Get Real 2020

Jump over to Instagram to see the Get Real portfolio gallery for our class of 2020!

   

Commendations & Shortlists!

Some great news towards the end of the 2019-2020 term to help get us all through lockdown

Firstly our students have again been recognised with commendations in the 2020 YCN Student Awards.HNC Graphic Design students Valentina Torella and Elia Ballesteros picked up commendations for their submissions to briefs by Camden Town Brewery and Fedrigoni / Oliver Bonas respectively. This brings the course's run of commendations dating back as far as 2008 to a total of 21.

The YCN Awards started in 2001. Each year YCN publishes a collection of live creative, marketing and business challenges — written by partners, and distributed across the Further & Higher Education network.   Check out this year's full list of Commendations here and you can read a bit more about the success, including some nice quote over on the main college blog.

Secondly, we are also celebrating 4 of our final year students making the shortlist for the Marketing Society Star Awards.  Huge congratulations go to Melinda Babai, Gonzalo Cervilla, Balaz Hirth and Rachel Nesbit who all worked incredibly hard during the initial weeks of lockdown to complete their pitches for this competition. Check out the full shortlist here.  This year the Star Awards is a free virtual event,  broadcasting on October 22nd.

Visiting BILD

Our annual Berlin study trip again included a visit to Axel Springer - one of the largest publishers in the world and publisher of Europe's largest circulation newspaper, BILD.

Axel Springer's Head of Apprenticeships, Dual Studies & Talent Attraction, Uta Bendixen, organised a tour of the BILD Newsroom, which included a talk by BILD's Editor about the future of publishing, and how the company's graphic design team produces the newspaper, whose circulation is over 1.5m copies each day.

We also visited Axel Springer's incubator project Accelerator, a joint venture between Plug & Play Tech Center and Axel Springer SE, where startups and new technology brands are nurtured and developed - http://www.axelspringerplugandplay.com

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.

DMA 2019 Breakthrough Awards

Congratulations to Ida Bukantyte and Marta Winogrodzka who were both shortlisted for the DMA Breakthrough Awards 2019. Both were given the opportunity pitch to the DMA panel and the client, Direct Line, in London, and then attend the awards event, alongside with the other  finalists, as well as the great and good from across the Marketing community in the UK.


Ida (left) and Marta with their DMA Awards.

Ida picked up the Silver award with her ‘Don’t Guess’ solution, and Marta secured Bronze for ‘That moment’. The winning pair, Jack Brodie and Brodie Childs from Edinburgh Napier, shared a cash prize of £1,000, with Ida and Marta receiving £500 and £250 respectively. All four were also offered a placement at Direct Line Group’s agency, MRM McCann.

Concours d’écriture créative 2019

The HND Graphics class currently have an exhibition on show in Edinburgh at the French Institute. The set of 37 typographic posters are the result of an annual creative writing competition - 2019 concours d’écriture créativen - co-organised by Edinburgh Napier University, the University of Edinburgh, the University of St Andrews, Edinburgh College, the Franco-Scottish Society, the Goethe-Institut Glasgow and the Institut français d’Ecosse.

An award ceremony for the 2019 concours d’écriture créative took place on the opening night Nov 21st, followed by the exhibition displaying the winning texts in poster format. The exhibition will be on display until 13 December 2019, and is free to view. Some samples -



Quand tout a bascule, written by Julie Donier Meroz, designed by Zoe Leung.



Amants sans frontieres, written by Olivia Walsh, designed by Rachel Nesbitt.



Une lettre aux mais amis, written by Rachel Prowse, designed by Marta Dal Farra.



Le plus mauvais jour de ma vie !  written by Jan Palysa, designed by Melinda Babai



Mn passeport ! written by Viktoria Jancurova, designed by Balazs Hirth