Pure Editorial DPS

On Friday our final year class presented their Pure Editorial projects. The brief was to create a masthead, cover and three articles for a chosen subject under the theme of 'pure'. Subjects included economics, politics, the arts, exhibitions, food, travel, technology and families.

For this project, our students worked in collaboration with their counterparts in HND Photography, and the work was designed to be published to tablet format.

We previously posted a sneak preview of work by Michal Grazewicz, and now we've put together a gallery of selections from ten of the resulting folios. A 'folio' in this context is a collection of articles, assembled into a single file using InDesign's Folio Builder, and published using Adobe's Digital Publishing Suite. Check the sample work out here.

We Love Review Nights

Our 12.12.12 review night was another successful get-together for our students, former graduates and mentors. With the class all set to go out on placement early in 2013, this was the perfect opportunity to get feedback on their work, and to find out more about what it's really like out in the creative industry.

As well as a great portfolio surgery session, we were treated to inspiring talks by mentor Ian Farmer, student designer Jonathan Walton (currently being mentored by Ian), and Equator's Creative Director James Jefferson.

Upright Creative's Ian Farmer kicked off by talking about his long involvement with our course, and how the sorts of designers we are producing now (and the awards they are winning) are proof that our curriculum and teaching approach has responded well to the daunting pace of change in the industry. Ian also made it clear that working as a mentor is a lot of fun, and a continual source of inspiration for those professional designers involved in it.

Final year student Jonathan Walton did a nice presentation featuring some examples of his projects, and he showed how the direction and intent of the work had been positively influenced by mentoring input from Ian.

Our guest speaker James Jefferson then gave a passionate talk about his experiences in the creative industry, from the founding and rise of his agency Equator, to the pitfalls of applying for jobs, doing interviews, and the general approach a designer needs to take to be a success. He also made the point that industry needs solid connections to education - our mentoring programme being a very good example of how it can work. James finished off with five off-the-wall gifts of advice, including a really classic final one - 'Don't Design, Do Remarkable Things'.

The evening finished off with a short set of presentations of advice and tips from our former graduates, all currently working at various Edinburgh-based agencies, and all keen to pass on the benefits of their experience. The event was filmed and hopefully we'll have it up on vimeo soon.


James Jefferson in full flow.


Portfolio Surgery.


This looks like nice work.


Graduate Advice.


Discussing a project.


It's Easy With Hindsight.

Pure Preview

The Final Year students are busy preparing their portfolios and work samples for tomorrow night's review event, but they also have a big deadline for the end of the week - their tablet editorial designs.

The format and workflow for this project uses the InDesign CS6 Folio Builder and Adobe's Digital Publishing Suite, which is great news for their future prospects and should make for some exciting presentations on Friday. As a taster, here's a sneak preview of 'Pure Exhibitions', by Michal Grazewicz, featuring his masthead, cover and contents pages, plus two articles.

 

Getting Festive

The last full week of term promises to be a busy one and will hopefully reflect our festive review theme for 2012 -



On Monday we are visiting Edinburgh zoo, to look at exhibition space and to discuss a possible live project for Semester Two.

Wednesday is our annual review night, held in the main college lecture theatre. This event is a celebration of design education, and gives our current final year students a chance to network with former graduates and mentors. We'll also have some excellent speakers, including stalwart mentor and all-round inspiring creative Ian Farmer, plus a special guest talk from James Jefferson, the founder and Creative Director of award-winning Glasgow-based digital agency Equator.

To promote the night we invited visitors to the blog to construct their own layout for our event poster. The plan was to choose the best one and use it, but we received so many versions (upwards of 60) that we've decided to use them all.

Finally, on Friday, the final year class will be presenting their 'Pure' editorial project. This is a collaborative project with HND Photography, and requires a cover, masthead and three articles, designed for iPad and built for Adobe's Digital Publishing Suite. We'll be posting a full gallery of the work online.