Have you ever been driving south on I-99 and as you come into downtown Seattle, wondered what the building on the left with the big SVC sign was? I did, but just recently found out it's a school for graphic design, web design, ad art direction and copywriting. It's called the School of Visual Concepts. After checking the school out online, I decided to take a couple courses. They have ten, five and one day classes available. What drew me in is that it's taught by people who are actively working in advertising and design, not regular full-time professors.

I just finished my first course, called Project Management for Design, which was taught by Matt Diefenbach of Turnstyle. Matt was a cool dude, both very knowledgeable and personable. Proving once again that it's a small world, upon chatting we discovered we had mutual friends. His presentation included a lot of work from Turnstyle, which seems like a great up and coming firm. Afterward I checked out their website and really love their design aesthetic/style.

The following are topics Matt covered:

> Writing great scope-of-work documents for design and advertising projects
> Getting buy-ins from project sponsors
> Writing creative briefs that are actually useful for designers and writers
> Setting up communication expectations for clients and co-workers
> Maintaining production schedules
> Successful client and team meetings
> Building relationships that lead to satisfied clients and more buisness

An interesting component was class participation and interaction. We had case studies where we worked in groups and shared our thoughts. I enjoyed the group activities, but in retrospect realize the quality of the course somewhat depends on the skill level of students in attendance. We had a good group that ranged from people working at agencies or internal creative and marketing teams at manufacturers.

Another highlight was finding out about Onehub.com. Be sure to check it out when you have time. It's a great alternative to using an FTP site to share files. I wish I would have used something like it with Nimbus. I could have just uploaded the webisode communication tools: banner ads, imagery, editorial, videos, link graphics, etc to Onehub.com and provided all the media and sponsors with their own login info. Would have saved me so much time. There are a lot of similar applications out there like Basecamp, but I really like the Onehub UI. Will be using it in the future.

Now that I've found my first course beneficial, it's time to sign up for more. Next will be Design and Build HTML Emails and Brand Strategy for Creatives. Eventually I may step up from one day classes to multiple, maybe some Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign stuff. I know the basics but am self taught and would love to be better. In another life I could be a graphic designer. Overall, I would highly recommend SVC. Maybe I'll see you there...