Tuesdays prove more difficult to describe than Mondays. Our schedule includes one constant fixture, followed often by something more vague, whose timeslot cannot be as easily predicted. The constant of course is the weekly lecture by James Mosley at noon. You know James Mosley from The Nymph and the Grot. He also might have the most thorough typographic history blog on the planet. Mr. Mosley presents an hour of typographic history to us each week. He shows us images in the form of an electronic slideshow. It is important to note that he doesn’t use actual slides, which is admirable, as many luminaries of his experience haven’t yet made the jump from analogue format. So far, we’ve made it from Ancient Greece to Renaissance Italy in the calendar.
After 1pm, we tend to break for lunch. The midday meal at the University of Reading is difficult. At Cedars, the cafeteria, Mensa, or whatever else you might call it depending on where you are from, is to be avoided—at least in my own experience. Cedars has the honor of serving me the worst cheeseburger I have ever eaten! The University has a number of caf’s scattered around the campus, and these serve pre-packaged sandwiches, which are at least edible, if not a bit too pricey. My favourite shopping point on campus is in the Student Union, which at least will sell you a sandwich bundled together with a bag of chips and a 20 ounce plastic bottle of coke for £2.89. Fusion, which is so close to the Typography department that we inevitably almost always go there for lunch, has sandwiches alone that are nearly as expensive.
Tuesdays afternoons are usually filled with supervised studio time, but not always. Sometimes the session is moved to Wednesday, or not held at all. Occasionally, we have a guest in, and then we’ll go all day, starting at around 9:30–10am and breaking only for Mr. Mosley’s 12 o’clock timeslot. The department is open until about 6pm. We can stay afterwards to work longer hours if we practice the buddy system and sign-out building keys beforehand.
Today, our first Non-Latin workshop began. This is with Fiona Ross, and is dealing with North Indian scripts. Tomorrow afternoon will be filled by lots of sketching and writing. Stay turned for more images!