I was invited to return to teach for a second time in the graphic design program at Ludong University in Yantai, Shandong Province, China this past May (scroll down for a description of my first visit). Instead of three classes in two weeks, I was able to work a bit more in depth by teaching two courses in three weeks. It was a sheer delight to reconvene with the faculty and school leadership, who have become good friends.

Though I have been told southern China has a much more varied and challenging menu, I had my first “sea rabbit” (on Chang Dao, or “Long Island” above). Back on the mainland I had pig’s head and, completely by coincidence, my first duck’s head later that same day. That was The Day of The Head. I was struck by how removed we Americans tend to be from the source of our protein: it is cut into pieces that are presented on foam plastic trays under plastic wrap in beautifully-lit supermarkets. That it ever came from any living creature is thoroughly disguised. It is a quite different eating experience when the creature’s eye is staring at you in situ. But there is nothing to be done but dig in – and both times I went for the cheek meat, which is approximately as far away from any namable face part as possible. The pig’s head was delicious. But you may be assured that eating duck’s head properly is a much more active process than merely picking at its comparatively-tiny cheek. We’ll leave it at that.

The Provocative Life of Type: Unearthing Expressive Value

Never underestimate the power of type to convey style, character, and meaning to a message. As Paula Scher says: “Words have meaning. Type has spirit. The combination is spectacular.”

This course will introduce ways to reveal meaning and add spirit to your display type. The design processes used to elicit typographic feeling is an integral aspect of this course. Understanding these dynamics can inspire more expressive, dynamic, and stimulating design. Although entirely online, the course will include active design development and will require the use of Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop. The workshop element allows you to bring an existing project or to create one in the course in order to hone your skills. This course would be well suited to graphic designers, mature students, and advertising and marketing professionals.

This course is FULLY online, but delivered asynchronously so you work at your own pace. However, this is NOT a webinar. This course is interactive, includes a lot of social contact and exchange, and includes video components, activities, Adobe instruction, ample networking opportunities, and a personalized critique by the Professor. Learn how to take type to the next level. The course is taught by Alex W. White, an award-winning designer, lecturer, and author of six books including The Elements of Graphic Design, Thinking in Type, and Advertising Design and Typography – all required texts for design students around the world. Alex has taught students at Parsons, FIT, and is a past chairman of the Type Directors Club.

A Venn diagram, according to Wikipedia, “shows all possible logical relations between a finite collection of sets… Venn diagrams were conceived around 1880 by John Venn (1834–1923), a British logician and philosopher. He is famous for introducing the Venn diagram, which is used in many fields including set theory, logic, and computer science.”

This is a Venn diagram by Rich Stevens 3, a former student of mine.

And this is a basic Venn diagram showing the intersection of two sets.

Yantai is a city of 8 million people about an hour and ten minute’s flight east-southeast from Beijing. It is a port city on the Yellow Sea, so seafood is plentiful – and wonderfully different. In addition to being a regional business center, Yantai is also renowned for its extensive apple and cherry harvest.

This is a composite shot of a principle intersection in downtown Yantai: the buildings there are not actually tilted – at least not to this extreme. These photos were taken on a too-long run from campus: I was pressed for time an hour and ten into the run when I finally found my destination, the harbor. Asking passersby for a more direct route back to the university, I was told “too far” by the first two. I eventually got directions and made it back to campus in 35 additional all-uphill minutes. That was a no-rest-for-the-weary push.

Ludong University is a medium-sized Chinese institution of about 25,000 students, half of whom are studying at the graduate level. They draw their students from all over China, though the majority come from Shandong Province, which is a large area – taking about seven hours to drive across from end to end.

I asked to meet each of my three classes ten times – once per day for the two weeks I was there –  and expected to leave China very tired, but we compromised and I met each class eight times over the two weeks. That provided nearly the maximum number of critique opportunities to discuss the students’ design thinking shown in their homework. This is a very early critique because many of the studies show random abstractions that have nothing to do with the originating letterform nor the intended abstract expressions. But the light approach I try to take with experimental work is plain on the students’ faces. They may have been laughing at my Chinese pronunciation: WOH bu geedoh. Woh BU geedoh? Woh bu GEEdoh… Woh bu geeDOH! Wherever you put the emphasis, it means “I don’t know.” 

