Archive for the 'Education' Category

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.

Postcards from India #5: The Final Installment

Published by Neil McGuire on January 27, 2012 in Cities, Education, Places and Student Work. 0 Comments


12 hours til our flight back home, just chillin’
— see you on monday :)

Postcards from India #3

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

highlights so far:

beth – cheap fags
lydia – her cheese sandwich
callum – photographing EVERYTHING
seb – becoming recognized as the worlds richest man
ross – becoming recognized as a worldwide heart-throb / scientologist

yours truly,

bill (seb) and tom (ross)

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)

Trading Futures

Published by Neil McGuire on December 21, 2011 in Education, Political and Society. 0 Comments

“In the United States, student debt has outstripped credit card debt, nervously edging toward the one trillion dollar mark and tracked by escalating commentary, protest and defaults.” say Mute magazine. (More here.)

The article above is very worth reading and thinking about, and promise I’ll attempt one less-gloomy post before Christmas. Speaking of which, anyone got any pictures of QuizCom 2011 they’d care to send in?

Void

Published by Neil McGuire on November 29, 2011 in Architecture and Education. 0 Comments

The Foulis Building is now almost entirely gone, this image taken at dusk today. For the worlds worst ever stop-frame animation, click here and then click the right arrow*, to watch the building emerge from the rubble (sort of).

*Requires application of imagination, and eyes half shut.

GSA Pecha Kucha VII

Published by Neil McGuire on November 21, 2011 in Education, Events and Talks. 0 Comments

Announcing another evening of rapid-fire presentations at GSA Pecha Kucha VII, with:

Ray McKenzie, Marc Baines, Philip Gurrey, Ice Cream Architecture, Thea Stevens, Malcolm Dickson, Michael Mersinis, Grainne Rice and Bruce Peter

(Free) tickets here.

Tense

Published by Neil McGuire on November 13, 2011 in Design, Digital, Education, Events, Inter-discipline, Talks and Typography. 2 Comments

Making use of the intermittent wifi on the train back to Glasgow, and in order to avoid this becoming one of those jobs that gets left and left until its so out of date it’s obsolete, thought i’d try to sum up the Critical Tension conference with a single sentence (containing perhaps a thought, an idea, a hyperlink, or some wild conjecture*), per speaker. There will be lengthier reviews and discussions else where on the web, notably the Eye blog. If anyone wants to ask anything about anything, would be only too happy to chat further.

Day 1:
Jonathan Barnbrook
The critical role of typefaces
Typefaces should reflect the tools used to make them, and can embody meaning through their form(s).

Tom Farrand
Are you Good for Nothing?
Tom set up Good for Nothing, and thinks we should be making stuff, not breaking stuff.

Phil Baines
Thinking and making happen in the same place
Illuminating talk on recent tensions at CSM, the relocation of the print workshop, and parallels in the arts and crafts movement, with interesting references from W R Lethaby. (Image below)

Paul Rennie
‘Britain can make it’ (1947) – signposts to the future
Looking back to look forward, what do the great exhibitions and investments of the post war years tell us about the relative roles of design and architecture in Britain, in the 50′s and now, and how Britain presented itself to the rest of the world. (Image below)

Alan Kitching
The Wrington Suite: the show must go on
Warm and humorous talk, reaffirming the role and integrity of making in any type of design practise, with some good jokes, but I can’t remember any of them.

Gerry Leonidas
The emergence of meta-typography
An interesting rangy talk on a number of forward-looking subjects, from micro-payments to the ongoing appreciation of objects, to how we think about and teach typography at art school. (Image below)

Timo Arnall (BERG)
Unfortunately couldn’t make it.

Plenary
moderated by Emily King
There were questions.

Day 2
Vaughan Oliver
Visual Pressures (30 years in 60 minutes)
Informal and informative in equal measure, Vaughan Oliver reviewed the work of his studio and collaborators, which threw up some interesting questions about whether concerns in design today might be considerably more retro / introspective than they were 20 years ago. (Image below)

Derek Yates
Camberwell
An overview of the formative years of a new foundation degree at Camberwell and how this course interacts with ‘industry’.

