My Intro to Mac students are learning their way around Leopard, the latest version of Mac OSX. Actually, since it’s installed in the labs and not in our offices yet, I’m learning my way around it too. No need to fear! Apple has supplied a nice series of tutorials, beginning with Anatomy of a Mac. These online videos walk users through many of the features I’ll be discussing and demonstrating in class.

1. CGT 1030 Intro to Mac MW 10:45–12:05
2. CGT 2005 Graphic Design II MW 12:25–2:30
3. CGT 1110 Typography TR 10:45–12:05
4. CGT 1105 Graphic Design I TR 12:25–2:30

I’ll likely be teaching CGT 1911 Portfolio as well, but right now we’ve got low enrollment in that course—probably because students are unaware of it. Portfolio prepares students for the faculty portfolio review at the end of the first year. All students enrolled in Graphic Design I should also be in CGT 1911 Portfolio, which must be taken by majors before taking Design II. Help me get the word out! To learn more about Pellissippi’s CGT program, click here.

Exciting news: I’m proposing a summer 2009 program in the Netherlands. This week I met with Dr. Milton Grimes, director of the Tennessee Consortium for International Studies. I’ll be working closely with Dr. Grimes in the coming weeks and months to propose the program to the committee and plan the details of coursework and travel plans.

The Netherlands is a fascinating country full of art, graphic design, bicycles, canals and windmills. We’ll spend a month in the country, with two weeks each in Amsterdam and Rotterdam, where visual art professor Anne Kinggard will teach Art History and I will teach Typography. Stay tuned for updates. In the meantime, here’s a link to a slide show of Amsterdam Photos by Claudio.Ar. Here’s a YouTube video bike tour of Amsterdam, and here’s a video on the architecture in Rotterdam.

It’s been a tough week in Knoxville. Last Sunday an angry, alcoholic, unemployed Vietnam vet with a history of domestic violence fired 3 shotgun blasts in a Unitarian church, killing 2 and wounding 7 before the church folks tackled the shooter and put him in a martial arts hold until the police could take him away in handcuffs. (Hey—we liberals are peaceful, but we can put a hurtin’ on a gun-toting wingnut.)

According to police reports and a “manifesto” found in his truck, Jim Adkisson targeted the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church because he hates liberals and blames them for “ruining America.” Among the books found in his home were vitriolic liberal-bashing books by right-wing media spokespeople Pat O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, and Michael Savage. Police chief Sterling Owen says “We’re certainly investigating it as a hate crime.”

The shooter made threats against his ex-wife who took out a restraining order 8 years ago after he threatened to “blow her brains out.” He recently bought a 12-guage shotgun from a pawn shop. The law requires a background check to purchase a gun, but apparently a restraining order based on a death threat is not enough. Too bad—it might have saved two lives.

And why target Unitarians? Well if you’re a drunken homicidal maniac who hates liberals, you’d really hate these folks. They do horrible things like welcome gays and lesbians in their church, protest wars, and preach tolerance of gays, racial minorities, and people of other faiths. They’ve been at the forefront of liberal and progressive causes for decades, and are the perfect symbols for liberalism, God Bless them.

My daughter and I went to Monday’s memorial service at the Presbyterian church next door. There were 1000 people there. This morning my wife and I helped out at the TVUUC re-dedication service by working in the nursery with other volunteers from our church. There were so many people at this service that they spilled over into two other spaces and the service was televised.

The prayers of thousands have gone out to these folks and will continue to do so. If there is anything good that has come out of this ugly hate crime, it is that thousands of folks have reached out to support this body of believers, including Presbyterians, Catholics, Episcopalians, Muslims and Jews.

Now wouldn’t it be great if conservative talk shows like Michael Savage would condemn this crime and dial down the violent undertone in their rants?

It should come as no surprise to those who know me that I support the Obama campaign. Barack Obama’s persona, his platform, and his campaign all give me hope that America can regain its position as a world leader and champion of justice. It’s fair to say that I am a huge Obama fan. For the first time since I was twelve the candidate I voted for has won the primary and is now is positioned to win the election.

Today I got an e-mail about the Barack Obama Manifest Hope campaign. In part it said:

Barack Obama’s historic candidacy has sparked an unprecedented artistic outpouring. Now, in partnership with Shepard Fairey and his Obey Giant collective, we’re offering a new way for artists—anyone with a pen and paper qualifies—to share their talents and help elect Barack Obama at the same time

If you’re as excited about the campaign as I am, why not check it out?

