Did you ask him if he DIDN’T have lots of kerning? He’s obviously a lousy typographer and he’s to ignorant to learn the software. I can’t believe that. That is rediculous.

He’s never heard of H & J’s? He’s never seen a gorgeous book from Hartley and Marks? Or Hyphen? Or David R. Godine? Does he use Bringhursts Elements? Has he ever seen a book? Has he ever seen a piece of classical literature?

I feel brilliant compared to this guy. Well, your homework should be easy right. Just wipe with a couple pieces of paper, bind them together and put them on his desk, he’ll probably praise you as a genius.

This just makes me angry. I’ve had a few teachers that talk like they know about things they actually dont, but this guy takes the cake.

If you’d be so kind to your classmates and recommend to them, James Felici’s Complete Manual of Typography and regard anything he says with a grain of salt.

*When you’re done with him for good, file a formal complaint with the school, and include TP threads to back you up. * You could learn more from that book in a week.

And from under which rock did this creature crawl out from under, and why doesn’t he return there post-haste?

I wouldn’t waste my time or patience going to class: mail in the assignments, read Felici (or any of the other books we toss out around here), and move on.

In the immortal words of Kenny Rogers, that well known philosopher:

You got to know when to hold ’em
Know when to fold ’em
Know when to walk away
Know when to run.

You know what I love most about reading things other people write about their design schools?

It makes me appreciate mine.

Make sure that when it comes time to turn in your course evaluation that you add a detailed letter explaining just what a nutbag this guy is.

You could learn more from that book in a week.

Ha! That’s so funny, because that is EXACTLY what I did for one of his classes! He teaches the web design class at my school, but I had a feeling he was teaching web design circa 1998. I asked him if you could design an entire web page NOT using tables, and he responded, “Why would you want to do that?”

So I went and found the greatest book on web design I’ve ever seen, the Head First Guide to XHTML, sat down at Barnes and Nobles for about 8 hours reading almost the whole book, then proceded to prove him wrong by creating a thoroughly modern webpage sans tables.

8 hours at Barnes and Nobles Vs. A Quarter of Web Design? Should have saved my money.

The sad part is that this guy is the advisor for graduating students in the design program.

One other comment about using justified type:

After his ridiculous comment about Gutenburg having lots of kerning, he did admit that you could justify text if you were an expert and you wanted to spend inordinate amounts of time going over every line of type. But WE should never use justification because the average secretary is only going to butcher it.

Idiota!

Where the hell do you think people learn how to become “experts?”

AT SCHOOL FROM TEACHERS WHO ARE SUPPOSED TO KNOW WHAT THE HECK THEY ARE TALKING ABOUT!!!

Are you saying that at the end of our program we will be no better at setting type than a secretary?

Dear Lord, where are my transfer papers?!

Well teach, if you ’teach’ us something as your title implies, maybe we wont be ’secretatries’

Transfer papers? Get right on it.

Is he talking about designing a guideline or template for use by secretaries or non-typographic professionals? His point might be valid if that is the case.
Tim

I assume this “teacher” works at Shoreline Community College. I hope the other faculty you have are giving you something of value. The community college here in Northern Virginia is quite good and they have a pretty rigorous hiring policy for faculty. I assume your “never get to heaven” guy must have slipped through the cracks somehow. I hope you can inform the Board of Regents (or whomsoever is in charge there) at Shoreline of your opinion of this person’s teaching and do the next class a favor.

ChrisL

Is he talking about designing a guideline or template for use by secretaries or non-typographic professionals? His point might be valid if that is the case.

No, he’s talking outright end designs by us, the students. WE shouldn’t use justification, ever. WE shouldn’t use drop caps, ever.

He must work for Microsoft in their MS Word division. ;)

But yeah, the other teachers here are really good. The entire Visual Communications program is pretty good overall. But this teacher, I have to assume, was hired because of technical prowess with Macromedia and Adobe products.

But this teacher, I have to assume, was hired because of technical prowess with Macromedia and Adobe products.

Ouch. That’s exactly why I always tell freshman and sophomore students to never take a Photoshop class and to just buy Classroom in a Book instead.

