Our YCN Annuals

A huge shipment of YCN Annuals arrived earlier this week. We are actually wondering if there has been a mistake, with no less than eight boxes of annuals totally 96 copies sitting in the studio!



With Art Direction by YCN's Alex Hunting, and design by Arthur Carey, this is yet another fantastic piece of print design. The annual features articles and interviews with former YCN winners, educators, and selected industry clients who set the briefs, plus 72 pages of commendations (the very first of which, page 74, features our very own Katy Johnson.

We Love Work Placements

It's that time of year again when our final year students take up to four weeks out from their studies to work in the industry. Placements are a crucial rite-of-passage for any fledgling designer, and gaining valuable industry experience is an important aspect of our course.

The response this year has been as good as in past years despite the economic climate, so we'd like to thank, in no particular order:

Heedi, Lewis, Mortonward, RAPP, Multiply, Editions Financial, Contagious, Heehaw Digital, Edinburgh District Council, Sedley Place, Whitespace, StudioMB, Eskimo, The Union, Line Digital, Story (and quite a few others who were unable to help out this year but whose support we value greatly).

A Busy New Year

Our Final Year students have started 2013 in top gear, tackling a live digital brief and starting their D&AD projects. They are also getting set to go out on work experience in February. We've had a great response from all of our favourite agencies, and the students will start their placements on or after Jan 28th.

The HNC group submitted their packaging projects this week - a choice between the Goji brief for YCN, and a brief to reinvent the inflight experience on BMI's European business flights. A selection of the YCN work will be posted soon, in the meantime here is snippet from Ryan Allan's BMI solution - a fingerprint-activated check-in planner App -

Pure Editorial DPS

On Friday our final year class presented their Pure Editorial projects. The brief was to create a masthead, cover and three articles for a chosen subject under the theme of 'pure'. Subjects included economics, politics, the arts, exhibitions, food, travel, technology and families.

For this project, our students worked in collaboration with their counterparts in HND Photography, and the work was designed to be published to tablet format.

We previously posted a sneak preview of work by Michal Grazewicz, and now we've put together a gallery of selections from ten of the resulting folios. A 'folio' in this context is a collection of articles, assembled into a single file using InDesign's Folio Builder, and published using Adobe's Digital Publishing Suite. Check the sample work out here.

We Love Review Nights

Our 12.12.12 review night was another successful get-together for our students, former graduates and mentors. With the class all set to go out on placement early in 2013, this was the perfect opportunity to get feedback on their work, and to find out more about what it's really like out in the creative industry.

As well as a great portfolio surgery session, we were treated to inspiring talks by mentor Ian Farmer, student designer Jonathan Walton (currently being mentored by Ian), and Equator's Creative Director James Jefferson.

Upright Creative's Ian Farmer kicked off by talking about his long involvement with our course, and how the sorts of designers we are producing now (and the awards they are winning) are proof that our curriculum and teaching approach has responded well to the daunting pace of change in the industry. Ian also made it clear that working as a mentor is a lot of fun, and a continual source of inspiration for those professional designers involved in it.

Final year student Jonathan Walton did a nice presentation featuring some examples of his projects, and he showed how the direction and intent of the work had been positively influenced by mentoring input from Ian.

Our guest speaker James Jefferson then gave a passionate talk about his experiences in the creative industry, from the founding and rise of his agency Equator, to the pitfalls of applying for jobs, doing interviews, and the general approach a designer needs to take to be a success. He also made the point that industry needs solid connections to education - our mentoring programme being a very good example of how it can work. James finished off with five off-the-wall gifts of advice, including a really classic final one - 'Don't Design, Do Remarkable Things'.

The evening finished off with a short set of presentations of advice and tips from our former graduates, all currently working at various Edinburgh-based agencies, and all keen to pass on the benefits of their experience. The event was filmed and hopefully we'll have it up on vimeo soon.


James Jefferson in full flow.


Portfolio Surgery.


This looks like nice work.


Graduate Advice.


Discussing a project.


It's Easy With Hindsight.

Pure Preview

The Final Year students are busy preparing their portfolios and work samples for tomorrow night's review event, but they also have a big deadline for the end of the week - their tablet editorial designs.

The format and workflow for this project uses the InDesign CS6 Folio Builder and Adobe's Digital Publishing Suite, which is great news for their future prospects and should make for some exciting presentations on Friday. As a taster, here's a sneak preview of 'Pure Exhibitions', by Michal Grazewicz, featuring his masthead, cover and contents pages, plus two articles.