Archive for the 'Design' Category

Talkers Talking

Published by Neil McGuire on February 12, 2012 in Design, Digital, Events, Talks and Technology. 0 Comments

In talk update news:

The talk from Nick Tweedie that was going to be on the 24th Feb has had to be rescheduled to the 11th May, Term 3, and will also feature illustrator Emily Chappell.

In addition, we’ve a talk on Monday the 5th March. The format for this is slightly different to normal in that it will talk place in the evening in the convivial environment of the Student Union (downstairs), and the point of emphasis will be slightly different, but all that will become apparent on the evening. It’s free but ticketed, and open to anyone who wants to come along, so tell your friends. It features;
—Lizzie Malcolm (Lust/NL) / http://lustlab.net/
—Found Collective / http://foundcollective.com/
—Malcy Duff (Usurper) / http://gianttank.tumblr.com/

If you’d like to come along, get tickets here: Would Work. [01]

It’s dead easy.

Save Our Creative Community

Published by Brendan Bennett on February 11, 2012 in Design. 1 Comment


Sign this petition and then come to this meeting to support the campaign against Glasgow City Council’s Public Entertainment Licence Fee – legislation that will cripple the creative community in Glasgow if we don’t do anything to counteract it. If you want to preserve the thriving arts community in Glasgow, get involved. That is all!

Exhibitionist

Published by Neil McGuire on February 11, 2012 in Archives, Design, Events, Exhibitions, Illustration and Inter-discipline. 3 Comments

Pictured: Brave New Alps, Fortezza Open Archive, from Reading Forms blog

Congratulations to everyone who did such a great job with the Work in Progress exhibition. On a similar topic we were recently alerted to this Reading Forms Blog, ‘Exhibiting Graphic Design Exhibitions‘. It’s interesting to compare a range of different contexts for exhibiting design, and while there is no written narrative, it’s a really useful visual resource to reference, and seems to be fairly regularly updated.

(Thanks to Matt from GoodPress for the link)

Yr1 ComDes Study Trip to London

Published by Michael Dancer on February 11, 2012 in Art, Books, Communication, Creativity, Design, Drawing, Education, Illustration, Imagination, Magazines/Editorial, Photography, Publications, Talks and Typography. 0 Comments

Tuesday 24th January

11.00am
APFEL (A Practice for Everyday Life)
Contact / Emma Thomas  t 020 7739 9975

Former RCA students producing intelligent graphic design from a small but perfectly formed studio in Bethnal Green. Best quote of the week “We would never want to get too big that we wouldn’t be able to sit around one table”. Check out an article about them in Elephant Magazine Issue 9 (available from Analogue Books ).
APFEL can be found HERE
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1.00pm
GAIL ARMSTRONG Illustrator
Contact / Gail Armstrong  t 020 8291 9153

Busy former GSA student producing intricate paper illustrations for a varied London and American client base. A great example of how to maintain a thriving creative life, be a mother and a Photoshop guru.
Check out Gail’s work HERE
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4.30pm
BIG ORANGE ILLUSTRATION STUDIO
Contact / Ulla  t 020 7739 7765

Great to catch up with Dan Williams and a few old friends at this vibrant illustration studio. Great advice and insight from Paul Davis who let us see a sample of his published work. Former GSA student Emma Houlston was also generous with her advice for shaping a career after graduating.
See Emma’s work HERE
Check out Paul Davis HERE
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Wednesday 25th January

10.00am
OPX
Contact / David Bennett  t 020 7729 6295

Multi award winning design agency welcomed GSA for an hour of shared thoughts and ideas. Pleased to see that they fill a wall in their board room with inspiration (Post-it notes, ephemera, colour printouts, drawings and scribbles) to assist idea generation for each project. Their philosophy is to involve the client as early as possible in the design process – a blend of inspiring and interrogating them – asking who, what, why and when.
Check out some of their studio work HERE
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1.00pm
THE PARTNERS
Contact / Alex Woolley or Jess Harvey  t 020 7689 4625

Alex and Jess are younger designers at The Partners and took us on a creative journey through their favourite projects. Each team works with an ideas book or sketchbook before any refinement of a concept on the Mac. This approach means that the designers are less precious about the work and allows them to reflect on the qualities of communication and meaning.
Check out the award winning work HERE
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4.30pm
THE CHURCH OF LONDON
Little White Lies Magazine
Contact / Matt Bochenski  t 020 7729 3675

