Compositions by the Sea

A few months ago, my friend Terry Lee Stone suggested that I do a course for Lynda.com. I've known Lynda Weinman for years. We served on the AIGA national board together. She's one of the smartest people I know, and Kristin Ellison, who has been my editor on several books was joining Lynda.com. So I knew I could trust everyone. I liked the idea of teaching to a wide audience of people. Lynda.com has over 2.5 million members.

I went out to the huge and impressive  production facility and headquarters near Santa Barbara to do a screen test. I thought about saying "I don't do screen tests," but that sounded a little too Norma Desmond from Sunset Boulevard. I had a little trouble convincing the make-up person that the white people makeup made me look like someone from The Walking Dead and I was actually not that pale. Fortunately it worked and they weren't revolted.

I started working on a course, Foundations of Layout. I thought it would be easy. I've been doing layouts for a long, long, long time. But each movie covers one piece of the puzzle: scale, grids, imagery, etc.. It was like teaching someone how to walk. You do it every day so you forget all the individual things that work together to make your legs move and body stay upright.

I didn't expect it to be as rewarding as it was. I had to go back and distill an idea like harmony into something understandable and digestible. After doing that, I remembered things I'd long ago forgotten. It helped me as a designer and teacher at Art Center.

I spent a week at the studios working with a cracker jack crew. I became obsessed that my hair looked like an old woman's hairdo and they had the crappy job of persuading me otherwise. Of course nobody likes to watch themselves on camera, myself included. But if I get past my old woman hair I'm really pleased with the result. And that has everything to do with the people at Lynda.com.