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.

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.

Star Creative Shortlist

For the fifth time in six years we're celebrating good news from the Marketing Society Scotland, who have shortlisted our final year design student Charlie Law for the Star Creative Award 2016.   This 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 the Scottish Government, and the brief was to highlight gender inequality and the pay gap in the business sector in Scotland. Only four entries made the shortlist this year, and they were then required to develop their idea and present it to the judging panel last Friday at the Union's studio in Edinburgh.  Charlie's presentation featured a clever twist on gender stereotypes and some engaging copywriting.  We'll post up samples of his work in due course.

The winner will be announced at the Marketing Society Star Awards, on June 9th at the Corn Exchange in Edinburgh, the annual celebration of Scotland's world-class marketing community. You can find out more about the awards, including the shortlists across all the professional categories, at the Star Awards 2016 website.

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.

Induction Week

The new Semester begins next week and as usual we will be running a full Induction programme. Induction week gives all our new intake the chance to work, share and collaborate in the studio before the main classes kick off (starting 31st August).  At the end of the induction week, teams will present their solutions to the group.

The HNC and HND groups will be collaborating on a project (devised by two of the current HND students) to design a 12" record sleeve.  We'll be supplying some classic LPs are part of their research -





The NC group will take on a research project, investigating inspiration and pop culture. Part of their week will include a visit to the Edinburgh Museum of Modern Art to see two excellent exhibitions - Roy Lichtenstein (at Modern One) and Esher (at Modern 2).

Our Friends at Equator

Earlier this week we hosted another guerilla day - a short project working with industry collaborators. For these short projects, the class is briefed at 9.15am and they present their concepts at 4pm. This time around we had Patrick Bjorkman and Stephen Noble in from Glasgow's leading digital agency, Equator, so a big thanks to them for their support, enthusiasm and energy.

Pitching #oneweek6

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.

#berlin15 - M&C Saatchi

On our first full day in Berlin, Alex and I took a large group of design students to visit M&C Saatchi - with 22 offices worldwide, the biggest independent advertising agency in the world. The visit was very kindly arranged by Viktorija Kravkova, an Art Director at the agency and one of our former students who graduated from the HND course in 2012. Viktorija previously worked at Landor in Hamburg before joining M&C Saatchi Berlin in February 2014.



The visit kicked off with an hour-long talk in the meeting room by Björn Bremer, the Chief Creative Director (who also teaches advertising at the University of Berlin).  He talked a little bit about the history of the company, and gave the group an overview of the client roster, which includes massive brands like Coca Cola, BASF, Siemens and Bayer Leverkusen.


Sample goodies from Saatchi's recent work.



Just waiting for the Creative Director to arrive.

To introduce the sort of work M&C Saatchi produces, Björn played a showreel video of the agency's Euro Effie Gold award-winning 'Nothing Compares to Havana' campaign for another big brand, Havana Club. This campaign was rolled out globally across 35 markets and exemplifies the creative approach that the agency is famous for - brutal simplicity - and reflects their commercial ethos that "the work is nothing until it goes out the door".



Björn also discussed creativity, the realities of working with clients, and gave out five pieces of excellent advice -

1. Make Mistakes.
2. Have An Idol - seek inspiration from your heroes or idols.
3. Photoshop Sucks - the software is just a set of tools, start with the idea.
4. Don't Covet Your Ideas - share them, kill them, accept criticism.
5. Work Harder - you have to put in the hours to get good at what you do.

On the final point, Bjorn referred to Malcolm Gladwell's book 'Outliers' which describes the '10,000 hours rule' for mastering any discipline.

A short Q&A followed which gave the group an insight into how to plan their careers, where to look for work, why presenting work is so important, the pitfalls of research (including the short story slide shown below), and how students should (and should not) present their portfolios and any speculative communication to an agency.


The limits of design research.


Finally, we got a short tour of the offices, which are located on Münzstrasse in the Mitte district, a mere 10 minute walk from our hotel and set across two floors, with the 40-strong creative team on the upper floor.  Huge thanks to Viktorija, Björn and all at M&C Saatchi for an immensely inspiring start to the study week.

Bob Is No Animal

It's the last college day of 2014 for our final year students, and today they were presenting 'Make Your Mark', a self-branding project. We normally run this brief as part of their portfolio production in preparation for going out on work placement in February, but with the Berlin trip taking place in the last week in January, we decided to bring it forward.

Branding yourself and creating something that feels fresh but has longevity and catches your personality and working style is always tricky for a designer. This year the results are as good as we've ever had, with lots of impressive thinking, experimentation and careful execution.

You can view some of the presented work on our Pinterest board, and here is a taster from a standout effort by Craigh Roberston, who kicked off the presentations with his 'Bob Is No Animal' mark - a clever working of his initials into a memorable design. The full set of finished visuals are on Craigh's Behance, but here are a few samples showing the development of the mark -

Start Me Up

We're just about there with the induction planning for the start of the 2014-2015 session. Our induction programme picked up an award last year at the College Development Network (for Innovation in Learning and Teaching), so we hopefully know a thing or two about putting together a memorable first week for our design students.

This year the HNC and HND groups will have a week-long collaborative project involving some hand-on screen-printing, whilst the NC group will visit a major art exhibition in Edinburgh and then use that as inspiration to explore the basics of visual communication, and produce a presentation. The NC group will also be issued with this extensive bursary pack, which includes A3 sketchbooks, a bunch of essential pieces of stationary, a cutting board, notebooks, and a couple of excellent large format design books, including Steven Heller's '100 Ideas That Changed Graphic Design'.

