Visiting BILD

Our annual Berlin study trip again included a visit to Axel Springer - one of the largest publishers in the world and publisher of Europe's largest circulation newspaper, BILD.

Axel Springer's Head of Apprenticeships, Dual Studies & Talent Attraction, Uta Bendixen, organised a tour of the BILD Newsroom, which included a talk by BILD's Editor about the future of publishing, and how the company's graphic design team produces the newspaper, whose circulation is over 1.5m copies each day.

We also visited Axel Springer's incubator project Accelerator, a joint venture between Plug & Play Tech Center and Axel Springer SE, where startups and new technology brands are nurtured and developed - http://www.axelspringerplugandplay.com

One Week Winners

Team Union Direct (l/r) - Zoe Willis, Valentina Torella, Gonzalo Cervilla, Balazs Hirth & Rachel Platts-Smith.

Our most recent One Week project finished with a remarkable flourish after the client, Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) assembled a panel to judge the presentations for a second time.

The brief from SQA was to create a campaign to promote their new National Progression Award (NPA) in Creative Thinking to teachers and the parents and carers of pupils in Scottish secondary schools. For this project we were lucky to have support from some of our favourite collaborators - Amaze Realize, Campfire, Emperor, Neish, Lewis, Union Direct and Whitespace were all involved.

Each agency took a team for the week to work on a campaign idea before pitching the work to a panel of judges from the SQA at the Emperor agency. The judges realised that a second round of judging would be required to find a winner.

The second panel, including representatives from SQA and Education Scotland, assembled at Granton Campus last Thursday and duly selected Team Union Direct, featuring HND Graphic Design students Rachel Platts Smith, Gonzalo Cervilla, Balazs Hirth, Zoe Willis, Valentina Torella, and Ross McGrail.

Their ‘Creativity is Possibility’ concept featured a range of clever ideas and promotional materials to be sent to secondary schools across the country. Edinburgh College student Rachel Platts-Smith, from the winning team, said “We are very proud to be named the winners of this year’s competition. The key to our success was definitely teamwork. We’d like to thank our mentors at Union Direct who were there every step of the way and made this experience all the more enjoyable – we couldn’t have done it without them.”

Fiona Robertson, SQA Chief Executive, and a judge on the panel, commented that “Creativity is a hugely important skill and that’s why the NPA in Creative Thinking is such an exciting development. I am thankful to all the students from Edinburgh College who provided an incredible range of ideas for promoting the qualification.”

Also on the panel, Martin Boyle, Head of creative, Hospitality, and Sport at SQA, added: “It was thrilling to see the students tackle the brief with such commitment, and creativity. The whole project has been a fantastic example of engaging creative education in practice, bringing together the college, students and industry to create something special. Of course, this isn’t just a theoretical exercise. We hope to be in a position to be able offer our NPA in Creative Thinking to schools and colleges across the country, and utilise the work of team Union Direct in our activities. The standard of work the students presented was genuinely exceptional. I look forward to hearing more about their progress.”

Well done all and huge thanks both to the client and our amazing agency friends.

Moving Stories

Our annual end-of-year Industry Event and Show takes place this year on June 5th at the Fruitmarket Gallery.  We last exhibited there in 2016 and this year the event includes the use of both floors, exhibiting projects from HND Graphic Design, and showcasing the work of the Daydream Believers Schools project.

We'll be hoping for another full house to help us celebrate design education, with attendees from education and industry, as well as parents and friends eager to see the work of the Class of 2019.







This year all our artwork and promotion was done by the hugely talent Balasz Hirth, currently studying in our HNC class.  You can book free tickets on Eventbrite.

Sprint Friday in Berlin

Traditionally as part of our annual Berlin study trip in February we arrange a studio visit. In past years this has included the generosity of Saatchi, TLGG and Eden Spiekermann. This year we were lucky enough to visit Axel Springer, one of the world's largest publishers, on the Wednesday (which we'll report on in a separate post) and AJ&Smart, one of the foremost exponents of the 'Design Sprint' ethos in modern visual communication, on the Friday.

