welovedesignetc
The design courses blog for BA (Hons)
and HND Vis Comm at Edinburgh College

Realising Their Potential

29 March 2015

Team Realise were named winners of our One Week project on Thursday by Lucy Hine, Marketing Manager for Innis and Gunn.

"We weren't prepared for just how great the work from all the teams turned out to be," said Lucy. "The presentations were very professional and we couldn't believe how much had been accomplished given the short project time. Every team had at least one idea that was completely new and exciting in terms of answering the brief and promoting our brand, but Team Realise gave us the strongest solution that worked right across all the required channels."

Team Realise's concept 'A Great Find' included strong branding visuals, a raft of guerilla advertising ideas, and a sophisticated user experience. Samples from all the work, plus a short film about the project, will be available soon.  In the meantime you can read mentor Gregor Matheson's take on how the project went over at the Realise blog.

Work by all the teams is currently being exhibited in the college Hub. Our Storify timeline documents the project and the reaction to the winning pitch.


Milestones : Zombie

28 March 2015

This year's ISTD (International Society of Typographic Designers) student assessment featured a brief entitled 'Milestones', which asked students to explore a subject of their choice and create a milestone in that subject, primarily through the use of typography.

HND student Simon Griffith's solution was an exploration of the evolution and history of the Zombie movie, designed in the form of a single page website. Simon's concept was to explore the subject without reference to the visual imagery and composition we normally associate with the genre, and instead to look back at a classic pre-digital format, microfiche.

A minimalist menu-based layout, with a great colour scheme, daring use of whitespace and beautifully crafted typography all support the detailed wikipedia-sourced content in this highly original piece of information design.


















You can check out samples from all the ISTD projects on our Pinterest board. Subjects the students explored for this project include the Hubble Telescope, the history of high heels, the genius of Nikola Tesla, Brutalism in Modernism, and a seminal heavyweight boxing match.


Pitching #oneweek6

24 March 2015

On Thursday, our 'One Week' student design teams will be pitching their projects to the client, Edinburgh's craft-beer specialists Innis & Gunn.  Up in the studio, each team will be given a fifteen minute slot - 10 minutes to present and then 5 minutes for a Q&A.  After the presentations, Lucy Hine, Marketing Manager at Innis & Gunn, will have the tough task of choosing the winning solution.


Lucy Hine, Innis & Gunn. Pic by Derek Anderson.

Directly after the presentations, in what has become a bit of a tradition, we'll exhibit all the artwork in the college Hub where mentors and designers from all of the agencies involved will get to view the results at a lunchtime reception.

Presentation times:
09.30 - Team Blonde
09.45 - Team Gate
10.00 - Team Multiply
10.15 - Team Lewis
10.30 - Team Realise
10.45 - Team Whitespace

You can also check out a series of images on our flickr, taken by our resident photographer Derek Anderson, who toured the agencies and team locations recording the project.




#oneweek6 Friday

20 March 2015



Our latest 'One Week' project is finishing up today, with the teams finalising their ideas with their respective mentors and agencies. The client for this project is Edinburgh-based craft beer specialists Innis and Gunn, and the agencies who've supported the course and taken on teams are Blonde Digital, The Gate Worldwide, Lewis, MultiplyUK, Realise and Whitespace.

All six teams will have a few days to tweak their solutions, and the final presentations to the client will be on Thursday. The work will also be exhibited in the college Hub on that day, and the winning design will be used by Innis & Gunn in its summer promotion plans. You can catch up on how the projects have been going via our Storify, although the teams have been under strict instructions for the client not to discuss or post images of their work.


BasketBall Foundation Scotland

16 March 2015

HNC Graphic Design students Rumana Sayed and Hannah Johnston have been working on a live project for Basketball Scotland, the national governing body for basketball in Scotland. The brief, set by Basketball Scotland's Marketing & CRM Manager Berta Galvez, was to create a new mark and a set of cohesive brand guidelines for Basketball Scotland Foundation - the organisation's soon-to-be-launched charity arm.  Berta and her team liaised with the students and gave some great feedback at each stage of the process, and the full branding is now underway.

The visual samples here detail the design process that produced the mark. The client had already supplied the team with their corporate typeface, Praxis LT Bold, and the colour palette was a variation on the existing branding for Basketball Scotland.


 










One Week #6 : Innis & Gunn

12 March 2015

On Wednesday our graphic design students were briefed on the latest 'One Week' project, which runs next week, from Monday 16th to Friday 20th March. The group attended a briefing by the client Innis and Gunn - Scotland's leading export beer brand - at their Headquarters in Randolph Place, Edinburgh. The students were accompanied by tutors Helena Good and Alex Gunn, plus mentors from the six agencies involved on this project - Whitespace (who generously offered us the project on behalf of the client), The Gate Worldwide, Multiply, Lewis, Realise and Blonde.



We'll be documenting the project via our Storify and participants can contribute with the hashtag #oneweek6. The One Week project is part of our award-winning experiential employer-engagement Mentoring Programme, where our students collaborate in teams, working alongside various creative agencies for a full week. Our most recent One Week project was for G.F. Smith (November 2014).


In the Fine Art Studio

10 March 2015

We're big fans of the 'hands on' ethos in the design process, and during the NC (Foundation) year, the students do three related units (Colour, Exploratory Media Handling, Drawing) that focus on exploration, expression and making a bit of a mess.

This week we set up a session in the Fine Art studios, where the class got to spend a whole day drawing with a variety of materials and tools, with some great results.
















Coffee In A Book

9 March 2015

Some inventive print design from Matt White on the latest NC project - a packaging brief for Glasgow-based coffee specialists Matthew Algie who were looking to create one-off gift packs of their best-selling flavours, exclusively on sale only in the National Gallery of Scotland.

Matt came up with the idea of packaging three flavours of coffee in book cover jackets rather than standard pinch bags or foil packs.  He connected each flavour to an artist whose work is on display at the Gallery - Tinderbox is connected to Emil Nolde, Pandora to John Bellany, and Forza to pioneering Modernist John Cecil Stephenson.

Inspired by Grammar school textbooks and Modernism, Matt then combined vector illustration, bold colour and clean sans serif typography to create a set of balanced, minimal paperback book covers. Each can be displayed separately at the point-of-sale, or also packaged as a trilogy or box set.









Maggie's Winner

6 March 2015

One of our HND Graphic Design students, Stephanie Dalzell, was named winner ina  recent project the class did for cancer charity Maggie’s, to design a corporate gift to give to charity patrons. Stephanie's design was for a ceramic candle holder design, and featured a laser-cut image of the local Maggie’s centre.



This project was instigated by stalwart mentor Graham Neish, who brought Maggie’s in meet the students and set a brief to imagine an object that would reflect the spirit of Maggie’s and which could be produced as a thank-you gift for patrons.

The students visited Maggie’s Edinburgh so they could see for themselves how creativity in architecture and design play a vital role in making the centres calm and uplifting places. Maggie’s came up with a shortlist of five students, who all presented to the charity, and announced the winner at Granton Campus last Wednesday.

Marie McQuade, development director at Maggie’s, said: “Stephanie particularly impressed us with a creation that beautifully illustrates the hopefulness of Maggie’s Centres. It will make a wonderful gift for our patrons.”

More info on the project at the Edinburgh College website.