a lesson in approaching things differently

Ironically enough this was also just a lesson in general. I'll take you all back to when I was in college. I took a class called History and Analysis of Design. According to the class catalog, the class was "A study of the art movements that have structured the field of graphic design covering political, social, and economic influences and the analysis of contemporary design and design trends." What we ended up doing was talking about a time period, picking an artist from that time period and then making a poster every week that mimicked that artist's style using a theme that the professor gave us. This class was easy peasy and as long as you did you work and showed up you got an A.

One week our assignment was "Geeks Against Gates". I can't remember who the artist for the week was, but I went home sketching and scanning and tracing all the things that I had in my sketchbook and made, what I thought was the best poster EVER! I drew a geeky looking guy really mad at the focus of the poster and he was just the geekiest of characters ever! I remember specifically spending atleast 10 minutes getting the gradient for his pimples right and they looked fantastic.

So the following week (we met every Friday morning at 9am) I walked up to the front of the class and placed my mounted poster on the board that everyone in class placed theirs (we would look at all of them and critique them. Art school is so judgmental sometimes). As I was walking back to my desk, I heard people giggling and didn't give it much thought (it was 9am on a Friday... DURING COLLEGE). I sat down and looked at the other posters and INSTANTLY knew what was so funny.

Oh my god he meant Bill Gates. Not a literal gate. Jesus Antonia... ooof
(side note: Why a tagline Antonia? WHY!)

My professor, in typical fashion walked in around 9:15 and looked at the board. He chuckled pretty hard to itself and said, "Well I can honestly say in my (lots- I don't remember the number) years of teaching, no one has interpreted this theme this way.". The rest of class went pretty normal and afterwards I called my Mom to tell her what had happened. She nearly peed herself.