The AJ&Smart studio is located in East Berlin, close to the East Side Gallery (one of the few intact parts of the Berlin Wall). The studio was founded by Aussie Michael Smart and Irishman Jonathan Courtney, and includes employees from the UK, Finland, Brazil, Russia, Poland, and of course Germany.  We were lucky enough to meet Michael when our group - all 40 students - arrived just before 4pm on Friday.



Huge glyphs on a wall right opposite the AJ&Smart office on Kopernicker Strasse.


Our students are all set to hear from the lovely folks at AJ&Smart

Venla Hakunti and Rob Hamblen, both wearing some cosy-looking AJ&Smart slippers, put together a great welcome and a fantastic presentation to the students.  The presentation focussed on the company's 4-day sprint process, itself based on the original 5-day model devised by Jake Knapp, a design partner at Google Ventures and the author of the best-selling book 'Sprint'.

Rob introduced some of AJ&Smart's clients - who have included Air BNB, Slack, and Europe's biggest retailer MOVMNT - and talked about their approach to design thinking and how the studio selects and manages its projects.  He then explained the typical sprint process at AJ&Smart - ideation, sketching/storyboarding, prototyping and testing - then demo'd some awesome sprint products, including a really cool mobile app for Red Bull and a (prototype) real bar of chocolate.


Something AJ&Smart build up plenty of during a Design Sprint


Rob explaining the four day sprint model.

As well as reeling off too many great quotes to list here, Rob, himself an HND graduate in Graphic Design, then gave a great Q&A, and our students asked some really sharp questions about generating ideas, dealing with clients, planning, timescales and process.

The AJ&Smart experience also included some nice refreshments and a general natter at the very end, and all of our students were clearly buzzing after the talk. It's always amazing when busy organisations take the time to host talks to students, and everyone agreed this was a big highlight of the 2018 Berlin trip.  Massive thanks to Venla, Rob and also to Danny Holtschke for making this all happen.  Hopefully we will visit again next year!


We left AJ&Smart a heartfelt message.


They even do Design Sprints in the AJ&Smart toilet!

Mini Maker - One Week 11

Tomorrow the team from Edinburgh Science Festival will be coming along to the Granton Campus to announce the winning team from our recent One Week project. This was to create a campaign to promote the Mini Maker Faire as part of the 2018 Edinburgh Science Festival.

Our HNC and HND students worked alongside Edinburgh agencies Lewis, The Gate, Neish, Whitespace, Campfire and Skyscanner.  We'll post the winning entry later this week but here is a sneak peak of some of the creative from each team.


Team Whitespace - Maker X




Team Campfire - Expect The Unexpected




Team Neish - F Word




Team Skyscanner - Meet The Makers




Team Lewis - Co-Lab




Team The gate - UnZip





You can find out how the project went over on our One Week 11 Storify - here.

Showing Off Our Talent

Our video dept filmed this short promo for our end-of-year show, which was at the Dovecot Gallery in May 2017.

Visit Scotland / Whitespace

Check out the promotional video for our One Week project from spring 2017. This collaboration involved award-winning design agency Whitespace, and their client, Visit Scotland.

 

New Show - New Talent

Our end-of-year Industry Night & Show takes place in less than two weeks, on Thursday June 1st. This year the event is at the Dovecot Studios, one of Edinburgh's best Arts spaces.  Our theme this year is 'New'- inspired by all the positive feedback we've received from our partners and collaborators out there in the industry.

As well as exhibiting the final projects by our HND Graphic Design students, the show will include work from winning competition entries for the Marketing Society Scotland and D&AD, plus samples from our recent Schools project and our Mentoring Programme live 'One Week' projects.

The show is on for one night only - a hugely successful format we've used since 2013 - and runs from 6-9PM.  You can book a place at http://new.etcshow.net

Star Creative Awards 2017

 We're celebrating good news from the Marketing Society Scotland, who have announced a shortlist of six students for the Star Creative Award 2017 - which contains no less than three of our design students - Christina Giannakou, Sarah Macrae and Catriona Munro.

The award is in the Development category, sponsored by Union Direct, and requires students from Universities and Colleges in Scotland to submit a written proposal and moodboard to a brief set by a high-profile client.  This year, the client was Brewgooder, and the brief was to encourage bars and restaurants to stock Brewgooder Beer and buy into its charitable mission to use 100% of its profits to supply clean water to the world.

