My Typographic Reeducation: Part 1 of 11
Very recently it was brought to my startling attention that I have forgotten more about design than I currently know. The professional daily grind has whittled my knowledge and expertise down to a skill set; a bag of tricks from which I can pull out answers to easily solveable layout problems. As I work in advertising, my idea of design has been slowly transformed-without my knowledge-into a concept-over-form mentality from its original concept-is-equal-to-form set.
Starting tonight, I’m teaching (essentially) Type 101; the foundation for everthing that graphic design is built on, not to mention the remainder of my students’ educations. I’m doing it in 11 weeks, once a week, for five hours a night. Due to my recent revelation, I feel somehow unqualified to aptly teach this course.
An Aside: I went to the University of Nebraska at Kearney. It’s a design powerhouse school located in the center of nowhere. My professor studied design under none other than Phillip Meggs himself. That, I suppose, puts me two educational steps away from the man who literally wrote the book. I spent one solid year studying nothing but typography and, much like high-school French, I now feel like I have very little to show for any of it.
So I am going to do every homework assignment, read every chapter, do every book report-and maybe even the extra credit-for this class. I’m going to do them under the same constraints as my students, using the same materials. And every Friday morning, I am going to post the results of my labor here, and damnit I’m going to learn what it means to design again.
If I was brilliant, or even just snotty, I wouldn’t do this. But I’m neither; I’m just a real designer with real clients, where deadlines and bottomlines factor into my work as much as rulelines and guidelines. But the way you have to do this job is to take the project that’s in front of you and do it the best that you can every time. I believe I once did that better than I do now, so I’m going back to school to get it back. I’m writing about it here on the chance that I’m not alone in feeling this way.
March 9th, 2006 at 5:55 pm
I spent about 10 years in design houses, from desktop support through graphic design. Designer by osmosis; no formal schooling. I know exactly how it feels to feel like you’ve forgotten your education, having learned nearly everything I know from being immersed in the moment of the work itself and learning by example and trial-and-error.
In formatting Merryll Lynch annual reports, for example, I got hard lessons in typography from a ~60 year old man who could see a 1/10th point offset in a line of text or the kerning, who had never touched a computer and didn’t need to. I don’t know or care whether he had a formal design education or learned on-the-job doing paste-ups and plate printing. He had valuable skills, and ever more important, valuable critical input and attention to detail, that I could only hope to achieve.
Now I’m designing. I’d like (on occasion) to even think I’m a designer, but there’s the occasional nagging that I never went to Pratt or Parsons, that I’m getting a Psych degree instead (but I often ask myself, what is design but a visual form of psychology?).
I don’t think that you need to remember every trick in the book, and every facet of typography to be a designer. I think the psychology is the point more than the philosophy. Can you get inside the client’s head, anticipate the audience, and coax the medium to perform? Do you serve the message and evoke the desired reaction?
I think the classes and the theory are just that — classes and theory. Having your own methods and theories of application developed through your own style, talent, trial/error, and observation does not make you any less of a designer.
At the same time, after so much experience, you come back to the theory with so much more perspective, it will probably serve you much better the second time around. I would probably appreciate a graphic design curriculum in a way that no post-high-school grad could, and get a lot more from it (just as I do from my psych curriculum, having had the extra 18 years out of high school out in the real world analyzing real people).
You’re not a typesetter. Your knowledge is broader, and the active skillset is far less specialized. While aspects of typesetting and typography relate to your position, there are so many more things going on today for a graphic designer that we’re sacrificing that fine level of granularity and specialization to serve the wider — and, face it, less exacting — needs of our clients.
Good luck,
Criss
March 9th, 2006 at 6:15 pm
Nate, I am unclear as to what snotty and/or brilliant blogging ‚Äì unless you are implying that me, and the Speak Up authors, are all snotty designers with unreal clients? ‚Äì has anything to do at all with being “just a real designer with real clients”…
Seriously, wtf? Your post would have been exactly the same without that sentence… it is hopelessly gratuitous. And non-sensical.
Good luck with the type classes.
March 9th, 2006 at 6:32 pm
Well, the above comment might not have been had there not been links in that sentence… without the links, I have no problem with it. But I’ll admit I clicked them to see who you were name-calling (whether that was the intent or not).
