Week 7 Summary

It seems as though the class has fallen into a routine. I wonder if most teachers feel this way about there classes half way through. Ours is as follows. Walk into class. Find seat. Make small talk. Gather at one work table to review work. Class critique. Leave class. Repeat.

The work, the commentary and the students ideas is what keeps the session engaging. So should anything change or is there any benefit to a consistent and comfortable environment? Is this type of experience helpful or realistic for the nature of design work? On one hand this is the students first “Advanced Graphic Design” course and they are still feeling things out. With that in mind, the critique and the discussion is really the most important aspect of coming to class. On the other hand I wonder what might be done to enhance their real world experience. Considering we are treating the class somewhat like a design firm where ideas are shared freely perhaps it would it make sense to treat it more aggressively. Maybe students should be responsible to pitch their concepts to the class rather then just push the papers around on the table. Maybe clients should actually appear on the first and last day of the project to judge or assess the assignments. I imagine it much like a Project Runway type show where there is the consistent panel of critics(teacher) and then their is maybe even a real client or guest teacher to give additional opinion—one who might be less attached to the projects. This is just an idea I had after feeling like the class period was a little ho-hum.

The class session went just okay. The work was good, fun conversation and nothing went really wrong. Students arrived with a couple great ideas, more good ones, and as usual the uninspiring ones as well. The students felt a little bored to me and maybe something needed to to give them fresh legs to finish out the semester. Reflecting on it now I wonder if a third of the classes absence had something to do with it. The dynamic was different without the full group and it may have hurt the experience for everyone. Their assignments for the evening were to refine their digital concepts from the previous week and to add the additional two ads that accompanied the first in the magazine or poster series. The finals would be due the following week.