ESP Biography

This class will be the first of a three-part introduction to graphic design, with an emphasis on the thought process that goes into making something look great, rather than the technical skills required to carry a good design out (which will come in the second part). We will go over things like balance, choice of typeface, use of color, stylistic decisions, fitting the design to the content, seeking out originality, and other choices that a graphic designer must consider over the course of any project.

In this hour, we'll go over some basic skills in the repertoire of the graphic designer, both in digital and non-digital media. We'll do various things by hand, then briefly go over the Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign programs in the Adobe Creative Suite, and talk about how the particular medium you choose informs the actual content of the work you make, as well as the process.

In this two-hour finale, you will be able, using whatever medium you choose, to work on a graphic design project suggested by the instructor, or one of your choice. You will use the ideas and skills discussed in the first two hours of the sequence as you make decisions and come up with a finished project.

We'll warm up a bit by drawing some letters of all kinds. Then I'll provide a short history of letterforms, alphabets and orthographies, from ancient times to the invention of the printing press and up to the most modern digital type design technologies, and give a very short introduction to the practice of designing a font. After that, you'll get a chance to start designing a font of your own, using some of the techniques that you've learned.

Do you live in a city? How often have you wanted to change the way your city looks or feels? What would you do if you could draw yourself a brand new neighborhood to live in? How would you design it? In this class, you’ll get a chance to think about this question, and all sorts of other questions related to the ways cities are designed. The focus will be on the visual, and where the visual meets the practical: urban design and architecture, as opposed to the politics and economics of city planning. The class will be a mix of some history, some ideas, and a whole lot of drawing and participation… so come ready to think, and ready to visualize your ideas with pen and paper. It’s perfectly fine if you’re not very experienced with drawing… but you need to be willing to try, because we’ll do a lot of it, and it’ll be an important way for you to think about your ideas and communicate them to others. We’ll build up to a final project in which you’ll choose a part of a city you know that you want to redesign and start to think about how you’d redesign it.

Have you ever caught yourself thinking about what the perfect city would look like? Drawing it, maybe? This class will begin by looking at the history of imaginary cities, both utopian (meant to be perfect), dystopian (meant to show the downsides of utopian cities gone wrong) and in between. Some will look a lot like real cities; others will look absurd. Then, with the historical ideas fresh in our minds, we'll try our hands at our very own imaginary cities, and talk briefly at the end about some of the reasons real cities don't always look like utopian ideas.