BasketBall Foundation Scotland

HNC Graphic Design students Rumana Sayed and Hannah Johnston have been working on a live project for Basketball Scotland, the national governing body for basketball in Scotland. The brief, set by Basketball Scotland's Marketing & CRM Manager Berta Galvez, was to create a new mark and a set of cohesive brand guidelines for Basketball Scotland Foundation - the organisation's soon-to-be-launched charity arm.  Berta and her team liaised with the students and gave some great feedback at each stage of the process, and the full branding is now underway.

The visual samples here detail the design process that produced the mark. The client had already supplied the team with their corporate typeface, Praxis LT Bold, and the colour palette was a variation on the existing branding for Basketball Scotland.


 

One Week #6 : Innis & Gunn

On Wednesday our graphic design students were briefed on the latest 'One Week' project, which runs next week, from Monday 16th to Friday 20th March. The group attended a briefing by the client Innis and Gunn - Scotland's leading export beer brand - at their Headquarters in Randolph Place, Edinburgh. The students were accompanied by tutors Helena Good and Alex Gunn, plus mentors from the six agencies involved on this project - Whitespace (who generously offered us the project on behalf of the client), The Gate Worldwide, Multiply, Lewis, Realise and Blonde.



We'll be documenting the project via our Storify and participants can contribute with the hashtag #oneweek6. The One Week project is part of our award-winning experiential employer-engagement Mentoring Programme, where our students collaborate in teams, working alongside various creative agencies for a full week. Our most recent One Week project was for G.F. Smith (November 2014).

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.

Coffee In A Book

Some inventive print design from Matt White on the latest NC project - a packaging brief for Glasgow-based coffee specialists Matthew Algie who were looking to create one-off gift packs of their best-selling flavours, exclusively on sale only in the National Gallery of Scotland.

Matt came up with the idea of packaging three flavours of coffee in book cover jackets rather than standard pinch bags or foil packs.  He connected each flavour to an artist whose work is on display at the Gallery - Tinderbox is connected to Emil Nolde, Pandora to John Bellany, and Forza to pioneering Modernist John Cecil Stephenson.

Inspired by Grammar school textbooks and Modernism, Matt then combined vector illustration, bold colour and clean sans serif typography to create a set of balanced, minimal paperback book covers. Each can be displayed separately at the point-of-sale, or also packaged as a trilogy or box set.

Maggie's Winner

One of our HND Graphic Design students, Stephanie Dalzell, was named winner ina  recent project the class did for cancer charity Maggie’s, to design a corporate gift to give to charity patrons. Stephanie's design was for a ceramic candle holder design, and featured a laser-cut image of the local Maggie’s centre.



This project was instigated by stalwart mentor Graham Neish, who brought Maggie’s in meet the students and set a brief to imagine an object that would reflect the spirit of Maggie’s and which could be produced as a thank-you gift for patrons.

The students visited Maggie’s Edinburgh so they could see for themselves how creativity in architecture and design play a vital role in making the centres calm and uplifting places. Maggie’s came up with a shortlist of five students, who all presented to the charity, and announced the winner at Granton Campus last Wednesday.

Marie McQuade, development director at Maggie’s, said: “Stephanie particularly impressed us with a creation that beautifully illustrates the hopefulness of Maggie’s Centres. It will make a wonderful gift for our patrons.”

More info on the project at the Edinburgh College website.

Reinventing Matalan

HNC Graphic Design recently presented their rebranding project - a brief to reinvent and reinvigorate the Matalan brand.  As well as creating a new mark and producing brand guidelines, the project called for visual concepts in print and digital to communicate the new direction the brand was being taken in. You can see a range of sample visuals on our pinterest board, and here are a few tasters that showcase the variety of ideas the project produced.

Olga Komineck combined clever copy with elegant typography and a hint of Americana to create a fresh change of direction for the brand -










Kiera Winfield looked to Google's Material Design guidelines to develop a vibrant colour palette for her intriguing and minimalist '*there is more to Matalan' concept -












Another direction came from Annabel Gibb, whose 'restyle yourself' concept combined a handwritten font with a bold circular red mark providing plenty of energy and a broad appeal.