Classes this semester and my impressions of them after about 3 weeks:

Graphic Design I

I'm... not entirely certain what we're learning in this class. Our first project was to draw a cube and combine it with a letterform and color to evoke one of 6 words. Hopefully I'll learn some good stuff, but right now I'm just... confused??

Production Design II

Holy crap, lots more work than I thought it was. But awesome! So awesome. I had 50 sketches due a couple weeks ago on poster concepts, and it was significantly more difficult than I thought it would be... but a really good exercise. It's good to know that the more I toss an idea around and mull it over the more cohesive and better I can design it. Kind of common sense I guess, haha, but still important. I think I'll like this class... even if it moves a little slowly.

Portfolio

This class is going to be vital. I never knew that so much consideration had to go into crafting your portfolio. My idea of a portfolio was "put some pictures on a usb drive I guess???" but aaaa there's SO MUCH more. Our proposals are due on Tuesday, so I'm going to be researching typography and other things for the weekend.

Digital Portfolio

Basically the same class as Portfolio, but it expects us to have already completed portfolio. Whoops. Fortunately, the same prof teaches both classes, so he understands my situation. In a way, it's good that I'm taking them simultaneously, because it means they'll be very cohesive. It's also bad because it means a lot of guesswork and extra work and thinking through everything at once. Intimidating. But sweet, I get to design my own portfolio website with input from a legit graphic designer. \o/

Worldview Development

First exam on Thursday, aaaaaaa;; This is a really interesting class so far. We're tackling all of the things nobody ever talks about, like sign gifts and the Holy Spirit etc etc. It's always super interesting, and the teacher has really neat perspectives on everything. The readings are kind of hard, and we have to have out of class discussions of them which takes a lot of time, but I think I\'m going to learn a lot and enjoy it.

Advanced Web Design

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa all my love aaaaaaaaaaaaaa
First project was a CSS Zen Garden reskin!! I made mine about tea. Eeheehee. <3 I'm going to love this class p much. We\'re going to learn javascript basics so we can implement jquery at the very end eeeeeeee!!

Web Development

WHOA DATABASES. WHOA QUERIES. WHOA THE INTERNET MAKES SENSSSSSEEEEE;;;
It's a pretty chill class; Not so much homework to overwhelm, just enough to learn something important each week! We are going to build a twitter-like application called ProfWatch for our final project. I am excite.


So yeah. Awesome classes are awesome p much. <3

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until I have a shiny diploma in my hands, barring extenuating circumstances (ie inability to find an internship, sudden death and/or maiming, etc).

But that means I need to survive these last two semesters! Easier said than done, especially this semester. Although I only have a measly 16 credits this semester - the fewest I\'ve had since... what, freshman year? - they are nearly all studio classes. Five of them are for my major - Graphic Design 1, Production Design 2, Advanced Web Design, Portfolio, Digital Portfolio. One of them is supposedly for my technical writing minor, except that it is about PHP and MySQL hahahahaa. Ha. The other is Worldview Development for my Bible minor, so there is a lot of reading.

I\'ve had all of them except for Digital Portfolio at least once by now... and man, I\'m gonna die this semester hahahaa. ha. haha.

Still, I think I\'m really going to enjoy it. Last semester at the end I suddenly remembered why I was an art major and started drawing left and right and now I\'ve got this huge interest in typography and design and everything and it\'s like whoa, wait, where did this come from??? I think I am going to be a web designer and developer when I grow up, which is good because people need those, oh gosh do people need those. I was looking at some design firms\' websites the other day, poking around for internship opportunities, and some of these sites were just absolutely hideous, I would not intern at the company if they paid me bad.

But, in any case, these classes are shaping up to be so many kinds of awesome, and I am pretty much in the perfect mindset to be taking them right now, especially having just come out of typography. I wish I\'d taken typography years ago, except that I\'m not certain I would have appreciated it as much back then. The whole \"HOLY CRAP TYPOGRAPHY IS BEAUTIFUL AAAAAA\" craze happened kind of recently, and I\'m not certain if it was because of the typography class, or if the typography class just fanned the tiny hiding flames.

Either way, here I am, reading typography books and surfing dribbble and searching #typography tags on tumblr for fun. I feel like a different person.

But I still don\'t feel like a designer, haha. At least not a designer like the other people who go here. Every time I\'m in a class for my major I feel severely out of place. I guess I\'m more of an illustrator than a designer on the inside.

There\'s niches for that, though, I think? I\'ll find out I guess... and my teachers don\'t seem to dislike the stuff I turn in so maybe I will pick up the rest of this design stuff some day and stop feeling like a fish in a land of birds.

ANYWAY.

I\'ll update this post after another week of classes, after I have a better idea of what they\'re all about.  A lot of them only meet once a week, so we haven\'t gotten into any sort of content yet.

I\'ll also probably start posting more student work. I think this semester I\'ll be making things that are actually interesting to look at, maybe? We\'ll see.

Thanks for sticking around even when I don\'t produce much to look at! If you want slightly more consistent updates, definitely check out my <a href=\"[link]\">tumblr.