The shortlisted students will all pitch their developed ideas to the judging panel at the Union Agency in Edinburgh on May 17th, and the winner will be announced at the Marketing Society Star Awards, the annual celebration of Scotland's world-class marketing community, on June 8th in Glasgow.
You can find out more about the awards, including the shortlists across all the professional categories, at the Star Awards 2017 website.

Over the course of the last few years our course has produced four winners of this event, including last year's Star Creative Student, Charlie Law, who is now a junior designer at Underscore in London. 

Talking Design Education

A recent interview with Judson Cowan, Lead Designer at Skyscanner, who discusses design education and the company's internship and placement programmes, which our current and past students have benefited from.

We Love Firestarters

Teviot, one of our partner design agencies, has launched 'Firestarter' – a year long paid internship for a creative student from our Visual Communication HND course. The successful student will join the company after they've finished the course in July, and then spend a year under the watchful eye of the creative team at Teviot, working on all sorts of projects and gaining valuable industry experience.

The initiative was started by senior designer at Teviot, Kirsten Murray, a former graduate of the course, who has been involved in the mentoring programme since 2010. As well as the internship, some our HND students will also get the opportunity to develop the brand identity for the Firestarter programme ahead of its launch in the Spring.




Kirsten (centre)  and her colleagues Kat Summers (right) and Ed Vickers, came into the college just before Christmas and surprised the class with the announcement about Firestarter.

Kirsten says: “Mentoring is a powerful tool in career development – whether you’re a student or the creative director. So we’ve launched Firestarter to build on our close ties with Edinburgh College - the opportunity is being exclusively to their students - helping to assist the next generation of talented designers to stay in Scotland and boost the industry here.”

You can follow progress on the Firestarter initiative on Teviot's website. and read the official press release as published in the Glasgow Herald.

Talking Shop

We had a very busy few days of guest speakers in the studio last week.  With the final year class finishing of their D&AD projects and getting their portfolios ready for their placements, its a very busy time but there is always room for employer engagement, and hearing it from the horses mouth on life outside college in the Creative Industries.

First up, on Wednesday, we had Gemma Rundell, who graduated from the HND course in 2009 and is now a designer at Teviot.  Gemma is a former YCN winner, and she talked to the final year students about placements. This is perfect timing because the students go out on work experience from the first week in February. This year we've managed to secure every student at least one placement at a broad range of studios and agencies across Edinburgh.  Gemma provided some awesome inspiration and plenty of words of wisdom.

On Thursday the HNC class got treated to a talk by Ian Greenhill and Jordan Laird - the very talented guys at Something Something.  Both used to work at the Leith Agency and have a reputation for being ideas machines - you can check out their work on their website at somethingsomething.tv

At the end of the week, former student Craigh Robertson came in and delivered a talk to both HND Graphics and HND Interactive Design on his experiences since graduating in 2015.

Craigh worked at Stuff and then at Hookson, before setting up his own business, Hawk, towards the end of 2016. Amongst other things, Craigh discussed how he devised a business plan, sources of support and funding, the development of his brand identity, and pricing work for clients.

Our final year graphics students start placements on Jan 30th, and we'll post up a list of the agencies involved soon.

Highland Park Retrospective

A short film featuring feedback interviews with some of our HNC and HND students reflecting on their experiences working on the Highland Park One Week project in Nov 2016.

DMA Awards 2016

HND Graphic Design students Jennifer Grieve and Sam Haynes were in London last week, with tutor Helena Good, to attend the annual DMA Awards.

Jennifer and Sam were shortlisted in the DMA Breakthrough Award - which recognises emerging creative talent from the UK's Universities and Colleges. The pair picked up the runners' up spot and did some valuable networking, raising the profile of the course and doing Edinburgh College proud.

This is the second year in a row that we've had student work shortlisted at this national-recognised industry competition.  As well as attending the awards event, Sam and Jennifer presented their design solution at the Proximity Agency for the client (The Economist).

More about the Breakthrough award here, and a full list of DMA Award winners here.