Lucienne Roberts and Rebecca Wright
GraphicDesign&: Inward / Outward
A talk about creating projects that were united by being about graphic design and another subject, I wondered if this might be a bit laboured (in the sense that isn’t all, or most, graphic design about something other than the subject itself), though the presentation was good, and we found out about the Bliss classification system.

12.30–1.00
Zoë Bather
Studio8
Detailed overview of the design work of Studio8

Educational plenary
moderated by Phil Baines
There were more questions.

Marina Willer and Ije Nwokorie
Wolff Olins
Problematic presentation on the new modus operandi of one of Britain’s most prominent design/brand agencies, which seemed to embody many of the contradictions and problems at the heart of brand and identity design today, i.e: ‘staff are expected to do stuff and then ask forgiveness if it goes wrong, rather than ask permission’ — that kind of thing.

Amelia Gregory
Bringing a magazine to life: tales from the frontline of print and online production
Quickfire presentation from the founder of Amelia’s Magazine, on the role of social media in creating and sustaining a printed publication.

Steven Watson
Is anybody there? The importance of authorship in independent magazines
A jaunty overview of the work of Stack (and partially the Church of London too, who produce Think Quarterly, the highly specced Google journal), and an insight into making a magazine in 48 hours.

Plenary
moderated by Phil Baines
There were even more questions, plus the best question of the day, from Paul Finn; “Art Schools are becoming more like corporations, while corporations are becoming (or want to become) more like Art School. Discuss”

Pub.
That’s where we all went.

Thanks.
To all speakers, organisers, and St Bride’s itself.

* Apologies to anyone who feels misrepresented by this. Will happily receive amendments, and should point out that these are my opinions and might not be shared by others.

** Apologies for the awful pictures, except ***

*** Apologies to Eye for ‘borrowing’ their picture at the start of this article, by way of evidence.

Self Interest

Published by Neil McGuire on November 9, 2011 in Design and Education. 0 Comments

If you can look beyond the eye-bleeding logo, you might be inclined to sign this petition to keep Design and Technology on the national curriculum (England and Wales). This was my favourite lesson, apart for the time a certain someone (now in prison) went round smashing everyone’s balsa wood bridges with a metal ruler… and maybe Art, because we were allowed to play our Stone Roses cassettes.

Whose Legacy?

Published by David Kerr on October 6, 2011 in Cities, Communication, Design, Education, Environment, Inspiration, Interviews, Media, Political, Society and Talks. 0 Comments
Friday 21st October, 2-30-4.30. Clubroom, Upstairs at The Centre for Contemporary Arts (CCA), 350 Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow G2 3JD

The Commonwealth Games 2014: Whose Legacy?

Short introductory talk by Dr Libby Porter (Urban Planner and Researcher, Glasgow Uni) and Neil Gray (Writer and Researcher, Glasgow Uni) about the Legacy of Mega-Events,  and large-scale urban regeneration plans in the UK and worldwide.

A discussion will follow with a series of live accounts by residents – including carers from the Save the Accord centre, who are campaigning to retain a day care centre for people with learning disabilities, and Margaret Jaconelli, who has recently been evicted from her home. The residents will talk about about the impact the Commonwealth Games development is having upon their lives.

This discussion, focusing on media portrayal and the right of residents to ‘stay put’ in the face of large-scale urban transformation and displacement, will be interspersed with a series of short films that highlight recent  experiences on, and nearby, the site of the Commonwealth Games Village

Includes special screening of a short film about Margaret Jaconelli and the forthcoming Commonwealth Games  by Glasgow documentary photographer and filmmaker, Chris Leslie. (14 mins) www.chrisleslie.com

GSA Website

Published by Neil McGuire on October 5, 2011 in Design, Digital, Education and Web. 2 Comments

The new GSA website is now live. Overlooked my ‘bane‘ suggestions.

Very Observant

Published by Neil McGuire on October 4, 2011 in Art, Creativity, Design, Digital, Education and Web. 0 Comments

Via manystuff.org: Art School Observation Club.

Charm Sadly Missing?