Thanks to Matt, Willo and Adam who gave us a unique insight into the ‘architecture’ of LWLies covering every aspect of its production. For students in the first year of a four year progression, this was invaluable. It was useful to see how they constructed their typefaces, the programmes used and where the inspiration comes from. Read some more HERE
GSA students might be interested in a LWLies creative brief HERE – great opportunity to work on a ‘real’ project.
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Alternative Art Schools and Plenary Discussions

Published by David Kerr on February 2, 2012 in Communication, Critical Studies, Design, Education, Inter-discipline and Society. 0 Comments

A really interesting article on the AN Blog by Pippa Koserek exploring the relationship between recent occupations in art schools across the UK and various alternative art school models going back to the sixties.

Got me thinking about a great book about the use of plenary discussions during an occupation of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences (Filozofski fakultet) at the University of Zagreb.

Another relevent resource is  the Carrot Workers Collective’s website. They recently organised an event at the now homeless Bank of Ideas.

Mobile Museum on Money

Published by Neil McGuire on January 30, 2012 in Design, Events, Exhibitions and Student Work. 0 Comments

Anja sent in this following link, from the Mobile Museum, calling for submission on the theme of money. If you a) did the currency project, b) did the banking project, or c) are the head of the Royal Bank of Scotland, you might be interested in submitting some work. Thanks to Anja for the link.

7:84

Published by Neil McGuire on January 27, 2012 in Art, Critical Studies, Design, Imagination, Inter-discipline, Media, Theory and Writing. 0 Comments

The arrow and the frame on Click Opera manages to touch on a whole range of topics relevant to current projects; Banking, currency, wild knowledge, art archive, not to mention an interesting reflection on Google adwords. And not only does it contain some very interesting thoughts in the continued thread of good and useful arguments against ternary or binary thinking, but it is also awash with great hyperlinks.

While on the topic, big thanks to Anja and Chris for their currency workshop earlier in the week. There are some pictures below, and a link to Anja and Chris’s bookmarks on the topic here.

And the Loose Fragment

Published by Neil McGuire on January 24, 2012 in Design, Events, Exhibitions, Illustration and Student Work. 0 Comments


Recent work by Chris Kohler.

Friday 27th January
Downstairs Space
Skypark Gallery
5 – 8pm

Work in Progress

Published by Neil McGuire on January 23, 2012 in Design, Events, Exhibitions, Illustration, Photography and Student Work. 0 Comments

Announcing Glasgow School of Art’s 4th Year Visual Communication Work in Progress show!

Preview
Thurs 2 Feb. 7-9pm
The Glue Factory
22 Farnell Street
G4 9SE

Exhibition Week Opening Times:
3-9 Feb. 12-6pm

Sponsored by Williams Brothers Brewery.

More info here.

Occupy Design?

Published by Neil McGuire on January 21, 2012 in Cities, Creativity, Design, Events, Fabricating/Making, Hacking, Inter-discipline, Political, Society and Technology. 0 Comments

Folk might be interested in this forthcoming event: I personally have some questions about the idea of ‘occupy design’ but undoubtedly the event will be a melting pot of ideas and proposals and one which could lead to some interesting outcomes.

‘This Space Is Not For Hire’ will take place at the Bank of Ideas, an occupied former bank near Liverpool Street Station.

Running across the afternoons of Saturday the 28 and Sunday 29 January 2012, will be a range of talks on topics such as: radical forms of communication and design activism; the precariousness of design employment; and exposing and reflecting upon the ways design is used to give a friendly veneer to the worst kinds of Corporate behaviour.

via Eye blog » Higher ground. Occupy Design is an opportunity to change design, and design for change..

Postcards from India #4

Published by Neil McGuire on January 20, 2012 in Cities, Design and Places. 0 Comments

According to the students at NID, Seb is really Bill Gates in disguise. And Ross, obviously, is Tom Cruise. The boys seem to have survived their stomach bug and are back in school, hopeful they will be well enough for the eight hour bus ride to the desert tonight

Meek FM Typographic Synthesizer

Published by Michael Gibb on January 19, 2012 in Design. 2 Comments

Thats right – a typographic synthesizer. Custom built by Rob Meek and Frank Müller, it manipulates preloaded vectors like a synthesizer would to sound. Real time graphics in a cheeky little package. Would love to see it hooked up with a mixer/effects box somehow so that it could manipulate sound and image simultaneously. Or if an input sound could affect the outcome…

Interesting stuff though with some real potential… I want to play!

