Good News for Great Ideas

Photography by Cameron Brisbane

Graphic Design Tutor Helena Good scooped the Leadership Award at the Creative Edinburgh Awards last week, for her outstanding contribution to the Daydream Believers project, and in hugely deserved recognition of a career dedicated to design education and the Creative Industries.

The annual awards took place in the The Hub on the city’s Royal Mile, where a wealth of talent from across Edinburgh's creative community gathered to celebrate a variety of outstanding projects, initiatives, studios, individuals and ideas during the past year.

The Daydream Believers project - the Edinburgh College collaboration with industry and Secondary Schools - won the Collaboration Award for its groundbreaking programme designed to encourage creative thinking in Secondary Education and beyond, ensuring the next generation of talent can realise its ambitions.

The awards also recognised the work of two of our 2019 graduates, Edinburgh College HND Graphic Design students Joy Mooney and Natalie Loh, who were both shortlisted for the Student Award for their final project work, exhibited back in May at the Fruitmarket Gallery, and for their contributions to Daydream Believers.

Congratulations to all the winners, nominees and organisers - demonstrating yet again that the Creative Industries in Scotland is in good hands moving forward into the future.

More about Creative Edinburgh.

Our newest YCN Winners!

Earlier this week Tutors Alex Gunn and Richie Bisset accompanied our Commended YCN students down to London for the annual YCN Student Awards.  Our winners from HN Graphics were Anne Bender, Ben Neilson, David Symmons (Gumtree brief), Sean  Gordon (Hostelworld brief) and from HN UX Design, Agnieska Koundourakis (Energy Saving Trust brief). Well done all (and here's the full list of commendees).

This year the ceremony was held in Toynbee Hall in East London, and featured a keynote talk by Pentagram's Astrid Stavro.

These commendations get more difficult to win each year as the competition gets larger, with 1000s of entries from UK and International Universities and Arts Schools for some of the more popular briefs.  Since 2008 our Graphics course has now racked up 18 of these wins so the pressure is on to repeat our success in 2020.




Sean, Ben and David.



Agnieska and Anne.

Pics by Richie, nice work.

YCN Quartet

YCN have announced their commended students for 2018/2019, and Edinburgh College have garnered no less than six awards - including a stunning haul of 4 commendations for our Graphic Design students.

HNC Graphic Design students Anne Bender, Ben Neilson and David Symmons all won for their submissions to the Gumtree brief, whilst their classmate Sean Gordon was amongst the winners for his work on the Hostelworld brief.  Congratulations also to HNC UX Design student Agneszka Koundourakis (Energy Saving Trust), and Emma Pye (Gumtree). Well done all!

 We've had many multiple winning years at YCN, but this is the first time we have not entered any team submissions, so each individual win is extra special.  We'll be taking our winners down to London in September for the YCN Awards Ceremony at the Barbican.

Full results are on the New Now YCN website.

Moving Stories

Our annual end-of-year Industry Event and Show takes place this year on June 5th at the Fruitmarket Gallery.  We last exhibited there in 2016 and this year the event includes the use of both floors, exhibiting projects from HND Graphic Design, and showcasing the work of the Daydream Believers Schools project.

We'll be hoping for another full house to help us celebrate design education, with attendees from education and industry, as well as parents and friends eager to see the work of the Class of 2019.







This year all our artwork and promotion was done by the hugely talent Balasz Hirth, currently studying in our HNC class.  You can book free tickets on Eventbrite.

Daydream Believers

The Daydream Believers programme, founded by Graphic tutor Helena Good,  is aimed at secondary school pupils to help them develop essential skills necessary for the future ahead. Working closely together with Employers, Teachers, Lecturers and Student Ambassadors, the initiative is testing a new pilot programme that engages pupils with creative experiments and promotes critical thinking, and problem-solving. Here's a short film introducing the programme, and more info here.

Berlin Letterpress Experience

As part of our annual study trip to Berlin, we booked the Year One Graphics class on a visit to P98a - Erik Spiekermann's fantastic Letterpress studio located on Potsdamer Strasse in central Berlin.

Spiekermann set up this studio primarily to work on personal projects and exploring how letterpress type  can be redefined and used in the 21st century. The studio is equipped with a number of Korrex letterpress machines and Heidelberg Windmill press as well as a modern Riso printer.

The studio also designs and cuts its own wooden letterpress type.

Director Ferdinand Ulrich  explained how the studio operates, demonstrated setting up the machines, and showed the class samples from Erik Spikermann's collections - including font specimen books from the early 1900s, and more than 500 cases of poster type, mostly made from wood.

Ferdinand's colleague Lunia  D'Ambrosino also explained how she had applied for an internship at P98a having graduated with a Bachelors degree in Visual Communication.


Typesetting a poster on the Korrex.


Editorial piece printed via Letterpress


Erik Spiekermann's signature quote, letterpress A1 posterzine.


Ferdinald Ulrich talking to the class.


Find out more about P98a on their website, and visit if you happen to be in Berlin.