Back to school. For a couple days.

This weekend Lindsay and I had a 2 day InDesign class. It was from 9-4 on Saturday and Sunday, and covered the basics of the program. I haven't used InDesign since before CS came around, so it's been a while.

We have a project coming up where we're going to have to create some print layouts, so we figured we'd better brush up before that starts.

It was pretty fun, and I learned a lot, even thought a fair bit of the class was a bit too remedial considering Lindsay and I are pretty dang well versed in Adobe's other programs. But we got enough information to feel competent, and I think we'll probably take the more advanced class next semester.

It's kind of strange to be back in school, but at the same time I see how much more useful class can be when you're not a kid. I think I had an easier time comprehending a lot of the information, because I could directly apply it to a lot of real-life, work-day situations in the arts.

When I was in school learning illustrator, I might have had no idea how it would apply to my everyday life. It seemed kind of useless. Fast forward 10 years I use it daily and I love it...

So when the instructor is showing a new tool or explaining a concept, I have the context to see exactly how it's valuable and precisely how I could use it in my workflow.

I also made the decision to really get a handle on my fonts. Our teacher was a font aficionado, and his passion for typography was a little contagious. I've been really frustrated by the mess of a font library, so I asked him after class to help my come up with a list of fonts I should have active at all times, and then I'll group the others into categories I can toggle on and off as a project sees fit.

I'm sick of scrolling through 2-300 (crappy) fonts constantly. Most of them suck, there's too many crappy one-off display fonts that are mostly useless... It's just depressing, really. To me, at least.

During the day we ate lunch at Pho Hoa on Saturday, and Jasmine Deli Sunday. We also had potstickers, dumplings and a noodle soup for dinner. Add that to my sushi binge last week, and I feel like I've eaten nothing but Asian food for a long while. Tonight Lindsay and I ran out for Punch after we cleaned the crap out of our house, so a Greek salad and some bad ass pizza really hit the spot.

I played some Battlefield with Ryan and Chris C tonight. It was really fun, and I'm still pretty good at that game, despite my brain occasionally slipping to the Halo control scheme.

I think I'm going to prepare a list of notable games that are coming out this holiday that I might be interested in. So ready yourself for that exciting shit.