MOME Says Yes to Zsofia

It's always disappointing to lose a student before they progress onto the HND with us, but congratulations are in order for one of our former design students Zsofia Elek, who studied on the NC Graphic & Digital Design course last year, but then opted to continue her studies back at home in Hungary.

After an intensive application and interview process (with 300 applicants for a mere 15 places), Zsofia has been accepted into the Moholy-Nagy University of Art & Design (MOME) Budapest, one of Europe's most prestigious art institutions, to study for a degree in Visual Communication/Graphic Design. MOME, formerly the Hungarian University of Arts and Design, adopted its current name in honour of László Moholy-Nagy, the Hungarian painter, photographer and pioneering modernist who taught at the Bauhaus School in the 1920s, and later founded the Institute of Design in Chicago.

Some of Zsofia's work was featured here on the blog back in January - a rebranding project for Lyon's Coffee - and we wish her all the best in her future design education.

More:
László Moholy-Nagy
The Bauhaus
MOME Graphic Design (Facebook page)

Say 2014 Event Nomination

Our 2014 graduate show, 'SAY 2014', has made the shortlist for Best Educational Event at the 2014 Scottish Event Awards - the second year running that our show has been nominated in this category at the awards.



Say 2014 was held at Creative Exchange in May, and attracted more than 150 advertising and design professionals from 58 of Edinburgh's best agencies and studios. The campaign this year was designed by HND students Saulius Strebulis, Adriana Matecka and Dan Plunkett, with art direction from one of our longest-serving mentors Alan Lennon of Lennon Design.

The judging took place in London in July, and the Scottish Event Awards will take place on Wednesday 8th October 2014 at The Marriott Hotel in Glasgow. The full list of nominations is available on the Scottish Event Awards website.

Sector-leading Accolade for the Graphic Design Mentoring Programme

Edinburgh College announced today that it achieved the highest rating possible in its Education Scotland inspection report published today.  Education Scotland is the national body in Scotland responsible for supporting quality and improvement in learning and teaching in schools and colleges.

The report concluded that the college has in place 'effective arrangements to maintain and enhance the quality of its provision and outcomes for students and other stakeholders'. This is the highest rating a college can achieve in the review process. The report also highlighted our Graphic Design Mentoring Programme as sector-leading, exemplary best practice.

You can read the college announcement at edinburghcollege.ac.uk
and the full Education Scotland report (pdf file) at educationscotland.gov.uk

Students Talk Innovation @ 20:20 Vision

Edinburgh College hosts its first post-merger Staff Conference today at its Sighthill Campus.  The event, 20:20 Vision : Innovation for the Future, features a full programme of workshops, seminars and talks across all the disciplines and departments within the college.  The aim is to explore new ideas in innovation and development that will support educators, administrators and management to keep the institution at the forefront of modern education in Scotland. The conference is organised around six key themes:

1) Technology Innovation
2) Teaching Innovation
3) Student Innovation
4) Sustainability
5) Workplace of the Future
6) Outward Innovation

Our HND Graphic Design students will actually be delivering a session at the conference, under the Teaching Innovation theme -  'Innovative teaching: a student’s perspective'.

The students will be presenting their experiences of our SQA award-winning employer engagement strategy, which saw our HNC and HND groups working on two ground-breaking 'One Week' agency projects, with high profile clients SAMH and Cutty Sark, and a variety of experienced industry professionals from some of Edinburgh's top design agencies.

Star Creative Again

We are celebrating another piece of awards success, as HND student Andrew Palfreyman won the Star Creative Student at the annual Marketing Society Star Awards in Edinburgh last night.

This is the third consecutive win by our students in this particular award category. We had two shortlisted students, Andrew and fellow classmate Calum Mackinnon, who were competing against  students from Edinburgh College of Art, Duncan of Jordanstone and Napier University. This year the client was John Lewis, and Andrew can now look forward to an internship, working in-house with the John Lewis creative team.


Andrew (centre) receiving his award.

Celebrating its tenth anniversary, and presented by Edith Bowman, the Star Awards this year brought together the largest gathering of the marketing and advertising community outside of London - some 500 practitioners, clients and creatives. The full list of winners can be found here.

Lockdown

One of the most experimental projects from our HND this year came from a team effort by Ryan Allan, Mark Phillips and Jordan Pollock, whose 'Lockdown' solution to the Royal Albert Hall brief for YCN cleverly integrated branding, digital and advertising into a dynamic and unusual event campaign. The general premise was a guerilla-style takeover of high-profile music performances and - well, see for yourself and decide -