Inspiration

Last week I attended a Los Angeles INDesign users group for graphic designers which was held at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena.  The meeting was sponsored by Adobe and it was to introduce us to the new upgrade for Photoshop and Illustrator.  The meeting was informative and the free pizza was a nice touch, but I especially liked walking around my old school, seeing how much it has changed. I hate to date myself, but when I started there, they only had two rooms with Macintosh computers, a total of 15 all together.  Now, every room has about 50 big screen Macs, along with everything else you can think of.  A lot of the classrooms are sponsored by Intel, Sony, and Sanyo to drop a few names, and some even have sofa's and plasma tv's.  It's a lot more high tech than when I went there but still has that oppressive feeling and the student gallery is as competitive as ever. I always get inspired when I visit, and it is overwhelming to see the amount of talent that is abound. I am thankful I am no longer a student, because I know how incredibly challenging it was and remember feeling like a zombie most of the time. It was especially difficult for me, since I was going through a divorce and had two small kids at the time.  Most students were many years younger and if I didn't know better, I would have thought I was at a Goth finishing school.  Being one of the few who wasn't into the Goth Culture, I stuck out like a sore thumb.  Even though my wardrobe does consist mostiy of figure slimming black and because of my coloring, without makeup, I have been know to look dead, I still didn't fit in. I realized that it was so different going back to school as an adult, opposed to when I was age appropriate in college. And I think it all had to do with alcohol.