jamin.org

Okay, so it?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s day three of design school, and I?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢m writing about it yet again. Today I felt even more excited about the path that I’ve taken. I?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢m learning stuff and it’s fun. I doubt I will keep up my blogging about the coursework, but I don’t think I really want to, because as I said before, it’s been done.

We?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢re working on a piece of content that?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s referred to as Richard L. Gregory. The content announces some lectures being given by the aforementioned individual. And apparently, this piece of content has been used within the School of Design for years, or longer.

I took away some great insights today, but I?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢m not going to get into all of them. But I will say that I really dig the difference between logic and visualogic: what might make sense logically may not make sense visually. I?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢m a pretty logical person, so I see that as a challenge.

I also learned more about InDesign today. Being that I have a strong software background, it has not been too difficult to pick up. My major complaint is it seems rather cumbersome when it comes to styling large bodies of content. Perhaps it?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s my inexperience, but I did ask the instructor about it and she agreed that it?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s a bit tedious. Maybe I just want it to act more like CSS.

Today I was introduced to the idea of typographic hierarchy and visualogic, which was defined as the cognitive relationship between any two lines and groups of text, and the way those relationships are reflected visually.

I also received my first assignment meant to explore typographic hierarchy. After years of arranging text into meaningful and digestible chunks of information in poetry and on the web, it’s fun and fascinating to get some formal training as to why certain things work, and why others are—as stated by my instructor—dumb.

We also went around the room and introduced ourselves. I kept mine pretty brief.

My name is Jamin, and I have no pets. I have lived in Pittsburgh for the past three years where I have worked as a web developer for the University of Pittsburgh. I am in the interaction design program.

The pets thing was in response to the instructor’s introduction of herself. Obviously, my introduction wasn’t very exciting. I went for efficiency. But afterwards, I realized by being efficient, I was also being boring, and not really letting people know who I was and what my experience has been.

Perhaps I am being too harsh on efficiency. I could have still been efficient and concise, as I was in my CMU application:

I am currently a web developer for the University of Pittsburgh. I also started my own web design and consulting company in early 2005. I have a degree in English Writing with a concentration in poetry. I have been a journalist, an editor, a web producer, and now a web developer and business owner.

And I have no pets!

And I love cake!

And sprinkles.

After having met a dozen or so of my peers and spoken to them individually about backgrounds and experience, I feel a slight sense of dread when they ask about me. I’m not sure if it’s because I feel there’s too much to tell, or that they don’t really want to hear everything and therefore I’ll have to censor myself, and where do I draw the line—or if I just don’t really want to talk too much about me because somehow I have come to think that talking too much about oneself is a bad thing. Maybe it is, but it seems I sometimes take the opposite extreme and say too little.

Something to work on.

This also reminds me of something on my to-do list: create an about page for this site. I’ve been putting this off because I have a difficult time talking about myself.* (Did I already say that?)

*Also note that sometimes I have no problem talking about myself due to my habit of being a self-conflicting human. See this blog for details.