small details of life that made me smile.

stefan sagmeister like bears and dislikes roy lichenstein.

milton glaser tried to smoke when he was younger, but he kept getting sick.

it rained last tuesday and steven guarnaccia was telling us that his socks had been wet all day. five minutes after this story, steven heller pops his head into the class and tell guarnaccia that he bought him some dry socks if he wants them. (heller and guarnaccia work together at the Times and guanaccia had probably told heller his dilemnia earlier in the day.) all i could think was how nice. i wish somebody would buy me socks when i need a dry pair.

okay. really off now to score that cupcake.

It can’t believe it is already October. This last month has gone by so fast. I guess that is what happens when you are doing something that you love. Photographers, designers and people who love their jobs have told me about weeks 14 hours days with such glee and bliss that I thought they were delusional. I always thought I could not be one of those people. I thought I wasn’t built that way. Now I find out I am. I happy trade a Saturday night out drinking and watching a show to figure out how to layout a book and what photos I should use. It’s awesome to be passionate about something again.

Don’t worry though. I haven’t become a complete social hermit. There are still nights of drinking, conversations and shows. This week I went and tried a fried octopus ball and went to a dive bar on the lower east side with Julia, mark and Lauren. We talked about projects, classes, teachers, the program, etc. nice to find intelligent people that I can relate too.
Later in the week, I went and checked out rainer maria at the mercury lounge with jeff. The music was beautiful. (image sleater-kinney like vocals with pop/rock underpinnings. Also a bit of Mates of State thrown in.) It made me miss playing my drums. And last night, I trekked out to Brooklyn for German food and beer with a handful of people from our program. Reminded me of what nights out in Chicago used to be like. Lots of good conversation mixed with tasty food and cold beers. Not much talk of school. Talk of German food, the transvestite waitress, 70s films and art films, hip-hop, windows and much more.

School is good. This last week was intense. We had two classes on Monday so we had eight hours of class. And the rest of the week was just as crazy. I had trouble concepting for milton’s class. We had to make a poster that would change someone’s behavior. (i.e.-spitting, littering, child abuse) I finally settled on people who don’t wear motorcycle helmets. It took me many hours and no sleep to finally get something down. Milton wasn’t convinced that my audience would we swayed by my poster, but he did like the design. Yea!

Here are the rest of the assignments:

Book class: take five objects and rename them. (I.e.-lipstick becomes sexual lubricant.) I picked five items from my purse; I have some of the names down just need a couple of more. Then I am going to package it all like a purse. We also did book binding this week. And last week we went to a book reading by our professor. Amazing.

Box class: presented our boxes last week. My boxed rock worked out well. I was happy with what I ended up with. This week he told us to come up with our own project for the rest of the semester that deals with the box. I think I might continue with my packed stone project. We’ll see.

Milton’s class: my menu went over okay. The items and the descriptions were good. I need to rethink the logo design and the menu layout.

Cd class: shot more photos with Lauren. Got some good stuff. Need to retype set the lyrics and do a couple more photos.

Web class: trying to learn dreamweaver. The program is annoying. I got frustrated and pissed at it on Friday. Will need to work on it more.

History of design: this week we discussed the swastika. How it was a good luck/happy symbol before the Nazis used it and can this symbol ever be taken back and be used as a good symbol again. Great class. All the lectures so far have been thought provoking and killer good.

Ross MacDonald came in last week and talked about his letter pressing shop in Connecticut. Super knowledgable. This week it was randy balsmeyer. He does tons of film titles and special effects.

Okay. I am tired and hungry. I want a cupcake. More later.