Typography Nerd

I made it to work today at 8:30, which is the earliest I’ve been in since coming back from San Francisco. This is good — I need to get back in the habit of coming in at a decent hour so that I don’t have to work till 6:00 every day!

Last night I had my second graphic design class. We talked about typography and I learned neat facts such as why letters are referred to as “uppercase” and “lowercase,” why old newspapers had columns that were a certain width, and why the space between lines is called “leading.” (The answers are, in order, because the printing press letters were stored with capital letters in the upper drawers and little letters in the lower drawers of a case of letters, because the linotype machine output lines of type in specific widths, and because space between lines was set with strips of lead.) My professor said that the information in last night’s lecture bored most people, and that if it excited us we’d make good typographers. Well, I guess I could be a typographer because I found it all extremely interesting. He mentioned that Houston actually has a Museum of Printing History, so I will have to check that out.

We got our second assignment, which is to create a typographic picture or design. I have a lot of ideas and I’m not sure which I’m going to go with. Because we don’t have class next Monday (Labor Day), I have two weeks to play around.

Two classes down, and I know it’s only two classes, but they have both been cool so far. We meet for three hours (7:00-10:00), and I haven’t gotten bored at all yet. It makes me wonder: “hmm, did I ever enjoy an aerospace class? Could I have even survived a three hour aerospace class??” I know I did enjoy some of them, and I know I went to three hour lab classes, but it’s hard to remember now.

I’d been on the UHCL campus a few times before, and it always seemed very emtpy and rather desolate. As a result, I didn’t have a very high opinion of UHCL — it was just that college nearby. But now that I’m there for a class, and I guess at a more normal class time, I’ve noticed that the small campus is packed. The enormous parking lot is actually full. There are people walking around everywhere, with backpacks and iPods and hurried looks on their faces. It’s so bizarre — it really does feel like a college. It really does feel like I’m a student again. I sort of like the feeling.

Tomorrow evening I’m leaving for six days in the Pacific Northwest (Seattle, Mt. Rainier, Olympic peninsula). I just got back from San Francisco and Yosemite and now I’m headed away again. This trip really snuck up on me — we’d been talking about it forever and I was in charge of planning, but due to work circumstances, we didn’t actually have a final count of who, and how many, of us were going until about two weeks ago. Final verdict: Jen M, Gavin, myself, Ian (friend from co-op days who works at JPL now) and Jen O. We’re also seeing a baseball game on Thursday afternoon and Irwin‘s going to come along for that. We still don’t have a true plan, and don’t even have campsites reserved or chosen for Saturday, Sunday, and Monday nights, but I’ve been assured that all will go well. The two Jens are familiar enough with the area so once we get out there I will probably leave destination suggestions to their capable hands.