The starting dates for induction week are:
NC - Monday 25th, 9.30am in Studio R310
HNC - Monday 25th, 1pm in Studio R310
HND - Tuesday 26th, 9am in Studio R310

Synergy

According to the CBi's Creative Nation report, the creative industries now provides a 'central part of the UK’s global appeal' and subsequently underpins much of the UK economy. The key action moving forward that the report highlights is that 'to cement its position as the world’s leading creative hub, the industry has to take steps now to build on existing progress'.

One big aspect of this is the 'synergy' between the various disciplines and areas - the need for collaboration and a sharing of ideas to ensure that all the underlying industries involved have the foundations in place for long-term success.

Our HNC groups have been investigating this situation as part of their Creative Industries projects. This year Film & TV, Radio and Graphics all worked together on a series of outcomes based around exploring, documenting and disseminating information and ideas about the current state of the Creative Industries. This includes how studios and production companies recruit and manage teams, and control workflow, budgets and copyright issues.

Working in Film & TV and Radio collaborated on an infographics project, which was written as a radio or film script, and then either broadcast or shot as video. Graphics then provided art direction on publishing this work, either via blogs, social media, or more traditional channels.

Tutor Conor Wright explains the process' "Earlier this year the college launched an initiative called 'Creatives Connect' - basically a social media space where creatives from all the courses could organise collaboration, share best practice and generally get into the habit of networking. So with the emphasis on cross-collaboration and a multi-disiplined approach to creative work, we felt that the groups should emulate this working style, so that their investigation of synergy in the sector was itself an example of that synergy".


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Team Neish #getawaywithit

Jason Craig and Wendy Harris Jones from Cutty Sark announced the winning solution to the One Week project today in the design studio at Edinburgh College (Granton Campus). Their feedback was thorough, and the assessment criteria covered -

a) understanding the brief
b) effective strategy
c) working as a team
d) creative and original thinking

and they agreed that Team Neish, led by HND student Calum Mackinnon and mentored by Graham Neish, were the winners. The runners-up spot went to Team Multiply, led by Mark Phillips and mentored by Multiply's Charlie Boyle. You can check out a sampler of all six team projects on our Pinterest boards, and the work will be on display in the college Hub until Friday, May 2nd.

The winning team - Calum Mackinnon, Craig Nicholson, Emily Hubbard, Jakub Sobanski, Saulius Strebulis and Magda Milek, have all been offered a place at the Cutty Sark table at the Marketing Society Awards in June, and the students will also be the first recipients of a new year-long graduate membership of the Marketing Society. As an additional boost to the course, Cutty Sark have also offered to sponsor our end-of-year Industry Night and Show, which will be held on May 29th at Creative Exchange in Leith.

Cutty Sark were full of praise for the standard from all the teams, but felt that the #getawaywithit solution really stayed on brief and featured the most original approach. The copy-based campaign played on the rebellious nature of the target audience by associating the Cutty Sark brand with the ethos of breaking rules and conventions. The idea also took into account the logical conclusion of the concept  - that a real campaign would be banned by the ASA - and that this would raise the brand profile.

Jason said "Their pitch showed a strong understanding of the brief, the product and the target audience. The concept showed composure and maturity and led to danger, adventure, the unexpected, rebelliousness and basically the feeling of discomfort which was the main purpose of the brief – to push us towards areas we had not considered. This team did it very well."  He added that "The reality of breaking the law is not to be applauded or rewarded, but basically putting the idea into the consumers head was very clever. It does translate and it would be able to spread internationally, and taking it into filmed live situations to post on social media was clever and feasible and would feed itself into a Phase 2 campaign."

The concept -

Tweak to the bottle cap from white to black -




Guerilla campaign - outdoor, print, social media and ambient channels

Ali's got the edge

It was an interesting timeout today from coursework for HNC student Ali Muir, who presented logo ideas to a live client in between his design classes. Ali showed off a wide range of inventive marks to Edge Textile Artists Scotland - a collective promoting excellence in all aspects of contemporary textiles. The client had a tough choice whittling down the selection to the best two, which Ali will then develop a bit further. This model of employer engagement provides invaluable experience for our students, and is something we are looking to develop further next year.

One Week Pitches

Our 'One Week Agency' teams presented their work in the studio today to the client, SAMH. Also in attendance were mentors Graham Neish, Alan Lennon and Veronica Ferguson. Each team pitched a great concept with plenty of ideas - some safe, some radical - and the client will now have to go away and make some tough decisions. Jo Anderson, SAMH's Director of External Affairs & Fundraising, said "We were blown away by the amount the students have achieved in a single week.  The pitches felt really professional, and the creative is really strong in all the solutions, so we've got a difficult task now to pick a winner".

Ahead of the selection, we've exhibited a small sample from each project down in the college Hub, and they look a little bit like this -


Team 1 : Mentor - Graham Neish (Neish)


Team 2 : Mentor - Alan Lennon (Lennon)


Team 3 : Mentor - Kirsten Murray (Family)


Team 4 : Mentors - Gill Carrie, Gregor Matheson (Lewis)


Team 5 : Mentor - Jen Wood (RAPP)


Team 6: Mentors - Ian Kirkby, Michael Heins (Lewis)

Once the client has made a decision, we'll post the full presentations, plus some nice photos (by our resident photographer Derek Anderson), documenting the week and the presentations. You can find out more about this project here.