After confirming with Professor B I was welcome to join his class to fulfill my SCAD internship responsibilities I was both excited and uncertain of what was in store. I have ever only played the student in the educational setting. Other than participating in one Adobe software training seminar I have never truly experienced the role as instructor, let a alone professor of design. With these apprehensions I showed up on the first day of class after only briefly having connected with the Prof regarding schedules and logistics. He had assured me that I would be fine and that nothing would need to be prepared for day one as he wanted me to observe and learn before taking on too grand of a role. I thought this was both fair to myself and the enrolled students.
Advanced Graphic Design I meets once a week from 6:00 pm until 8:45pm every Tuesday night on the East Campus (40 minutes across town from where I work). It fits into the 4th semester of a 6 semester AS degree in Graphic Design. The course description is as follows:
“Addresses practical problems relevant to contemporary industry standards in graphic communication. Emphasis on producing layouts and comprehensives in black and white and color. Various up-to-date methods of camera-ready production utilized.”
Like many course descriptions I’ve read, this one fit the mold of being intriguingly vague. There must be some sort of rule for course description writers to be nebulous and indefinite. The great thing about these sort of descriptions however is that it gives the professor considerable rein. Week one is to fill in all the blanks, to clarify and to paint portrait of what will be expected.
Sixteen students showed up the first day of classes. I’m not sure why but for some reason I didn’t expect such a variety of ages, ethnicities and personal styles. Only a class picture would explain this sort of comment—we will see if that will ever happen later on in the semester. The class had a laid back feel to it as the professor casually spoke with students who had clearly taken classes from him before. After waiting for a short grace period for first day lost students the professor got right down to business.
Let me stop here and mention a couple things. Observing a class is drastically different than taking a class. Not having taught as of yet I would imagine it is quite different from that as well. It reminded me quite a bit of attending my undergrad classes however without any of the pressures they included. I could listen to the teacher and watch the students as they learned what was expected from them, the work they would most definitely be toiling over and the hours they would put in.
It was clear from the beginning of class that Prof. B was an experienced professor who had taught this class several times before. His understanding of students habits and past illustrations resulted in upfront explanations of both the syllabus and the projects. As he spoke he moved around the classroom. This movement encouraged peoples attentiveness, and also inspired their participation. The text book for the class, “Advertising Now. Print” by by Julius(Editor) Wiedemann (Author) was only brought to class by two pupils—inspiring the teacher to take time to describe the value of the book and the need for each student to have it by the following week. I saw merit in the steps he took to encourage each student to have access to their own copy. Prof. B went over the entire syllabus to clarify each section regarding attendance, due dates, late work, special needs, critiques, computer literacy, academic honesty and grades. After each section he was sure to ask students if anything needed clarification.
I noted something throughout the class, but specifically as he outlined the guidelines, conduct and decorum. Prof. B was sure to relate everything back to real-world applications. He was sure to relate how late projects were not accepted at all just as they would not be permitted in the actual client—designer relationship. I was somewhat surprised to see students expected at such an early stage to treat their class projects as client work and to conduct themselves appropriately.
Upon making it through the housekeeping formalities, the professor introduced the first project: a public awareness poster for a real issue. I say “real” issue because questions arose about the possibility of creating posters for zombies—again the “real-world” for designers was addressed appropriately. Building a strong portfolio is the ultimate goal of the program which is another reason students were encouraged to use a realistic topic. Using the textbook for examples, Prof. B defined for the class different elements that make an effective campaign poster. From arresting calls to action to compelling tag-lines and dramatic imagery the book had pertinent examples. For the following class each student was assigned to have 20 sketches created for their cause. He added some incentive for the students by clearly outlining the penalty for coming up short. Should anyone miss the amount, each student would have to create 10 more sketches.
Prof. B opened the class up for questions again before excusing the class and taking one-on-one questions.
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