Hot Issues in Graphic Design

HNC Graphic Design recently completed their design-in-context essays - a 1500 word exploration of a hot topic in Visual Communication. The essay questions included controversial subjects in creative advertising, such as sex, alcohol and tobacco, plus design trends, and also the option to explore a single typeface. As part of this project we also asked the group to design and publish their essay in booklet format. Working with content you have written yourself is always an interesting challenge, and you can check out some example covers and spreads below, and view the full range of visual ideas on this project at our issuu digital publication page at issuu.com

 
Sophia Bhullar - Sex Sells

McKenzie Armitage - Making Addiction Cool

Darik Malik - Design Sprints

Nova Magazine

This year our HNC editorial design project was to reinvent the seminal 1960s feminist magazine, Nova.  Nova pioneered journalism that tackled taboo subjects and radical feminist ideas during the 1960s and early 70s.  Times change, but many of these issues are still with us, and Nova's aim is to capture a new readership in the current #metoo LGBT Fake News climate.  Some examples of masthead cover and spread concepts -


Illaria Veroli







Lewis Lee-Grant





Gemma Gorton







Murray Notman

In / Out

We love topical projects. This one by HNC student Liam Phillp, for his Graded Unit, deals with the EU Referendum. The brief - In/Out - was to present an alternative to the recent Government publication outlining why we should vote Remain on June 23rd.

Liam's concept is 'the breakup', and blends an ironic play on personal relationships with crisp editorial design and a fresh typographic approach.  It's surprisingly informative, and far more memorable than any of the official information that's currently out there.

Spreading The Word

Our NC class have just finished their first editorial project 'Interview'.  For this work, they interviewed HND students whilst they were out on placement at some of Edinburgh's best agencies. The class gathered the interview source along with some great photos of the HND class, and then set about designing some nice Q&A-style spreads.  We've posted a batch of samples on Pinterest, and have included three striking pieces here -


Aga Pomaranska interviewed Aiste Piechaviciute at Whitespace.


Ken Sjoberg interviewed Alex De Sousa at APS


Julia Martins interviewed Olga Kominek at Lewis

Talking Magazines

Earlier this week we had a visit from Eric Campbell, Creative Director at White Light Media, an award-winning Edinburgh-based agency specialising in editorial design, magazines, and publishing in print and online. They've been consistent supporters of the course for a number of years (Eric is a graduate of the course) and he came in to talk to the NC and HNC classes about the joys of editorial design and the general approach thats required in the niche market area of magazines.


Eric talking editorial design in the studio.

White Light Media's work includes their cool specialist drinks mag Hot Rum Cow, and Eric brought in a box of Issue No.7, and also the quarterly tabloid-sized magazine, Poppy.  Awesome stuff.


White Light samples

The NC group are currently working on an editorial brief 'Interview', so this was great timing for them.  The brief was to interview our HND students whilst they were out on placement, and find out about their experiences, and then use that as source for magazine spreads that will be included in our forthcoming annual review magazine, InSitu.

Celebrity Spreads

Some nice examples from 'Celebrity Spreads' - an HNC Graphics typography project focussing on print editorial design. The requirements - a celebrity photo, a full bleed layout, and a few hundred words.



Blonde - Christina Giannakou


Fassbender - Dora Bowman


Jaar - Ildiko Rohonka


Florence - Sarah Mary Macrae

Re-imagining The FACE

It's a tradition on our HND course to set the editorial project during October, and for the last couple of years we've concentrated on digital publishing.  This year the brief was to design a contemporary treatment for a relaunch of the FACE, the seminal 80s/90s culture magazine created by Nick Logan and designed by Neville Brody.

The assessment criteria for the project combined typography, art direction, user experience and digital imaging, plus a strong concept behind the styling, theme and tone which would meet the client requirements - a big challenge given the iconic provenance of the title.


Saulius Stebulis



Dan Plunkett


As well as a new masthead and cover, each student had to design a range of articles featuring interactive content such as animation, audio, video and kinetic type.  The work was then published using Adobe's Digital Publishing Suite for the iPad. The results look a little bit like this -


Sarah Diver-Lang - The FACE 


Alasdair Muir - The FACE 



Zsusi Slezak - The FACE 



Simon Griffiths - The FACE 

You can check out a selection of the covers on our Pinterest boards.  The full set of designs are published to the Adobe cloud and each student can share their publication on request.