I just got an e-mail from Teela, a former student who earned her Associates at Pellissipppi and is now getting her BFA at Watkins College of Art and Design in Nashville. She’s set up her portolio using Behance, and says:

Behance is a pretty cool network. Its similar to the Myspace setup but ya know, without myspace. Its free and a great way to get feedback and network with other creatives around the globe! Check it out.

Her work looks great, and I recognize a few projects from my courses. I like Behance’s portfolio, and it’s features are more robust than Carbonmade. Think of it as MySpace for designers without the messy layout and ugly backgrounds. I require all my Design I and Design II students to create an online portfolio as their final exam. I think this semester I’ll switch to Behance.

1. Think Free Online Fight Microsoft with an open source alternative. Use for spreadsheets, word processing, and slide presentations.
2. 4Shared 5 GB of free storage, and you can file share by folder. Sounds like a great off-site back-up solution.
3. Bluestring Another free storage site with e-mailed link option. Great for blogging.
4. Phasr This site makes photo collage postcards based using flikr and your words and phrases. Sounds like fun.
5. Flypaper Use this site and the free software to make flash-based projects including resumes, presentations and more.
6. URL Snooper Grab YouTube movies with this free download.
7. MeeVee This is TV Guide on steroids, allowing customizable listings, lots of information about shows, and (ta-da!) links to actual video content.
8. WeFi Find WiFi hotspots and track down friends and enemies based on their WiFi usage. Fascinating yet creepy.
9. FreeMind Map out projects and ideas. Interesting, veerrry interesting…
10. Pidgin Use Pidgin to instant message anyone on any service.
11. Make Me Sustainable Calculate your personable carbon footprint.
12. Talkshoe Group voice chats for folks with similar interests. Sounds like Yahoo Groups with voice.
13. Scrybe A free note-taking and calendar application in beta testing. Nifty.
14. Lala.com Upload your personal music collection and play it though any browser on any computer.
15. Feedshow A free news reader for Foxfire that scrolls the news items in your feed across the bottom edge of your browser.

I’ve always gotten a kick out of sleuthing out fonts, and identifont is supposed to make that much easier to do. I decided to use a sample from a magazine to test it. I started with the “identify font by appearance” link, and typed in the letters that appear in the sample word above. I read a series of questions, clicking on the best answers. Of course the questions and answers will vary according to each sample.

1. What shape is the lower-case ‘g’? Two storey (with or without gap).
2. Do the characters have serifs? Strokes have spiked/slab ends (serif).
3. Is the font suitable for body text? A readable font suitable for setting continuous text at small sizes.
4. What shape is the lower-case ‘e’ bar? Straight, horizontal.
5. Does the lower-case ‘g’ have a gap in the tail? No gap.
6. What shape are the serifs? Thinner than strokes, with brackets (Garalde or Venetian).
7. Are the character outlines smooth or corroded/jagged? Smooth/sharp.
8. Are the strokes upright or sloped? Upright.
9. Is the axis of the upper-case ‘O’ or lower-case ‘o’ inclined to the left? Axis curves are inclined to the left (Garalde or Venetian).
10. How many serifs on each of the lower-case ‘n’ strokes? Two, two.
11. Do the characters look handwritten? The character outlines are drawn with geometric precision.
12. Is the font fixed-width? Characters vary in width.

After 12 questions, identifont offered over 30 matches, with the first being Berling. By clicking on the font name on the left I could see a sample, along with design information and vendor links. The third sample was Bembo, which was a perfect match.

I’m impressed with Identifont. From the questions I was asked, it helps you find obscure font styles like grunge and bitmapped styles. I even learned what “Geraldine” and Venitian” mean, which I never knew. If you are trying to match a mystery font, I’d recommend Identifont.

I was in high school in 1981, and I got a part-time job shelving books at the branch library in Nashville. We kept back issues of magazines and that’s where I discovered Rolling Stone. While I was in the back reading about The Doors, I noticed the magazine’s masthead was drawn in 3D, which I thought was very cool. Inside were more examples of dramatic lettering.

Jim Parkinson was the guy responsible for much of the hand-lettering for the magazine. Parkinson is interviewed in this months Creative Characters newsletter from MyFonts. Check out the article for more about Rolling Stone, Abraham Lincoln Paulsen, and failing the Fuzzy Rabbit Test.