FdA student wins Lacoste Competition!

Congratulations to second year Fda student Jasper Darko who was recently nominated as the grand prize-winner of the Lacoste x LOOKBOOK.nu Contest! His look 'Designated Loitering Area' earned him £1000.

Here are some details about the competition:

‘For the past 80 years, Lacoste has been synonymous with casual elegance. From sportsmen, style-savvy boys and girls, to an older more classic generation. The iconic polo shirt has been adopted across the globe in line with its Unconventional Chic philosophy. Lacoste has been constantly reinventing itself thanks to cutting edge designers such as Christophe Lemaire, and more recently Felipe Oliviera Baptisita. The brand offers a wide colorful, and effortlessly stylish range. To celebrate the AW11 collections Lacoste is delighted to announce a brand new competition with LOOKBOOK.nu to win £1000. Once you have stocked up on Lacoste, create your image including one item of Lacoste clothing (old or new), tag it and upload the picture onto Lookbook.nu. In return, you will receive a £20 voucher to spend in Lacoste stores and your look will be automatically entered into the competition to win £1000 and a chance to have your image exhibited in a London Gallery.’

BFi 24th November

The final presentations for this year’s onedotzero_cascade took place at the BFi on the 24th November. This year, the two most innovative entries were presented with £1000 by Ideastap to develop their ideas further. FdA Course Leader, Derek Yates, was on the judging panel for this prize and took part in a panel discussion that followed the presentations. The two ideas that were chosen were produced by Puzzle who proposed a series of installations to create positive messages around London using discarded free newspapers and If who proposed an online network to entertain Londoners as they travel around the city.

Wayne Hemingway then kicked off a discussion into how we can nurture new design talent with a presentation that was funny, controversial and heartwarming all at once. Wayne questioned whether conventional degrees are able to build qualities like resourcefulness and problem solving and Derek Yates offered him the opportunity to come to Camberwell to discuss how this might be done better. In the discussion that followed James Hilton, co founder of AKQA questioned whether students are put under enough pressure at college and other areas addressed were the difficulty in removing poorly performing lecturers, 18 month long degrees, closer industry collaboration, self promotion, the importance of s***ting yourself and whether design apprenticeships offer a worthwhile alternative.

The Persuaders

Second year FdA Graphic Design students have been working on a project with Tara Hanrahan from ‘Thinkdo’ Studio and Sophie Thomas, one of the founders of Thomas Matthews. The project involved students working in small groups to create communications strategies aimed at having a positive effect on people’s behaviour. In just a week students organized tea parties on the Circle line, campaigned to raise awareness of hygiene issues related to IT equipment, created an online space to share overlooked places and organized activities designed to encourage students to log out of Facebook for a week.

The tea party on the Circle line prompted Julie Carr, head teacher of a Primary School in Wiltshire to send us this Email: “I was on the tube yesterday coming home from a conference. I don’t usually work in London and never look forward to the tube journey. However yesterday was different! Your students were a real credit to your organisation. What a fabulous idea-my cup of tea was most welcome and the idea of getting people to talk to each other was great! But it was their charm, their fabulous manners and the creativity that so impressed me."

Milltag

Milltag was started in 2010, by FdA Graphic Design alumnus Ed Cowburn and Pete Kelsey. Milltag began by producing bespoke, limited edition, high quality cycling jerseys designed in collaboration with leading artists and designers from around the world. Having quickly established themselves in the marketplace and built up a loyal and dedicated following, Milltag now offers more than just jerseys. They can now offer a full range of creative services specific to the bicycle industry through their design studio. From print to online environments, they have previously worked for some of the world’s leading companies across a diverse range of industries and are now focused on working with like-minded people on purely cycling-related projects.

Milltag have recently collaborated with street artist INSA on a series of “super” limited cycling jerseys. Only 3 of each colour way have been produced and can be purchased from the Milltag website.

onedotzero_cascade 2011 – Final Presentations: 24/11/11

As mentioned previously in this blog – Derek Yates, FdA Graphic Design Course Leader has been involved with onedotzero_cascade since it was launched in 2008. ‘Cascade is onedotzero’s award-winning education platform that aims to develop a new model for creative collaboration and innovation across diverse disciplines to foster personal and professional development.’ This year 40 creative graduates participated in the 5 day workshop led by some of onedotzero’s most innovative partners, creators and featured artists: Kin design, Mother, the Spring Project and Guardian Digital. The final presentations for the programme will take place on Thursday 24th November at the BFI Southbank as part of the ‘onedotzero_adventures in motion’ festival. This year two of the groups will be awarded a £1,000 fund from ‘IdeasTap’ to go towards the development and creation of their idea and Derek will be present to provide his input in to the decision as to which two ideas would make most value out of the funding. The event will be hosted by Wayne Hemingway – founder of Red or Dead and Linda Relph-Knight – Design Consultant and writer and the presentations will be followed by a panel discussion with the audience.

Thinkdo Studio and Sennep visit Camberwell

Two friends of the FdA – Tara Hanrahan from Thinkdo Studio & Matt Rice from Sennep will be talking at the Wilson Road, Lecture Hall, Camberwell College of Arts on Wednesday 23rd November starting at 11am. The talk is part of a series of lectures from practitioners invited by staff at Camberwell. Tara and Matt were invited by FdA Course Leader, Derek Yates – a description of the talk is below.

