Marie

Hey everyone. I was wondering if anyone had any favorite teachers there and why. Im in the process of picking out classes now for fall. thanks everyone.

The Nisbro

Western sucks. very few good teachers. Mrs. Johnson is a great math teacher...other than her, i wouldnt really recommend anyone...

Letze

Steve Huff, Communication Design Head Typography/Design Teacher. I spent less time doing my work and more time shooting the shit about rally cars and offroading. From what I hear though a good deal of people hate him lol.

Engineering Department and the Art/Design Department are the best, the rest I think are so so then again I have family friends teaching some of the more vocational training programs that are cool.

TNGChris

Haha,not sure if that's really the definition of a good teacher.

Letze

He taught tools concepts and techniques well in the starting classes but during com design he essentially walked into the room gave every one a design job from a fake company and threw a deadline. The best design got the best grade, the worst the worst grade.

it did a great job of weeding out those that weren't up to it and it was a great incentive for every one else to try hard to get a good grade knowing it wouldn't be handed to us. Personally I think I learned more about being more efficient and a better designer because of it. job style training, We even had competitions for actual design jobs that the school paid for.

I preferred my quad screen workstation at home to the single monitor macs they had in the lab which is part of why I didn't do much in class.

Cosmo

Jeff Scott was my Web Design II teacher. Diane Wolf was my Java teacher. Both get the thumbs up.

David Doughty is the Linux teacher. I know him outside of school and he's a great guy. I've heard he's a good teacher too...

What did you take Typography for? They want me to take it to work towards my Communication Design degree.

Letze

I have an associates (AAS) in communication design I'm taking the rest of the classes required for the bachelors upgrade to it.

Typography is the use of Type, to use it properly this teachers you to notice how type goes together and why. Type is an important part of graphic design that communicates :P Talk to Sue, Brian, Steve, or William in the Humanities building they can explain everything.

From the sounds you've taken the technical side classes already and not the art/design oriented ones.

In addition to your math english and elective classes you need to take the following for com design 3 drawing, 2 Intro Design, Intro Comp Graphics (in design), Photoshop, Illustrator, 1 Art/web Design, 1 General Design (packaging related), 1 Painting (oil or water color), 1 History of Design, 1 Portfolio class

Cosmo

I know what typography is. I've been a graphic designer for 21 years.

My biggest gripe is taking Photoshop and Illustrator classes. I've been using those two programs daily for more than 10 years. It was the same way with my Web Design classes. No offense to Jeff, but I could have taught those classes. My first class I just tested out of it. Never actually went to class. I hope I can do that with those classes too. It still kills me paying for a class that "teaches" me how to use a program I'm already fluent with.

So the Intro Comp Graphics class is using InDesign? That can't be right. InDesign is a page layout program (another one I've been using for years, except I'm still a Quark holdout).

I took several art classes with Brian many years ago.

Letze

They stopped teaching quark because its being dropped by most companies. The intro classes are for the most part a joke to any one with real design skill but its required to teach the new people the basic concepts. Talk to Steve and Sue about testing out, Bring in your work and talk to them about it. I don't know what to say about it man, but they'd be more than willing to work with ya. If you've worked with Brian I'm sure he'd be willing to vouch for ya.

Cosmo

Yeah. Companies are dropping Quark, but it's still worlds better than InDesign. I guess Quark doesn't have the marketing power that Adobe has...