How To Hit The Ground Running

One of our HND graduates from 2010, Tania Meiring, has just secured a job with Dorset-based agency CreativeByte.

Tania is now working in a small, talented team, and inside the first week has already produced her first pieces - packaging visuals for Linsar LED Televisions.

As Creativebyte point out on their website, they are a relaxed bunch, but that doesn't mean that they don't expect a new designer to hit the ground running. In Tania's case that's not been a problem.









All images courtesy of CreativeByte.

14 Weeks And Counting...

Our HND students are almost 14 weeks into the course that could change their lives. The Design Team is organising a repeat of last year's successful Christmas Review, showcasing the work produced so far at HND level.

As well as learners and tutors, industry mentors and graduates will be coming along to see the work, and it will be a great opportunity for the students to congratulate themselves and to reflect on how far they have come since first starting the Visual Communication course.

This year our NC classes, inspired by the success of Not Another Student Show, are designing a branding campaign for the event. Submissions will be presented on Monday 6th Dec and once a winner is announced, a set of promotional pieces will be produced and exhibited on the night.

As part of the campaign, the winning visuals will be integrated into our exhubition webspace at etcshow.net.

Everything Is Made

A nice surprise in the post today - three copies of the world's most prestigious annual for creative professionals - 'Everything is Made', the 2010 D&AD Annual.

These limited edition members' versions are hardcover, 23.9 x 25.6 cm (9.4 x 10.1 in.), with a whopping 592 pages.

This year the annual was designed by Bob & Roberta Smith, whose trademark style is multi-coloured signs and unusual typography, painted onto a diverse range of materials.

The book features an audio recording from D&AD President Paul Brazier when you open up the front page, and a cover that folds out into a double-sided typographical poster, in a matte plastic finish.

Each chapter title is displayed in a handwritten typeface alongside an anagram of that title in a heavy weight of Helvetica. And of course the book contains a massive selection of the best advertising and design in the world.

We'll be putting a copy of 'Everything Is Made' in the LRC, and the remaining copies can be found in the Design Studio.

Los 33

HND 1 have just finished a one day Guerilla project, set by one of our current mentors, Julie Diver, from the 39Steps Agency. The brief was to work in teams and design a film poster for a possible movie of the recent Chilean Miners ordeal.

Hollywood actor Brad Pitt is reported to be in race for screen rights to shoot the film, currently being called 'Los 33', hence the title of this project.

Selected posters:


Abbie and Nick - 'Esperanza' - 5 X A3.


Sarah and Jordan - Tomb of the Free, A3.


Mikey, Scott, Zia - '33' - A3

Kat & Terry - Dig Deeper - A3.

Learner Buddies

2nd Year HND student Emma Hart has produced the branding for the 'Learner Buddy Project' - a new initiative at Edinburgh’s Telford College which will allow lecturers and students to exchange and share knowledge of evolving media technologies.

The idea is to select a team of four students based in learning street alcoves, equipped with data projectors and whiteboard technologies. These 'Learner Buddies' will lead sessions with lecturers to help facilitate and promote the use of new and interactive technologies in curriculum delivery.

Emma's concept used the strapline 'turning the tables' and the result is a nice hand-drawn logo that captures the informal exchange between student and peer.





More:
Learner Buddies @ Edinburgh's Telford College

88% Iron Man

HND 1 have just finished an MPA Roses brief 'Younique'. The task was to relate yourself to a hero is six steps.

One of the more unusual solutions came from Nic Cameron, who produced a 16-page comic book, drawn in Illustrator, documenting his relationship with the Marvel Superhero Iron Man. Here is a four-spread sampler -

More Inspiration!

Big thanks to HND students Rachel Patrick and Emma Hart, who gave two really inspirational presentations of their recent CABE signage projects to my NC Creative Media class today.

The class have been given a live brief by PR Consultants ProScot, whose client National Grid Plc are looking for original signage and promotional material for the Forthquarter Land Regeneration project (of which the College Campus is a prime example).

Rachel's concept promoted Edinburgh's parks with a poster campaign and some inventive advertising in urban public spaces, whilst Emma opted for a clever call-to-action in a variety of print and web media with some striking typography.

Rachel Patrick - Green Space




Emma Hart - 101 Things To Do In The Park






More:
Forthquarter
CABE Gallery

Ross Reflects

The SQA website features a nice interview with our HND student Ross Duncan, whose poster design won the 'Show Racism the Red Card' competition earlier this year.

Interiors Project

Well done to HND 2, who presented their interiors project today to the Principal, Miles Dibsdall OBE.

The brief was to produce a set of concepts for a complete redesign of the signage and interiors for Edinburgh's Telford College. The students worked in pairs and all the projects featured great visuals and some really inventive creative concepts. The final pieces will be put on display in the Hub, where students and staff can vote on which works best.

As part of the presentation, design agency dsquared, who recently redesigned the College's Corporate ID, were also on hand to view the interiors work and offer some advice and feedback.

Check out some examples in the Gallery section.

Some Advice on Sketching

Our NC groups are now three projects into their course, and are starting to get the message - a good sketchbook is the holy grail of the design process.

At any given time, there can between 40 and 50 sketchbooks lying around in the studio, and the Design Team is looking at digitising selections of all our HND student's sketchbooks. Currently, these documents of the inner workings of a designer's mind are lost to us once the class has graduated and left for pastures new.

Which reminds me of a nice article by the American designer and critic, Michael Beirut, on the importance of sketching, and why sketchbooks should be archived.

Beirut has archived 26 years' worth of his sketchbooks - 85 books so far and still counting. Looking back through them, he hits upon two revelations that shouldn't surprise many designers, and which offer up some good advice -

1) a lot of good design ideas originate at the very beginning of a project

and

2) a lot of ideas are 'so simple and dumb that a simple dumb drawing is all it takes to describe them'.