Paper in China is not particularly expensive, but it is respected as a finite resource. Instead of taking notes, students photograph everything with their phones, including their professor who is holding up a study for discussion. Chinese students do not own their own printers, so outputting studies at the local print shop, which is closed from 7pm until 8am, is part of their homework planning.

The two-week course could not have been nearly as successful without the extraordinary skill of Xu Shanshan (or “Sophie,” in the foreground), my graduate-student interpreter and translator. I was talking for two weeks about letterform abstraction, image abstraction, and conceptual abstraction, none of which are especially easy to grasp in English (I know this: I teach it regularly), and Sophie not only translated what I said, she understood and was wonderfully able to express what I meant. This was made evident in the students’ work.

Here are most of the students with whom I worked at Ludong with Sophie, who is holding an inscribed copy of my Advertising Design and Typography book. It was important to me that she be presented with this in the presence of “our” students.

It was cold, snowing every couple of days, and heat is extremely carefully used. Coats are worn by everyone all the time, outdoors and in. Twice-per-week celebratory dinners with professors, deans, and key administrators were occasions to eat until failure: a brilliant ritual!

There were several opportunities to visit extraordinary cultural sites. This huge Taoist temple is near the town of Guzhen, Qixia City, very near the Mu Family Man­or, the largest (480 rooms) intact feudal landlord manor in northern China and a protected historical site which was begun in 1723.

Please join me. The lecture is $20 for Graphic Artists Guild members and $30 for others*. That is a saving of at least $400 over what you would pay for two hours of any other kind of talk therapy in Manhattan, which I am lead to believe is over $225 per hour. By very special arrangement, my students get in free: thank you Graphic Artists Guild!

Lots of Q&A. If you bring an already-purchased book**, I will be delighted to sign it. If you bring a book by another author, I will do my best to disguise my handwriting as I sign it with their name. (My cousin Miguelito introduced me to this idea when he spent an afternoon signing all my LP sleeves in 1972. Each signature was distinctly different. Looking back, I wish I’d kept my fake signed Carlos Santana vinyl.

*If you visited this site earlier, I was mistaken about it being free for everyone. I apologize for not having the facts and for making hasty assumptions. That’s what gets me into trouble as a designer, too. I hope you will consider joining us on Thursday anyway. I will do my level best to help you see differently in those two hours. It won’t be one of those presentations that goes on and on about how wonderful the speaker is and how wonderful their clients are and how wonderful it is to be them. No. My goal is to give you a two hour dose of another way of seeing. Using words. Cool if it works. Come see if it works.

** Oh yeah, about having books for sale there, which was something I also had in the earlier version of this post: the weird October nor’easter we just survived has affected the bookseller who was going to populate the back of the hall. She can’t be there with the goodies. I have tried in the past to sell books while speaking, but it doesn’t work out very well. Either I stop speaking or I don’t move books. So instead of selling books, I have, by very special arrangement, secured covers of my 2011 book, The Elements of Graphic Design, 2nd Edition, which I will be handing out to everyone in attendance. Farrrrreeeeeee. And I’ll sign ’em if you wish. (Another workaround is you can pick up a copy of EoGD2 at Barnes & Noble on Union Square on the way over and I’ll sign it for you at Pratt.)

1. What is white space and why is it important?
2. What are the three raw materials of graphic design and visual communication?
3. What is the difference between “nothing wrong” and “something right” with a design?
4. Let’s talk about history: when was white space invented?
5. Let’s talk about art: what is white space equivalent to in other arts?
6. Let’s talk about law: is it really a crime to misuse white space?
7. Let’s talk about food: it is said white space makes a design “tasty.” True?
8. What is “hidden” white space?
9. What is wrong with filling in all the space?
10. If white space is so important, why aren’t there any empty pages in your book?

My responses are here.