Designers have lots of different kinds of styles. Im not a designer who puts on headphones and is content to zone out over a photoshop doc for hours. I am one of those designers who thrives on constant human interaction and feeds off verbal bursts of passionate brainstorming. I LOVE people. I LOVE people who LOVE design . I especially LOVE people who LOVE to talk about design and typography. Oh goodness, that is the trifecta I get really stoked about.

When CDIA at Boston University asked me about teaching a web design class at their campus in Georgetown, I had no hesitation in replying with an overwhelming “absolutely”. Hanging out with PEOPLE passionately perusing a career in the design field? That is a no brainer for me.

Well, of course my first class was more than hanging out, it was a fantastic experience that has reinvigorated my love of the creative web industry. The students who greeted me were already deeply entrenched in the design program. Before starting web design at CDIA students complete a very extensive graphic design curriculum, making them both knowledgeable and excited about typography, layout, and some design history. The enthusiasm that greeted me was an unexpected but delightful surprise, I found them inquiring about the typefaces and talking about their favorite fonts amongst each other. Hell yeah, the trifecta!

Since completing the class many people have asked me about it, and in short all I can say is that I LOVED it. There is a lot more to that, here are my 3 take-aways from my first teaching experience:

1) Teaching is really inspiring. Even though it makes me a lot more busy going to class and planning class, it is also a huge motivator to get off my ass and design more. I left each class with tons of fresh ideas and perspectives brought up by the students and all I want to do now is design MORE and better. Each class was a invigorating discussion and brainstorm, the kind that you leave and you say to yourself, “damn that is better than (insert your favorite vice here)“. Thats right folks, Web Design school is better than ________. THAT good.

2) Teaching web design is 100% dependent on practicing web design. Towards the end of class students filled out wufoo feedback surveys that I created, and it was interesting to find that there was a lot of value added to the content of the class by explaining concepts in real-life context. The class was predominantly structured around the design process, starting with research and user experience and then going in to visual design and brand, and ending with front-end development and build-out. The entire time we followed that process through an actual Viget project to put all of the steps in context to a real world situation. It proved to be very helpful. In addition to my previous example the web design industry is constantly changing, hell… if I skip my feed reader for a day I fall behind, so its hard to imagine what it would be like without actually being in the field.

3) Education in the web design field is evolving. When making my initial transition from print design to web design, a program like this one did not exist (that I knew of in the DC area) so I learned from my peers, blogs, books, and trial and error ( don’t forget that I am still learning ). Many things I learned the hard /long way, but I can skip a lot of the crap and just teach the most effective stuff to my students. Essentially they had a road map that many practicing web designers did not have in their learning process, so watching how quickly they picked things up that took me a while to learn was really gratifying.

Overall the experience was so positive I had to write a blog post about it. I appreciate the opportunity CDIA gave me, but also the enthusiasm that my students have. Sometimes when you stare at a computer screen day in and day out, and rely on twitter and CSS galleries as your main form of inspiration, you get stuck in a tunnel. You forget that rush of excitement you had as a student learning new skills, striving for those big ideas, and the feeling of loving design so much that you will go to great lengths to be able to actually make a living at it. Its an amazing thing to be a web designer and I open my eyes every morning and think to myself, “Wow, I get to be a designer today, and not just any designer… a WEB designer. That is Bad Ass.”

Pedestrian Type
This typography blog forces you to take notice of ordinary lettering that you may realize upon further investigation, is actually pretty extraordinary. With information overload in our lives today I love a blog that allows me to examine art i may have otherwise overlooked and gives me the chance to appreciate it on a whole new level.

The History of Avant Garde
Designed in the 60s, and released in 1970, Avant Garde is making quite the comeback these days. Maybe its my over exposure to Rockband (via Devklok) , but I see it popping up all over the place. Otherwise check out this site’s beautiful gradation of color over it’s four column layout. Fabulous.

Cat In a Military Tank
Shiiii….. now this is Bad Ass. I currently co-habitate with a cross-eyed Siamese cat who has the personality of Stewie from the Family Guy. She constantly plotting how she will take over the world, or just the apartment… this tank is so perfect. If you can, view the magnified image and check out the fantastic detail that someone put into this thing.

