The other night,  I took a class at the BCAE to help learn Adobe Illustrator.  A couple of weeks ago, I had downloaded a trial run of the Adobe Creative Suite to create digital photopolymer plates to make letterpress prints.  After a few minutes of playing around with Illustrator, I quickly realized I had no idea of what I was doing.  While I pretty much know every Excel trick in the book after 8 years in Corporate Finance, I have never used any type of graphic design program.

After doing a few on-line searches, I realized the least expensive classroom option to learn Illustrator would be at the Boston Center for Adult Education.  In the past, Husband M and I have taken wine classes there.  I also took a beginning sewing class there as well two summers ago.  The facility is pretty close to my work so it’s really easy to take evening classes there.

The class turned out to be just what I needed.  The teacher, who I thought was really funny throughout the class, was really good at going over the basics of Illustrator.  Not surprisingly, she told us at the end of the class that she was a stand-up comedian when she wasn’t doing graphic design.  Her personality really kept the class interesting because three hours of software training can sometimes become boring quickly.  When I had initially been playing around with the software at home, there were a few things that had I had no idea what was going on…I was able to quickly learn what I had been doing wrong and found new tools to help create what I was hoping to.

Overall, I thought the class was definitely worth my time and I plan on utilizing my new skills over the next couple of weeks to design the letterpress plates.  It’s kind of funny how interesting it is to head back to a classroom setting to learn new things once you are no longer in school on a daily basis.  Over the next month, I’m signed up for classes about blogging,  kitchen knives skills, and  digital photography.  I’ll definitely keep you posted on how they go…

-m