critique: absorb > synthesize > apply ...
8. Watch all of the requisite videos and read all of the relevant posts: leverage that wisdom.
9. Ensure your projects are complete, meet parameters, and are on time... Did i mention that one already?
10. Ensure your projects leverage what you've learned in your previous classes — these baseline learnings are table-stakes. We can't re-teach Type-1 in Type-3, for instance... it's a given that in Type-3, you're doing all of what you learned in Type-1 and Type-2 and building on that. Otherwise, you're literally not evolving... growing... learning... thriving.