Highland Park One Week

Here's the video from our recent One Week project for Highland Park (Edrington), nicely shot and edited by our resident video specialist Richie McAllister.  The agencies involved this time around were Lewis, Multiply, Neish, Teviot and Whitespace.
 

Highland Park - One Week

On Friday our design teams pitched their one week projects to the panel from Edrington - Jason, Wendy and Juliet. Each team presented their project and then they had to mount their deliverables down in the college hub for exhibition, where the other teams, and some of our industry mentors, could view all the work.

For this project, we worked with design agencies Lewis, Multiply, Whitespace, Teviot and Neish. Each team consisted of up to seven students, at five different locations across Edinburgh, and in some cases with multiple mentors to a team.  The teams had four days to produce the creative work, and 30 minutes on the Friday to present it.

As well as tutor visits and agency meetings over the week, communications across teams were run through the slack App, allowing students instant feedback and crits as they went along. This also provided the tutors with a running commentary on how the week was progressing.

Edrington's Jason Craig announced the winning work, with Team Lewis just pipping Team Teviot to the top prize. Team Lewis will now get to work with Edrington on the Highland Park brand.  The other teams all received Highland Park goodies and a great deal of praise.  As it turned out, all five teams were separated by only a handful of points, based on Edrington's judging criteria (i.e. based on exactly whats covered in the brief). Having worked with our students before (on Cutty Sark in 2013), they had a good idea of the kind of work to expect, but were really blown away by the quality and depth of ideas the students managed to produce in less than a week.

This was our ninth project of this kind, and the client and the agencies were again impressed with the professionalism and creative energy of all the students - the opportunity for this level of employer engagement is central to the curriculum offering on the course.  I'll post up samples from all the work soon, and there some examples here -


Jason Craig gives some insightful feedback to Team Neish.


Team Lewis #vikingconquerors


Team Lewis #vikingconquerors


Team Lewis #vikingconquerors


Team Teviot #vikingsoul


Team Teviot #vikingsoul

One Week No.9

Our 9th One Week project finishes tomorrow, when HNC and Final Year students, working alongside 5 agencies - Teviot, Multiply, Lewis, Neish and Whitespace - will pitch their work to the client, Edrington's Highland Park brand. This is the second time that we've been lucky enough to work on a live brief with Edrington (we did a one week for Cutty Sark back in 2013).  Samples of all the work, plus the winning idea, will be posted once the winners have been announced.


The Client and the Brief




Breaktime.


Team Multiply at Multiply.


Team Whitespace, at Whitespace.


Team Neish (with Graham Neish) at Creative Exchange.


Team Teviot - at Codebase, Granton Campus.


Team Lewis at Creative Exchange.

All images by Derek Anderson.

A Brief Student Show was like this...

Our annual Industry Night & Show - A Brief Student Show - was held at the Fruitmarket Gallery back in June, and turned out to be our biggest and most successful yet. More than 200 industry practitioners, designers, graduates and employers assembled to view our students' work and celebrate design education.

With the new term just a week or so away, we thought it might be nice to look back at the show with this short film of the event, when some of our mentors gave their impressions of the work this year.




You can also go to our flickr stream and see photos from the event, taken by our resident photographer Derek Anderson.

National Galleries One Week

As part of our annual end-of-year event at the Fruitmarket Gallery on 9th June, we'll be exhibiting our most recent One Week project, where our students took on a live brief from the National Galleries of Scotland, in collaboration with their mentors in design agencies Whitespace, Multiply, Realise, Teviot, and Blonde. Check out our short film of the project -



Part of the Edinburgh College Glow Festival, 'A Brief Student Show' is on at the Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh, June 9th from 6-9PM.  If you are planning to come along but haven't let us know yet, you can register at www.etcshow.net

TES FE Awards

We were in London recently at the TES FE Awards, where our HND course gained a nomination for the Partnership Initiative in the Employer Engagement category. The awards celebrate dedication and expertise in the Further Education provision across the whole of the UK.

Curriculum Manager Neil Manning accompanied the design tutors to the event, held at London's Grosvenor Hotel, along with two of our Mentors, Kirsten Murray and Kat Summers, both from Teviot Creative.  A full list of nominations, winners and the official photo gallery are available at the TES website http://www.tesfeawards.co.uk