On a related note, last semester I had a web design class by a first-rate designer/web developer/UI developer. Unfortunately the curriculum he had to teach us had not been updated since HTML 4.0, so most lectures went something like this:

“Ok, open up Dreamweaver and create an X by X table. Now stick the images into it. Now go through the image map tutorial. Once you’ve finished this, remember to never, ever design a web site like this. God I hate this curriculum. Whoever put this class together was an idiot.”

“Ha! That’s so funny, because that is EXACTLY what I did for one of his classes! He teaches the web design class at my school, but I had a feeling he was teaching web design circa 1998.”

*ALL* ’web design’ classes are circa 1998 in terms of what is being taught. I have yet to find a reputable web design syllabus outside of perhaps a few arts colleges that have rather robust ’new media’ programs.

Darrel, I have a friend who studied at the Dublin Institute of Technology and he had good training. I am sure there are others, what about this.
This is a very interesting thread, Dan, and you made me smile opening with “Well, he’s at it again.” And I am glad to read your attitude/reaction as a student. Don’t give up for those small things.

*ALL* ‘web design’ classes are circa 1998 in terms of what is being taught. I have yet to find a reputable web design syllabus outside of perhaps a few arts colleges that have rather robust ‘new media’ programs.

I blame the W3C; if XHTML wasn’t so obtuse, people who have time to wrap their heads around coding for the web might also have time to teach. Say what you want about tables, I’ve never met someone who had more trouble learning tables than DIV tags. I’ve also noticed that schools don’t seem to have much trouble keeping their Flash curricula up to date.

Just between you and me... only the great teachers provoke thought and action.

_________
Hiro

>I’ve never met someone who had more trouble learning tables than DIV tags.

It’s vice versa, especially for beginners. A table in a table in a table etc. This brings totally confusing markup. If a beginner tries to keep the layout neat... there are not much problems with css. Especially if a teacher with profund knowledge in semantic markup and css is on his side.

PS.
Beginners should use a “simple” codeeditor instead of Dreamweaver and such.

Our class was a Dreamweaver class. And I’m sorry, WYSIWYG doesn’t mean jack when you’re used to InDesign or even Pagemaker.

I was having the hardest time trying to figure out all of the tables and all the extra code, and HOW DO I GET IT TO DO WHAT I WANT IT TO DO. Is that too much to ask for a supposedly WYSIWYG program?

That’s why I went and got the book, which not only tells you what to do, it tells you WHY you need to do it. Purely semantic mark-up using XHTML Strict and CSS. Oh, and it teaches you to use TextEdit for all of your coding.

It makes more sense for me as a designer, honestly. I can rough out the entire page by hand in picas like any other design, then the coding is purely spec’ing everything out in ems. It’s like what I suppose designers had to do way back in the day when they didn’t do their own typesetting.

It allows me to focus on what I want to do, rather than what I can do. And, it means that my design will be better because I don’t start off on the computer.

Beginners should use a “simple” codeeditor instead of Dreamweaver and such.

Yup. Everywhere I look I see Dreamweaver classes, when the schools should be teaching XHTML/CSS and BBEdit.

I was having the hardest time trying to figure out all of the tables and all the extra code, and HOW DO I GET IT TO DO WHAT I WANT IT TO DO. Is that too much to ask for a supposedly WYSIWYG program?

XHTML doesn’t make that easy to do, at least not without limiting the user to a lot of carefully locked-down templates. This is why I expect Flash to eventually surpass XHTML/CSS: Macromedia was already doing a lot of great stuff with stylesheets, dynamic content, and database connectivity. Once Adobe’s engineers have overhauled Flash and Flex to be more user-friendly I expect that Flash will be the solution to everyone’s XHTML and browser compatibility woes.

Absolutely correct, Dan.

Back in the bad old days (mid-90s), when WYSIWYG web programs were so clunky and code was bloated, everyone on a Mac used BBEdit: I’ve since switched to TextEdit, although I admit that when doing tables (where one is needed), I still fire up Dreamweaver and then trim the unnecessary bits out by hand. :-)

AAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!

Hmmm, nice use of typographic colour, Mr Gayle. Like it.

Very interesting for me to hear both about syllabuses and experience of WYS (IS NOT) WYG web editor programs.

As I said another time, you should think about studying elsewhere.

As for this guy is the advisor for graduating students in the design program frankly that explains a whole bunch of stuff. Just ’cos you don’t think it’s ’political’ doesn’t mean it isn’t... institutions are the same the world over in some senses.