'Designing to inspire, educate and provoke change – A talk on how communication and interaction can be put to good use. All design jobs are to some extent social, but there are some that have the opportunity to change how people think and act in relation to helping with, or raising awareness of, social issues. Communication designer Tara Hanrahan (of think/do and formerly of thomas.matthews) and interactive designer Matt Rice (of Sennep) will discuss a range of their work; from projects that generate simple positive actions, to far-reaching campaigns that influence policy. We aim to show that this needn't be an overly worthy or style vacant area of design, but an exciting space to explore how the right mix of graphics, materials, technology, interaction and play, can engage and persuade.'

Critical Tension

Second year FdA Design/ Illustration students presented their ‘Hashtag Manifestos’ last week at the ‘Critical Tensions’ conference at the St Bride Library. Course Leader, Derek Yates, introduced the project as an example of learning that redefines conventional definitions of vocational education and work based learning. Popular perception draws a distinction between vocational and academic learning, between the practitioner and the educator, between industry and education. This view says that the sort of research that enables innovation and new ways of thinking is distinct from activity that improves employability. The term ‘vocational’ is thought to imply a short-term fix, associated with passive thinkers and technicians only able to work under instruction. A more contemporary approach sees creative thinking, innovation and employability as intrinsically linked. According to Sir George Cox, former Chair of the Design Council, ‘Creativity – the base for innovation – has never been more important. For business, it holds the key not just to success, but to survival.’

At the conference Derek called for a re-evaluation of the relationship between creative education and the employers it serves in order to instigate research that has resonance outside the academic environment. Demonstrating how projects like this investigate the potential of partnerships with the creative industries that encourage an exchange of ideas that has genuine benefits for both parties.

The conference is featured on Eye Magazine blog and more photographs of the event can be found here.

# Manifesto: Final Presentation

Final draft presentations of the books took place on the 26th October – with Russell Holmes meticulously checking PDFs and black and white mock ups. Once more it was pleasing to see just how far ideas had travelled since the last meeting and it was very clear that the input of Russell and Viv had given a genuine rigour to the students ideas. The number of technical problems the students had overcome was also noted and almost without exception they were now able to create print ready artwork for a 28 page book – understanding limitations of resolution, colour, binding and bleed. Students were sent away to make corrections and the books were uploaded to the UbyU website ready for production on Friday 28th October. They should be delivered to Camberwell on the 9th November, just in time to be exhibited at the Tenth Annual St Bride Conference.

# Manifesto Stage 02 Presentation

A week later on the 21st October, one of Russell’s partners at Ico, Viv Bhatia visited Camberwell to chair meetings to review the next stage in the development of the Hashtag Manifestos. Students presented 6 finished spreads and a black & white mock up and Viv took them through how to develop these through to a final book.

# Manifesto: Stage 01 Presentation

Russell Holmes, one of the partners at ICO Design, came into to Camberwell on the 14^th October to look at initial ideas for the Hashtag Manifestos. Students presented visuals for two spreads and talked through their ideas with supporting material. The range of interpretation was extremely impressive and subjects covered included a future Global Economic Republic, religious cults, anti social behaviour brought on by computer gaming, frameworks for moral choices and the dynamics of sexual relations amongst others.

ICO/ UbyU – # Manifesto

On the 4th of October the second year FdA students started a project organized in partnership with ICO Design. This project requires them to work in pairs to design a manifesto. The starting point for these manifestos will be a tweet related to one of the following hashtags: #give; #riot; #poverty; #profit; #wealth; #community; # hedonism; #play; #share; #vote; #brand; #exploit. Twitter condenses messages to bite-sized sentences that communicate beyond their word limit and are open to a myriad of interpretation. One of the aims of the project is that students visually interpret the deeper meaning of a ‘tip of the iceberg tweet’ in order to produce a book that addresses the wider issues that the tweet alludes to. These books will be printed by online bespoke publishers, UbyU and will be exhibited at ‘Critical Tensions’, the 10th Annual St Bride Library conference.

Viv from Ico kicked off the project with a slidetalk about Ico’s work and provided loads of sources of inspiration – including punk fanzines and the work of David Pearson and El Lissitsky. Working with Derek Yates, Viv then led a series of workshops that enabled the students to start to formulate their ideas and gain a deeper understanding of what the project would involve.

Visit to Mother

Recently, Derek Yates, Course Leader for the FdA in Graphic Design visited the creative agency, Mother, who are based in the Biscuit Building on Redchurch Street. He met with Sam Payne to plan the content of a talk that Sam had agreed to do at Camberwell. Before the meeting, Sam, gave Derek a guided tour of the space that Mother inhabit. Every aspect of this space has been considered to enable dynamic, flexible relationships between the people that work there. A huge concrete table circulates the main space and staff can spread out, hold informal meetings or hide away in purpose built lounge areas if they need some privacy. Teams are made up of people with an equal investment in every part of every project and each member is never pigeon holed into a restrictively defined role. There are many lessons for contemporary education in this approach – not least in the way they avoid entrenched division between departments and the alienation of an overly rigid hierarchy. When they sat down, Sam took Derek through Mother’s strategy for research that enables communication with appropriately specific cultural reference. This includes utilizing a world-wide team of film makers to produce mini documentaries that record the lives of people at the forefront of evolving contemporary vernacular cultures. The depth with which people like Sam develop this reference provides genuine understanding and the process was particularly interesting for Derek as he continues to develop new approaches to contextual research at Camberwell. Sam Payne will be about his role at Mother in the Wilson Road Lecture Hall at Camberwell on the 19th of October at 9.30am.