Lift Off Day

Our HND classes pitched some great ideas and had plenty of fun at the Induction Week presentations on Thursday.

This is the third year that we have started the term off with a collaboration between the two Graphic Design years, and as well as being a huge ice-breaker, this sort of activity kicks off our internal mentoring system, where the final year students support and collaborate with our new intake. Some sample concepts -



'Travelodge Orbital' - promoting weekend breaks in Earth orbit.





'Aurora Air' - branding Hypersonic flight to transatlantic passengers.




Universal signage for visiting aliens.

Connecting with Industry

It's only week one but we have already got some good industry-related events in the diary for September.

First off, the mentors are due in on Wed Sept 12th to meet our new crop of final year students. There won't be a major change to the current mentor line-up, but we do hope to have a couple of new faces on board. We've also written the brief they'll be setting, and this will be handed out on the night.

As part of our Employer Engagement Scheme, we've set up some training for recent graduates looking to tweak their skills. Alice Will, a digital planner at the award-winning Front Page Agency in Glasgow, will be doing a day-long studio session on digital marketing and social media on Sept 19th. We already have a big up-take for this, there are just a few slots left, so email us if you want to be involved.

Finally, Murry Calder, a Director at MediaCom, and recently listed at No.71 in the DRUM's Power 100, will be popping in on Friday 21st to give a guest lecture to both HND New Media and HND Graphic Design on the future of advertising.

We Love Being Back

Well done to all after a fantastic start to the new term for our design students. As well as the obligatory (and very loud) speed-dating ice-breaker, our HND2 year co-ordinated the handout and team allocations for the 'Lift Off' induction project, and the groups are working away on their concepts. Here are the four briefs the guys came up with:

Celebrating Print at MagFest

A short selection of some of the best work from the Magfest Exhibition, which Design Tutors David Wilson and Chris Hughes attended today. The event, a celebration of cutting-edge magazine publishing, is part of the inaugural Edinburgh International Magazine Festival.

Lift Off!

The new term begins next week, and it's a tradition in the Design Team to hand over the running of the induction project to our final year students. They'll collaborate with the HND Year 1 class on a studio project, where they'll tackle a brief and then present in teams towards the end of the week.

Tasked with setting the brief, a Year 2 trio of Jonathan Walton, Michal Grazewicz and YCN winner Katy Johnson have come up with 'Lift Off'- featuring a choice of four possible project briefs based around the concept of launching your creative career.



We can't reveal the briefs just yet, only their intriguing project logo and the deadline - the teams will present their design solutions at 11am on Thursday 30th August in Studio R310.

MagFest 2012

As part of this year's Edinburgh Festival, Edinburgh's Our Dynamic Earth (venue 315) hosts the UK's first international magazine festival later this month.

The event is called 'MagFest', and features creative workshops, industry day sessions, and a superb exhibition.

The industry day features a host of guest speakers, and topics include 'Entrepreneurship in Publishing' and 'The Digital Dialogue'.

The exhibition is co-curated by Jeremy Leslie of magCulture, London and Andrew Losowsky of The Huffington Post, New York, and features 40 national and international magazines that all exemplify excellence in magazine design and reflect the amazing level of creativity in current print layout. Fifteen covers from the exhibition are available to preview at http://bit.ly/M0dDvq

We'll be expecting our HND students to start their final year off by booking at www.magfest.co.uk. The event runs on Sunday 26th and Monday 27th August.