Published by Walter Hamilton on October 1, 2011 in Architecture, Education and News. 2 Comments

Interesting article in today’s Guardian about the new building for Central St Martins in London. While there’s a nice mention of the Mackintosh building, the most interesting bit (for me) is a comment from one of CSM’s current students (called Tuesday Rigby, no joke); “We’re worried that it’s lost its charm…”

Will be worth keeping an eye on how CSM’s shiny new premises affects its students and staff and understanding any issues that may be echoed in the new GSA building.

Value for Money

Published by Neil McGuire on September 15, 2011 in Design, Education, Political and Society. 3 Comments

News that Glasgow School of Art has set UK fees at £27,000 prompts me to dig out a couple of other recent references to funding, art schools and education, that I’d been meaning to post up for a while.

The first is a detailed interrogation of the recent White Paper for Higher Education in England, on Afterall: Ten things everyone working in or studying art should know about the White Paper for Higher Education in England. The second is a recent edition of the recently relaunched Grafik magazine (no 190) which carries a (less detailed) education special — a large portion of which is dedicated to enquiring about whether a design degree is worth £27,000, and asking designers who aren’t (design) degree educated what their view of design higher education is. There are a range of opinions, but in that annoying way, I’ve chosen to ignore the quotes that go against what I think, and picked out one from Joost Grootens, that I think sums things up nicely (and cosily reinforces my world-view):

“Students seem to be worried about the near-future … My advice always is: study for as long as you can afford, there is plenty of time for work later. If you worry too much about the near future you want assignments that make sense, that are practical, down-to-earth, and ‘real’. But this is so stupid. A school is an artificial environment, outside, but next to, reality … It should be unreal in order to be good.”

That’s a slightly truncated version of the quote, but good starting point for a discussion.

LetterMpress

Published by Michael Dancer on September 7, 2011 in Digital, Education, Print and Typography. 0 Comments

For all of you missing the caseroom.

From App Store (here)

Samantha Hardingham Talk — Potteries Thinkbelt: A City Caused By Learning

Published by Neil McGuire on August 26, 2011 in Architecture, Design, Education, Talks and Technology. 0 Comments

Samantha Hardingham talks about Cedric Price’s Potteries Thinkbelt: A City Caused By Learning at the Lighthouse on Thursday (1st Sept). Follow link to reserve a place. (Links to this and this).

Visual design students today

Published by Neil McGuire on July 4, 2011 in Communication, Creativity, Design, Digital, Education, Technology and Web. 5 Comments

Lists are always tricky things, and often come across as attempts to create order (or patterns) where there are non, but I thought Adrian Shaugnessy’s observations on Design Week were interesting and quite thoughtful. The one I’m most interested in is point 7;

7. Few students seem interested in web design. Most admit to being print fixated. This is a worry.

I wondered what you think about this? If this is true, I’m interested in why? In our false-dichotomy driven world, this is often presented as a choice between one or the other, as if the two were mutually exclusive, and radically different fields of expertise, rather than related on at least a few significant levels. It also limits what we might explore as ‘technology’, ‘craft’ etc by restricting it to web design (as opposed to networked design, technological artifacts etc), and seeing those things as part of an eco-system that also includes more traditional forms of communication. But there are (at GSA) unexplored and very different ways of communication design thinking/doing in the digital/networked world, and it does raise an important question about how we could do some more interesting and exploratory projects with digital, technology(s) and networked objects, and not just as a fringe concern… anyone interested in discussing further please chip in… Note to self: Do more of this. And stop rambling on.

Then When

Published by Neil McGuire on June 22, 2011 in Art, Communication, Creativity, Critical Studies, Degree Show, Design, Digital, Education, Events, Exhibitions, Inter-discipline, Interaction, Interviews, Media, Networks, Publications, Research, Resources, Talks, Technology and Web. 0 Comments

if not now

IF NOT NOW will broadcast live from the RCA degree show, 24hrs a day we’re told.

Call for Education

Published by Neil McGuire on June 20, 2011 in Critical Studies, Degree Show, Design, Education and Publications. 0 Comments

Can you remember if you graduated this year? Then you might be interested in this call for submissions.