Getting Started

On Friday of last week, our HN groups presented their Induction Week solutions. The project was devised and directed by HND2 students Alex De Sousa, Aiste Piechaviciute and Olga Komanek, and the brief was to design a 12" record sleeve for a short compilation of music of your choice.  A key restriction was that computers weren't to used. The students worked in teams and the winning design came from a team led by Rumana Sayed and Rhys McGeary.

Our NC group sat in on the presentations in R310 and their votes determined thew winners. They also handed in their own induction work - a set of moodboards exploring Pop Art and inspired by their visit  earlier in the week to the Museum of Modern Art.

To finish off the first week, all the groups met up at the Innis & Gunn Bar and Kitchen on Edinburgh's Lothian Rd.  Innis & Gunn sponsored our 2014 Show and provided us with a major One Week project last year.





Sample 12" Sleeves




The winning sleeve, a gatefold featuring sketches of the interior of a fridge.




Full house for the presentations.




NC A2 Moodboards.

Colour Me Impressed

Today we welcomed our new NC Graphics students to the course, and after a short presentation and some course-related housekeeping, we got down to business of getting them started by issuing a 3-day project 'Colour Me Impressed'.  The idea of this project is to get our fledgling designers thinking about visual signals and emotional responses, and to look at one of the basic building blocks of visual communication, colour. They'll put together a sketchbook and an A2 mood board exploring their favourite colour.

To get everyone talking about colour, we'll be taking the class to the Fruitmarket Gallery on Tuesday morning to catch the Jim Lambie exhibition (running from 27 June – 19 October).


Zobop at the Fruitmarket Gallery. Pic by Alasdair Muir.

Lambie is one of Scotland's most important and original contemporary artists. Nominated for the Turner Prize in 2005, he uses bright colours, lines, shapes and everyday objects to create dazzling pattern-based artworks, including his most famous work 'ZOBOP', a floor-based psychedelic sculpture of continuous coloured lines of vinyl tape that can be exhibited on any floorspace with mesmerising results.

Let's hope this provides useful inspiration for the project. The class will mount their work on Thursday at 2pm in the studio corridor, then join the HN classes in the studio to celebrate the end of induction week and the start of their design education.