Calligraphy Lesson.
I nominated Haggit's You Teach Us session on creativity as the best of the class. This gave me a chance to participate in the activity twice.
Literally calligraphy translates to beautiful handwriting. It is a skill that one learns through practice and patience. Calligraphy encompasses technique, discipline, focus and a touch of creativity as well.
In some ways holding the felt-tip pen in my hand and drawing the alphabets on the practice sheet was like revisiting the writing lessons from early childhood. I couldn't believe how ugly my letters turned out in the first attempt even after all these years of writing!
Or perhaps it was all these years of experience that was coming in the way. Haggit taught us how we need to hold the pen at a certain angle, control our movement to give the desired thickness and curve to the characters. I realized something more about calligraphy- it requires the practitioner to be versatile to quickly learn and unlearn new styles. She also showed us how the practitioner could create a serif of his own by developing a new style. I liked the balance of fluidity and discipline that she highlighted in the exercise. She choose to call it the yin and the yang.
It was interesting how she improvised her presentation the second time for the bigger group. She showed a small video clip from Steve Job's commencement speech at Stanford where he talks about how the Calligraphy lessons he took in college came to good use later in the user interface design- (fonts, typeface) for Mac. I had read about it before as well but it looked like a bigger revelation today.
Its interesting how all our motivations, actions, successes and failures can be interpreted in terms of one lesson in our life which we have truly internalized. Sitting in the class I felt I better understood his
relentless pursuit of perfection. He wowed us with his showmanship in each of Apple's product launch presentation but behind the scenes he would practice and rehearse to get the act just right. (Just as perfecting a calligraphic serif).
Some life events or learning's become the dynamo that sustain and influence our life's choices and decisions in a much bigger way. Therefore it is a good idea to explore and learn about things that genuinely interest us.
We might not have the foresight to see how we might end up using these skills some day but perhaps it is the best investment that we can make.
Literally calligraphy translates to beautiful handwriting. It is a skill that one learns through practice and patience. Calligraphy encompasses technique, discipline, focus and a touch of creativity as well.
In some ways holding the felt-tip pen in my hand and drawing the alphabets on the practice sheet was like revisiting the writing lessons from early childhood. I couldn't believe how ugly my letters turned out in the first attempt even after all these years of writing!
Or perhaps it was all these years of experience that was coming in the way. Haggit taught us how we need to hold the pen at a certain angle, control our movement to give the desired thickness and curve to the characters. I realized something more about calligraphy- it requires the practitioner to be versatile to quickly learn and unlearn new styles. She also showed us how the practitioner could create a serif of his own by developing a new style. I liked the balance of fluidity and discipline that she highlighted in the exercise. She choose to call it the yin and the yang.
It was interesting how she improvised her presentation the second time for the bigger group. She showed a small video clip from Steve Job's commencement speech at Stanford where he talks about how the Calligraphy lessons he took in college came to good use later in the user interface design- (fonts, typeface) for Mac. I had read about it before as well but it looked like a bigger revelation today.
Its interesting how all our motivations, actions, successes and failures can be interpreted in terms of one lesson in our life which we have truly internalized. Sitting in the class I felt I better understood his
relentless pursuit of perfection. He wowed us with his showmanship in each of Apple's product launch presentation but behind the scenes he would practice and rehearse to get the act just right. (Just as perfecting a calligraphic serif).
Some life events or learning's become the dynamo that sustain and influence our life's choices and decisions in a much bigger way. Therefore it is a good idea to explore and learn about things that genuinely interest us.
We might not have the foresight to see how we might end up using these skills some day but perhaps it is the best investment that we can make.
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