Archive for the 'Imagination' Category

Yr1 ComDes Study Trip to London

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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7:84

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.

Sagmeister Talk @ Flash on the Beach 2010

Stefan Sagmeister – FOTB2010 from flashonthebeach on Vimeo.

Stefan Sagmeister on his latest sabbatical in Bali.

ZINE FAIR at The FH 57

News of a great looking ZINE FAIR at the Free Hetherington.

London Study Trip

1st Year Department of Visual Communication

London Study Trip
24-27 January 2011

25.1.11
DAY 1

VISIT / 10.00am
- Company / Alex Swain
http://www.company-london.com/
- An informal insight into business acumen combined with how to take a client on a creative journey.

VISIT / 11.30am
- The Association of Illustrators / Paul Ryding
http://www.theaoi.com/
- There is very little former graduate Paul Ryding does not know about contemporary illustration.

VISIT / 1.00pm
- Tomato / Michael Horsham
http://www.tomato.co.uk/
- An intimate sharing of large and small projects from one of the most influential agencies. There portfolio goes back to 1991 and are continuing to work with Underworld.

VISIT / 4.00pm
- Pentagram / Jane Pluer
http://pentagram.com/en/portfolio/
- One of the most impressive offices in the creative industries with a workshop to match. Imperious work delivered with style and elegance.

26.1.11
DAY 2

VISIT / 11.00am
- Browns Design / Jonathan Ellery
http://brownsdesign.com/
- Jonathan engaged with the students immediately by asking how they defined art compared to design. Award winning work from a man who applauds the students form outside London including The Glasgow School of Art.

VISIT / 1.30pm
- Field / Vera-Maria Glahn
http://www.field.io/
- A German duo working with all the latest programming software and code to produce really beautiful ‘cross-media’ work. Cool rooftop garden with views over to the City of London.

VISIT / 4.30pm
- Build / Nicky and Michael Place with former graduate Lynne Devine
http://wearebuild.com/
- Michael allowed us to touch, feel and sniff the quality of his best design for print. Designers Republic guru happy to be working in a small agency with one of our best graduates.

Big Ideas (Don’t Have Any) [sic]

Russell Davies on the tyranny of the big idea.

Video: Big Ideas (Don’t Get Any), by James Houston.

Shadow Catchers

I am really excited about the Shadow Catchers Exhibition at the V&A from 13 October 2010 – 20 February 2011.

<http://www.vam.ac.uk/collections/photography/shadow-catchers-camera-less-photography/exhibition/index.html>

At Lacock Abbey in Wiltshire, England, Floris Neusüss reveals his preparations to make a picture without a camera – a ‘photogram’ – of the window that formed the subject of William Henry Fox Talbot’s first photographic negative, made there in 1835. In the Abbey’s grounds Neusüss also demonstrates the creation of ‘cyanotype’ photograms using fern leaves, recreating the methods of the very first photographs.

Floris Neusüss

Broken Imaginations

poster4

In what appears to be a mass collective failure of imagination the rash of designer world-cup wallcharts is now upon us. At least this one is for a relevant charity, rather than just self-promotion.