Meek FM Typographic Synthesizer from lettersaremyfriends on Vimeo.

Thanks to Typetoken for the original post.

So Long SOPA

Published by Neil McGuire on January 19, 2012 in Design, Digital, Inter-discipline, Political, Society, Technology and Web. 0 Comments

Obama Says So Long to SOPA, the Controversial Internet Piracy Legislation, as reported by Forbes, and here by the BBC. The question still remains though; in what form might this ‘type’ of legislation next re-appear?

Here’s Clay Shirky talking about the topic at TED. To read more, try Lawrence Lessig, or this piece on copyleft, as a starting point.

“It is clear that copyright is being misdirected from its original intention to that of meeting the needs of corporations desperate to safeguard existing profits and create new markets artificially.” From: Copyleft and copyright / Eye 55

Postcards from India #2

Published by Neil McGuire on January 19, 2012 in Cities, Design and Travel. 0 Comments

“All the boys are feeling a bit wobbly today, just left Ross hugging a bucket in the hotel room, the intrepid Lydia and Beth are off filming somewhere and me and Callum are just catching up on emails. (Having a good time for the most part, but being a voyeur on slum life can be a bit unsettling). Here is a video of one of our many chauffeurs.”

See more.

Thought provoking diagram of the week

Published by Neil McGuire on January 18, 2012 in Art, Critical Studies, Design and Theory. 0 Comments

from Slavs and Tatars.

Glasgow University Media Week

Published by David Kerr on January 18, 2012 in Design. 0 Comments

Includes a free screening of  How to Start a Revolution and Discussion with the Director.

6pm, Friday 20th January,
Andrew Stewart Cinema, G12, University Avenue
Free entry, open to all

Stone, Paper, Scissors – Drawing Glasgow

Published by David Kerr on January 18, 2012 in Design. 0 Comments

Stone, Paper, Scissors – Drawing Glasgow
11am – 1pm
Saturday 21st January
Pearce Institute Govan
Free

Drawing and talking for all ages and abilities. The theme is Glasgow – what its like now, how it used to be and what’s going to happen to it. You might want to draw buildings, people, streets, parks, parties, weather, memories, stories,  anything and everything. Bring pictures, photos, objects, ideas or anything else that you think should be recorded in drawings about Glasgow.

Pens, pencils, scissors, paper provided

Any questions, speak to Bob, Village Square.

http://themeetingsquare.wordpress.com/

Political Illustration: Lebanon and Beyond

Published by David Kerr on January 18, 2012 in Design. 0 Comments

Another excellent article on the Design Altruism blog. This time an interview with Daniel Drenan about his work with the Jamaa Al-Yad collective. Here’s a short quote as a taster:

The academic design realm separates “designer” work from cultural manifestations that are just as much of merit, or it tries to recategorize former historical works as “graphic design,” which is wrongful in approach as well as being a tautological deceit. We need to give credit where credit is due, period. Most of the “big-name” designers/illustrators I’ve worked for in my lifetime have never had one minute of university design training; they are the first to recognize that “design” as we know it in terms of its underlying crafts and trades has very proletarian and commercial roots.

Students for a Democratic Society Conference

Published by David Kerr on January 18, 2012 in Design. 0 Comments

The Students for a Democratic Society Conference has been organised to bring students from across Scotland together who want to transform student politics and our student unions. The conference aims to come to an agreed set of policies for education that student activists across Scotland can support and participate in.

Students from Aberdeen, Glasgow, Paisley, Dundee and Edinburgh will be joining the conference, we would encourage you to put forward suggestions here and join the conference on the 21st.

WHEN
January 21, 2012 at 11:00 AM
WHERE
Art School
Glasgow School of Art Student Union,
468 Sauchiehall Street
Glasgow
G2 3LW

Postcards from India #1

Published by Neil McGuire on January 16, 2012 in Design, Education, Places and Travel. 0 Comments

A small group of students and staff are currently visiting the NID in India. This is the first in an occasional series of digital postcards.

We’ve had constant sunshine since we got here, :)
hope all is well back up north.

(Film by Lydia)