Lobsters, fine art and me....What an interesting trio. Last night's graphic design class was by far the most enjoyable - I am beginning to get into the "graphic designer" mood, and the only thing I am lacking is the skills :). I think the moment I decided I liked the class was when I realized we were all girls in a class of 20, and everyone looked unique in their own relaxed and creative way. I was so alien to this whole graphic design thing that when I enrolled, I had never heard of something called print design, and assumed all graphic design is digital and computerized. So imagine my surprize when in the first five minutes the instructor told us we would have drawing assignments - using liners, transparent paper etc. I was slightly disappointed because what I wanted to learn was not The Fine Art of Graphic Design (this was indeed the title of the class on the syllabus, apparently I had not paid much attention to it), but software programs used by graphic designers. Something like a class teaching Illustrator for Idiots. This never happened as we started the session discussing typography, the art of creating intelligent visual appeal through the use of letters, fonts, etc. It turns out, mastering the art of typography will help us design brochures and logos. To make sure I understood correctly, I asked the instructor at the end of the first class, and she confirmed this was "print design", and we were going to learn the basics of it. Now that I am in the middle of the course, I made a few friends and one of them told me she was equally surprized, but then a very good graphic designer/instructor told her that the class taught the essentials of true graphic design - the classic approach, if you will. Knowing how to be visually critical and alert is more important than knowing how to use Illustrator, and if you know all fonts from memory and where to use what font, then Illustrator will only be your tool, he said to her.
The next thing we will learn is colour codes, page layout and the print process. For now, I am busy drawing a logo consisting of the letters of a lobster. This is the last assignment our instructor handed out, and it tells all about visual creativity and fun: draw a lobster out of its letters, L,O,B,S,T,E,R. And if this is too difficult for some of us, we are allowed to use all letters in the alphabet. I picked the second option and the lobster is nowhere in sight yet.