That said – humility is a fundamental part of true greatness. Not that I’m great or anything, because I’m not (note the humility
but I congratulate you on your introspective honesty. Bust your ass and maybe you’ll give yourself a good grade. Will you grade yourself? Or perhaps submit your work to the class? The only teachers I remember for their teaching were the ones who admitted they were learning, too.
March 9th, 2006 at 8:37 pm
Glad to know I’m not the only one that has turned around, wondering where everything I’ve ever learned went.
meggs, eh? yet another book i need to re-read.
March 9th, 2006 at 8:47 pm
Maybe you can post your results and let the readers grade it! Anyway, it might be good for all of us to relearn some of these lessons as we watch you do this.
I also didn’t understand the slam on SpeakUp. No need to start fires for no reason.
March 10th, 2006 at 3:27 am
WTF seconded(thirded?).
This calls for some serious explanation, or a retraction.
March 10th, 2006 at 7:12 am
Oh for crying out loud, it was a little dig at Speak Up. Get over it, world. Fine. I’m the snot. But when I was considering this undertaking I thought ‘Maybe it’s just me. I’ve never heard anyone else talk about this. Michael Beirut wouldn’t need to do this, and I can’t imagine anyone at Speak Up feeling the need to do this.’ And then I thought, ‘oh, wouldn’t it be funny‚Ķ’
I suppose it wouldn’t. On a more positive note Armin, Jim Lasser’s writing is gold. I’ve become quite a fan.
March 10th, 2006 at 9:05 am
Sweet! Regardless of what ever any one else here says, I’m all for seeing the lessons and hearing/reading about your experience. Plus I hope to learn something along the way as well.
Can’t wait to see the first one!
March 10th, 2006 at 9:41 am
Thanks! You’re right, everything I do is going up here (and it all starts with hand-drawn type). So next week everyone who’s mad at me can tell me how much I suck. By week eleven I hope to know what I’m doing again. Hopefully my students will as well.
March 12th, 2006 at 6:21 pm
FYI, Nate -
Un-learning teaches valuable lessons as well.
A designer’s life is not as glamorous as some non-designers think. Meeting unrealistic deadlines with half the required budget for clients who swear their newphew in high school can design rings around you is why many seasoned professionals hit the wall at one or several times during their career.
The skill sets required to stay in business often run counter to truly innovative creativity. Learning how to deliver a “good job” on time and within budget IS A SKILL in itself. Finally, the “designer” inside you is no longer content doing “good jobs.”
Take heart. The talents and drive that made you take that “fork in the road” to be a designer in the first place, are the same attributes that can bring you the the “next level.”
Good luck. Looking forward to see you reach higher again.
March 13th, 2006 at 9:09 am
Just a quick second to your whole thesis on this post, sir…Having immersed myself in full-time design education finally and spent the many weeks staring students directly in the face trying to feel like I remember with any real clarity the many specifics and hard details of my own typographic / layout & design / etc. education, it’s immediately recognizable that you speak the truth – the day-to-day work has a way of positively pushing you past the foundational ABCs and 123s of design, but also has a way of allowing rigor and discipline to go by the wayside unless they’re tightly clung to…
A total hat’s off both to your diligence to experiencing your own curriculum in the same way your students will be and also to the chance to reinstate the rigor that professors likely inflicted for you when you were rising in the the ranks.
March 14th, 2006 at 3:08 am
Great idea!
Looking forward to following it, will you be posting the curriculum of your classes as well? Requiered reading etc?
March 17th, 2006 at 6:33 am
Did I say Friday? Surely I meant to say Monday. Monday it is.
March 17th, 2006 at 2:18 pm
Well, you said Friday so I hope the students got an extension as well, to keep with your “constraints”
March 17th, 2006 at 2:53 pm
Oh, snap!
March 17th, 2006 at 4:09 pm
Would love to re-learn along with you… reading and assignments and all. Any possibility you could post a mini-class?
March 20th, 2006 at 8:33 am
when are we going to see something? Have you decided to take this class just as a real student? Meaning, totally slacking off.
March 20th, 2006 at 9:08 am
Internet down this morning (Nebraska snow storm, check the Weather Channel). Back up now, story posted at lunch, with picture goodness.
March 27th, 2006 at 12:23 pm
I am looking forward to learning more about typography with you. Good luck teaching and learning with your class.