Spreading the Word

The students in my Graphic Design Capstone class have taken on a exciting new challenge. We’re developing both a new website for the Graphic Design Program at Colorado Mountain College, and a series of teaching aid posters that we’ll be mailing out to high school art and design teachers this summer. Of course, the posters will serve as a recruiting tool for the program. The topic of the first poster is the history/development of typography and graphic design. We’ve got some modifications to do, but the basic design is shown above. The topic of the second poster in the series is a glossary of print production terms, and the topic of the third poster is the mathematics of design.

Earlier this week was campus Visitation Day, where prospective students explore the campus, sit in on classes, and have a chance to talk with current students, faculty, and staff. I had the opportunity to spend time with several students from the Denver and Colorado Springs area who are interested in studying high in the Rockies instead of staying on the plains.

I also met with a current student from Ohio, who is going to transfer into the Graphic Design program for the upcoming fall semester. He’s very excited about the new classes he’ll be taking: Introduction to Computer Graphics, Art History, Drawing I, and 2-D Design. In speaking with this student, I found out that Colorado Mountain College has a lot of students from other states. They choose CMC not just for the idyllic location, but because the tuition costs are very competitive compared to most other colleges and universities. CMC prides itself on offering the lowest tuition rates in the state.

Elsewhere in the program, my Typography & Layout class students are learning about typographic hierarchy, and my Adobe Illustrator® class students are exploring the gradient mesh tool. The students in the Drawing I and Drawing II classes had their first session with a nude life drawing model, who was very gracious about the ad hoc posing platform we arranged. The students in the Illustration I class are working on an illustration for a cookbook cover. The Graphic Design II students are working hard on projects that will likely end up in their portfolios. Students in the Design and Concepts class are learning the inner workings of Adobe InDesign® and designing a coffee table book, and the Digital Photography I students are developing still life lighting skills.