Vintage Magazine Covers
This fantastic flickr collection of vintage magazine covers is a wonderful source of inspiration. Exhibiting a wide range in styles from numerous time periods i felt like stumbling upon this collection was a real find.

Beautiful Surf Board
Ok, if you don’t know by now, I have a bit of a thing for sweet surfboard art. NY artist painted this intricate black and white pattern on a surfboard for her boyfriend, and it is just stunning.

Photoshop Shortcut Keyboard
I suck at keyboard shortcuts. Just about everyone i work with totally schools me on them… I like the mouse… or maybe I just need one of these skins for my keyboard.

My SXSW Typography Panel
Please go register and vote. Not because its my panel, and especially not because of this shameless plug… but because I hope to assemble the most badass group of motha-typographers out there and get them talking about type. Every year at SXSW I hope for some engaging Typography conversation, so this year I’m taking the initiative and try and make it happen. If you have 5 minutes please register and vote. I would really appreciate it. Thanks.

When I was in college I had an insane art instructor who challenged the class to go sneak out late at night unto the hip streets of Harrisonburg Va and engage in politically charged guerrilla art. While extra credit was an incentive, in my college years there were no motives for me to spray paint a mural inscribed “f- the Man” or drape some historical monument in a banner proclaiming some righteous agenda. At the time my belly was full of ramen noodles and getting to 9am classes was at the top of my list of concerns.

Since that experience my instructor’s passion stuck with me, at the time she was some crazy hippy in my mind, but since her challenge I have realized the power of public art. A genre that intrigues me because it takes as much balls at it does skill.

While watching current I saw a pod on Banksy that inspired me to learn more about his work. With a keen sense of satire, the work of this guerrilla artist has managed to catch the attention of millions around the globe. Banksy’ s specialty is exposing the irony in human nature without exposing his own identity. Using stealthy tactics the locations where he chooses to showcase his work are often as thought provoking as the story they are telling. From Israel’s West Bank Wall to New York’s Meterpolitan Museum of Art, a part of the creativity in his process is how he actually gets his work to where it is.

Shepard Fairy’s work, however I have known for sometime…. I just did not know I knew it. Here in the states Fairy began plastering images of Andre the Giant, the wrestler on buildings, stop signs, and spray painting sidewalks. Fairy was more intrigued with the sociology of public art and how it caught on as a trend, rather than its ability to influence people’s perceptions… that was until about a week before super tuesday. Taking a guerrilla approach to distribution Fairy printed up hundreds of posters of Senator Obama and plastered them everywhere he possibly could, bringing street art to the forefront of American politics.

So this brings us to this month’s Refresh DC where Ellen Lupton the author of DIY Design (and a ton of other fantastic design books) spoke on a variety of topics, but the one that stuck with me most was that of the accessibility of design. She brought up the new fad in self publishing and touched on the excitement of crafters reaching people via Etsy.com. Essentially anyone can be an artist or a designer the tools are right there. She said when she published her book there was backlash in the design community, people were afraid that she was giving away our trade secrets, why would anyone want to hire a designer if they could design it their self?

Lupton’s talk reminded me of a book that is collecting dust on my shelf “DIY Guerrilla Art”. Its true, a little piece of me wants to hit the streets of suburban Alexandria and spray paint signs to make mindless businessmen on their way to Cosi stop and think about health care. I mean, heck… I bought a book that tells me how to fold up a stencil so I can run from authorities more quickly. I have the instructions, I even have the passion, but what is it that keeps me from going all Banksy up on this piece? Probably the same thing that keeps all of those aspiring designers from ditching their day jobs and making custom business cards that are detailed in Ellen’s book. Sometimes the inspiration does not come fromactually doing it yourself, its the fact you know its there to do it if you really wanted to. One day maybe a mysterious mural will appear on a street sign overlooking I395 and I will be all tired and disheveled from running from the cops, but why when there are so many badasses who do what they do so well?