Martinez, Charmaine  

Charmaine has been my FAVORITE graphic design teacher so far in the Art and Design department. She is a sassy lady who always keeps you on your toes. She seems harsh if she is your first graphic design teacher, but in the end she is just trying to groom you for the future. Her advice is constructive and she really pushes you to be the best you can be. You have to work extremely hard to get an A, but in the end it is totally worth it. People who did many revisions, talked to her for advice, and took the class seriously had much better portfolios in the end.

Charmaine is bump'n, she gives critical and meaningful critiques. Get ready to go through multiple ideations, as she will tell you to scrap ideas that don't work. I believe her style of critique is extremely beneficial to any creative professional. She is respectful to her students and she was a joy to have as a professor.

So I had this teacher for spring quarter for Critique & Discourse. This was my first time having this teacher for the Art & Design department. At first she seemed cool but then as the quarter went on I realized her inappropriate behaviors she had towards students and unprofessional and disrespectful actions. This teacher plays favorites with students and is not a fan of transfers. I watched her insult numerous students throughout the quarter, stating things to students like, "This is terrible, did you even take a typography class, Omg... clearly you do not know what your doing" or accusing students of something based OFF her assumptions. She if did it to me once and screamed at me in front of the whole class for something she thought I was doing only to realize a second later that I was not and looking like a complete idiot and disrespecting me and other students in the process. Overall she likes to make snarky comments towards students and its clear she's a little bit full of herself. The class itself was OK. It wasn't the best and wasn't the worst. However she grades unfairly and I remember her bragging to another professor when I was getting help from the that professor, how she sometimes doesn't even check typography mistakes and assumes the students did it wrong and just marks them wrong without actually checking. Furthermore, the class towards the end gets to be pointless because it seems that its still not a fully developed class because the projects become less relevant. Lastly the blog entry project is a joke and just a bunch of busy work. Avoid her if you can, but if you are a graphic design major you won't be able to unfortunately...

Charmaine is a great designer and decent professor, but she can be very UNFRIENDLY AND RUDE, especially during critiques. She is very unsympathetic of students' personal situations and is often unavailable during her office hours. She is EXTREMELY MOODY, so don't cross her on one of her bad days. I would recommend this class with her, but just be careful to stay out of her way and make sure to read through the project descriptions thoroughly and do exactly what she tells you to do. But if you don't feel like dealing with her bullshit, take Mary.

Charmaine is an okay design professor. I have taken a few classes with her and haven't found her project assignments to be super interesting. Her critiques aren't very helpful because she doesn't really specify why something needs to be changed, and rather comments on a design based on her personal taste. She does a good job at lecturing, keeping information concise and interesting. Overall, I liked her as a professor, but never really improved in her classes or got any strong portfolio pieces out of her projects.

What else is there to say? Fine person, nothing interesting. Class was meh... Blah, blah, blah... Fine person.