21 Card Design History Set

HNC Graphics recently completed a design-in-context brief to create a print-based design product or gift for a gallery shop or bookstore.  One nice example came from students Olga Komanek and Aiste Plechaviciute, who teamed up to design a set of 21 cards, each illustrating a movement, technique or practitioner in design history, in the relevant style. The likes of Theo Van Doesburg, Paul Rand, Tibor Kalman, Milton Glaser, El Lissitzky and Rodchenko are all featured.

The cards are printed on linen paper in ivory, 300gsm, and the set is boxed in a black die cut card case, sized at 110mm X 70mm.

On Placement

Once again we are just about there organising the work placement programme for our final year students. With the annual Berlin study trip running from Jan 27th till Feb 3rd, the rest of February is when the students will take up placement opportunities.

The response this year from employers able to take on placements, as always, has been fantastic. As well as support from many of our industry mentors, former students, and regular agencies in Edinburgh, we've also placed students at some of Glasgow's finest, including Scotland's Design Agency of the Year, Freytag Anderson. So we'd like to send out huge thanks, in strictly alphabetical order, to the following employers -

Blonde, Copyshop, Edinburgh District Council, Editions, Equator, Firefly, Freight, Freytag Anderson, The Gate, Hookson, Ignite, Lane, Lewis, Mortonward, Multiply, RAPP, Realise, Shaw, Skyscanner, Story, Studio LR, ThreeBrand, The Union and Whitespace.

We won't be finalising all the slots until next week, so there may well be some agencies to add to this excellent list, but each of our student designers will be guaranteed two different work placements. The class have just finished up a short live brief for Maggies Centres  which they presented on Wednesday to the client, and tomorrow they are presenting their ISTD (International Society of Typographic Designers) projects. Look out for samples from these projects on our Pinterest boards soon.

All Set for 2015

Welcome back! January is traditionally one of our busiest months, as Semester One winds up and crosses over into Semester Two.

In terms of project-work, our NC group are presenting concepts for their Roses projects tomorrow, and have been issued with a new magazine brief; the HNC group will be handing in their YCN; and our final year students are finishing up their ISTD typography project, as well as getting ready for placement in February.  Last year we had 26 agencies and studios involved in the placement programme, and this year is shaping up to be just as successful.

Besides all of this course activity, our annual Berlin trip is happening during the last week of the month. Traditionally we take 30 students from Graphics and Interactive Design students to Berlin for seven days, primarily to attend the renowned digital festivals Transmediale and CTM. We've also arranged a number of museum outings, plus a visit to Saatchi Berlin, where one of our former students, Victorija Kravcova, is a designer. Big thanks to her for arranging a talk with the Creative Director at one of the biggest agencies in Europe. We can't wait.

Elsewhere, we have just renewed our D&AD Education membership, and have also secured our Final Show exhibition space for 2015 at one of Edinburgh's best cultural venues, the Fruitmarket Gallery. We'll soon be announcing details of our next One Week project, due to commence in March.

Bob Is No Animal

It's the last college day of 2014 for our final year students, and today they were presenting 'Make Your Mark', a self-branding project. We normally run this brief as part of their portfolio production in preparation for going out on work placement in February, but with the Berlin trip taking place in the last week in January, we decided to bring it forward.

Branding yourself and creating something that feels fresh but has longevity and catches your personality and working style is always tricky for a designer. This year the results are as good as we've ever had, with lots of impressive thinking, experimentation and careful execution.

You can view some of the presented work on our Pinterest board, and here is a taster from a standout effort by Craigh Roberston, who kicked off the presentations with his 'Bob Is No Animal' mark - a clever working of his initials into a memorable design. The full set of finished visuals are on Craigh's Behance, but here are a few samples showing the development of the mark -

Visiting Time

As well as all our project activity, over the past few weeks we've enjoyed a number of visits from industry practitioners and supporters of the course.

Back in November, Michael Heins from Lewis came in and did a talk (which you can read about here), and we also had a visit from Terry Smith, a designer at Peach in Glasgow, who graduated in 2012 and is a recent recruit to our 'Design Buddy' scheme. Terry brought in three years' worth of sketchbooks for our archive and shared some of his thoughts on design with our NC group.


Terry Smith juggling his sketchbooks.

More recently Prof. Keith McIntyre, the Reader in Visual Art and Interdisciplinary Practices at Northumbria University was visiting the Dept and dropped into the studio to see what we were doing. We also had day-long visit from Garry Kane, a designer at Storm Ideas, an offshoot of the award-winning Leith-based digital agency Storm ID, who specialise in viral marketing and experimental social media strategies.


Garry Kane offering some advice in the studio.

Garry graduated HND Interactive Design in 2010, and prior to Storm Ideas,  was part of the design team at the Union, (coincidentally, alongside Terry Smith) and worked on digital campaigns for some of Scotland's top brands. He presented his portfolio and talked about the relationship between digital design and front-end development, and how he has managed to bridge that gap in his own career.

Also in for a short visit and a spot of lunch was Mike Donoghue, whose experience in marketing and advertising has included stints at Saachti & Saatchi, WWAV Rapp Collins, and most recently, StoryUK.  Mike has been a long-time supporter of the course, but this was the first time he had actually visited the college to see the studio and meet students whilst they worked.

Talking Soap

Nice video shot by our in-house film team covering our recent employer-engagement project for Scottish Soapworks.