It has been a great couple of days at Penland (despite the non-stop rain)! We had our first official class last night following a school-wide orientation meeting. Our class is small—8 or 9 students, maybe?—but everyone is very excited about work and eager to get the ball rolling. We got to know each other a bit, looked at samples of Bryan’s work, asked questions, and talked about our first two mini-assignments. Today we started out with a typesetting exercise that is actually more fun that it sounds, mostly because we will be making a mix cd for the class of songs that we enjoy working to (aptly titled “Crank This!”).
We are also writing six-word “microfiction,” (originated by Ernest Hemingway), which we are typesetting with the potential to mix typefaces, sizes, and break the grid a bit. We’ve also had safety demos and press operation demos throughout the day.