@Rest: aaron rester's blog

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Blogger has made some changes to how they allow publishing posts, and I need to do some fiddling under the hood. So if you happen to see anything odd here today (old posts disappearing, old posts claiming to be new, unexplained lights in the sky, unattended luggage), just pretend you ain't seen nuthin.' Capisce?

The Lost Cartographers come out of winter hibernation for their first show of 2010. Check out the poster below (designed by yours truly), or our shows page for details.

Labels: design, lostcartographers, music

During the year after I graduated from Oberlin College, while I was working for the Office of College Relations, I was able to take one course per semester for free. One of the courses I took was called "Teaching and Tutoring Writing Across the Disciplines." Aside from our own writing and discussion, part of the class consisted of working as a writing tutor for college class (I tutored Paula Richman's "Introduction to Religion").

The primary text for the class, Working with Student Writers: Essays on Tutoring and Teaching, was a collection of essays that had been written by previous students in the class, edited by the instructor,  Len Podis, and his wife, JoAnne Podis. I still have my copy, filled with the enthusiastic scribblings of my 22-year-old self, who could imagine no other path than going on to graduate school and eventually becoming a professor himself.

Now, just over ten years later, Peter Lang Publishing has released a second edition of Working with Student Writers featuring the essay I wrote for that class: "The Hero With a Thousand Voices: The Relationship Between the Narrative and Academic Styles." The book is also available on Amazon. In the essay, I attempted to mediate the tension so many young writers encounter between the academic discourse community they're suddenly expected to inhabit and the narrative discourse that they've been consuming and producing their entire lives; I did so by highlighting the commonalities between the two forms of narrative and academic writing, and by reframing the writing process itself as a narrative.

It's actually a lot more entertaining than it sounds, I swear.

Labels: books, highered, personalnarrative

One of my favorite websites of late is Clients From Hell, a compendium of anonymously-submitted horror stories from designers.  Paging through the site, however, it becomes clear that many of the issues that arise between designers and clients could be preempted by some simple client education at the start of the design process. Many clients have only a vague idea of what it is that designers actually do, and it is the designer's responsibility to explain what we do and how. So I've compiled a list of a few articles that it may be helpful to have a client read before any project begins; I plan to share these with prospective clients as early as possible to ensure that we are both on the same page as to what our respective roles in the project should be.

Of course, if you have any other suggestions of good articles, I'd love to hear them.

• The Value of Design: Why Hire a Graphic Designer (Gizmo Design)
  
• Making the Most of a Design Engagement (Adpative Path)
• How to (and not to) work with a designer (Will Harris)
• 5 Things Your Clients Should Know (Webdesigner Depot)
• Working with your designer (Random Non Sequitur)
  

Labels: design, webtech