It's in Holly's Hands

Moving On Inverclyde visited the college today to announce the winning design for our live Mentor project. We arranged for samples of the work to be exhibited on boards and on a suite of Macs in the college Hub area, along with a buffet lunch. The client then presented a nice summary of their decision-making on the project before handing out prizes for the winner and two runners-up. They also presented a small token of appreciation to all 19 students who submitted work.

The joint runners-up Calum MacKinnon and Craig Nicholson received £50 each. Holly Kemp's 'The Power Is In Your Hands' campaign, coupled with a great logotype, was overall winner. Holly was presented with a cheque for £250, and her idea will now be taken into production across web and print.

Moving On Inverclyde's John Hackett said "The presentations were all really excellent, and this left us with a huge problem. In the end, having whittled it down to six possible winners, Holly's logo stood out as something we could use and build upon in the years to come".

Holly and Calum are both mentored by RAPP's Jen Wood, and are currently hot-desking at the agency, whilst Craig is working with one of our longest-serving mentors, Graham Neish.

Moving On : Mentor Project

On Wednesday our final year students presented their Mentor projects to the client, Moving On Inverclyde, a Recovery Skills Service founded in 2001 to assist people affected by problematic drug use and associated mental health issues in the West of Scotland. The brief was to re-brand the organisation, re-design the existing website, and create a campaign to raise awareness of the charities' work, and hopefully attract more addicts to attend and seek out help.

The project spanned three weeks, and the students met with their mentors to discuss concepts, art direction and project management. The client panel (all seven of them!) made the journey across the central belt to our studio to see the final results and were blown away by the scope of the work, and the professionalism of our students. With 19 presentations to view, it wasn't possible to pick a winner on the day, and the panel will be coming back in a week's time with their result. The winning entry will receive a £250 prize, plus the chance to develop the idea for print and digital. As a sampler, here are three of the web design work.

Craig Nicholson (Mentor - Graham Neish).







Ryan Allan (Mentor - Ian Farmer, Upright Creative).











Mark Phillips (Mentor - Vicky Sinclair, Line).









A full selection of work from this project will be on our pinterest board soon, and we'll be announcing the pitch-winning work on Thursday 31st.

Chandler Book Covers

There was a literary vibe in the studio today as our HNC class presented their typographic projects - a set of book cover designs and a point-of-sale for four Raymond Chandler novels. The brief specified no images, just typography, with all four books connected in some visual way, and Penguin as the client. There were 18 presentations to get through, featuring 72 book covers and dozens of supporting visuals, so this was a long day in the studio!



The three example designs shown here came from Saulius Strebulis, Sarah Diver-Lang and Oliver De Leon.

Saulius' concept, 'beneath the surface' focussed on Chandler's words, via some serious minimalism, as he dispensed with the cover altogether in favour of a table of contents showing opening lines for key paragraphs in each chapter.











Sarah's designs also veered towards minimalism, but she took a more hand-crafted approach, cutting bits of type out of an original 1950s American magazine, and assembling Chandler's name from the letters - a neat twist on vintage typography.









Oliver's work featured some slick effects on the titles to create a bold and dramatic look with a hint of menace and a really commercial feel.







You can check a larger sample of the work from all 18 students, pinned to our Chandler Covers board on pinterest.

A Helping Hand

As well as our successful Mentoring Programme for Final Year design students, we also run an internal mentoring scheme, where each student in a given year takes a student in year below under their wing. This holistic approach to design education allows students to share in a community of practice, gaining critical and reflective skills which will serve them well out in the workplace.

Earlier this week, our Final Year students offered up advice to the HNC Year on their book cover project, a set of four Raymond Chandler novels, no images, just typography. A selection of these will be posted as soon as the project has been presented.

With that experience under their belts, the HNC then got to take on the mentoring role by spending an afternoon in the studio with the fledgling NC group, looking over their postcard work - a series of double-sided A5s showcasing urban typography across Edinburgh.

Events Awards Success

The Design Team are celebrating after picking up a Commendation on Thursday evening at the Scottish Event Awards.

Back in July we received a nomination in the 'Best Educational Event' category for our sell-out One Night Stand graduate show at the Traverse. Our event team - comprising the design tutors, HND students Ryan Allan and Byron Abbot, plus mentor Iain Lauder - accompanied Neil Manning, Programme Leader for Art & Design in Creative Industries, to the Crowne Plaza in Glasgow for the ceremony. Check out the full results at the SEA website.

The HND Graphic Design course has two further opportunities to win important educational awards later this year. We've been named finalists in the Innovation Award category (for our Mentoring Programme) at the SQA Star Awards, and have also been shortlisted for a Learning & Teaching Award (for our course induction strategy) at the College Development Network. Both awards ceremonies will be held in November.

More: Scottish Events Awards winners (in the DRUM)

mentor evening

Final Year student Emma Fitchie and new mentor, Kate George. Pic by Derek Anderson

On Wednesday we hosted the first mentoring session of the year, where our new final year design students got the chance to meet their mentors and discuss their new project, a live brief involving a re-brand and web design for a Scottish charity organisation.

We also showed a selection of the 90-second videos our students put together for their motivation projects. Some of these are now available to view on our vimeo space.

One of the mentors who couldn't make the event was Kirsten Murray (a senior designer at Family), who was on holiday in America. But she showed her dedication to the programme by taking some time out to say hello to everyone via Skype from San Fransisco.

An extra guest in attendance was Simon Earp, recently appointed Vice Principal of Corporate Development at the College, who came along to see the mentoring programme in action.