Real Life

Andy telling it as it is in Design Lab A111 at Granton Campus.

We had a recent visit from designer and mentor Andy Jamieson, who talked to the HNC and HND classes about his career. Andy has five years' experience both in-house and agency, and described how he came into Graphic Design through the HND route and described securing a junior position at Teviot.  Andy showed some examples of his work on various projects and for a wide range of clients, then talked about his recent redundancy from award-winning Glasgow agency Front Page and how he has since tackled moving into freelance.

Andy also recently collaborated with two of our other mentors, Kirsten Murray and Kat Summers, on their new magazine 'Aye', and contributed some great photos for the first issue of former HND graduates Liam Philp and Catriona Munro, who feature in the magazine. Check out some of Andy's work here - http://andyjamieson.co.uk and his work for Aye.

Along the way Andy had some great pieces of advice on self-belief, making contacts and developing skills.  Inspirational stuff.

In the Fine Art Studio

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.

Essential Reading

It's been out-of-print for the best part of ten years, but at last, just in time for the new term, Paul Rand's 'Thoughts on Design' is available again. In this classic text of 164 pages (featuring 94 halftone illustrations and 8 colour plates), Rand describes and explains his ideas about the role of design in the world, showing how symbols and type, underpinned by strong conceptual thinking, can be combined to create the pure and clear kind of visual communication that we're all familiar with in modern branding and corporate identity.

Rand's philosophy is summed up in his most well-known quote - "Simplicity is not the goal. It is the by-product of a good idea and modest expectations", and of course he has plenty of brilliant examples of his work to back this up - ABC, IBM, UPS, Westinghouse and Enron to name but a few.

Along with Reid Miles and Lester Beall, Rand (1914-1996) was a leading proponent of an Americanised commercial approach to the Swiss Style, and this little book is a must-read for all students of design. You can order it on Amazon for about £12 in paperback and £8 on Kindle. And as a taster, it's worth reading Michael Bierut's introduction to the new edition, 'Thoughts on Thoughts on Design'.

More:
Paul Rand website

We Have Hand-Made Winners

We had 11 student teams presenting their 'Hands On' induction projects this morning. Solutions ranged from a subversive guerilla advertising to educational pamplets, an imagination station, a handprinting installation and even a photocopier photobooth. But the clear winners, as voted by the whole group (and incidentally by the tutors) was Team 3 and their 'On' campaign - using hand on techniques on 'practically everything'. See what you think -







Selections from the rest of the project-work can be checked out on our Pinterest boards here.

Some Inspiration

After the mid-semester break, both HND 1 and 2 are hard at work on a number of projects - HND 2 have an interiors brief, based around a signage re-development for the Telford campus, and HND 1 have a typeface design project and an MPA Roses brief.

On top of that, the 2011 D&AD briefs have just been announced, and Helena, David and I will be integrating them into the delivery over the next seven or eight weeks leading up to Christmas. And finally, we'll be gearing up for a modest end-of-year exhibition, with input for the Mentors, and a chance for the NC classes to exhibit their work as well.

All of which means that its time for some inspiration, so here are three great short TED talks by David Carson, Jaket Utko and Paula Scher on creativity, intuitive design, and the thrill of being hired to think for a living -