Employers talk about the importance of ‘soft skills’ such as communication, people management and teamworking. To build these skills all students on the FdA work in a team to create a communication strategy that incorporates design and illustration across a range of implementations. These projects are described below...
In 2009 &10 we worked with the marketing department at the V&A to create a series of ideas for how to market the museum to 16>25 year olds. Students set up a blog to record their working process and presented their strategies to representatives from the V&A in the Sackler Centre at the end of the project. In February 2010 they set up a small exhibition about the project which was viewed by staff from Local Education Authorities in London.
After the project Karen Leathan - Senior Marketing Manager sent us an Email to say: ‘I was extremely impressed with both the standard of the presentations and the quality of the ideas presented by the students. They clearly showed that they understood the communication challenge, the target audience and the V&A’s objectives. Their work was not just a demonstration of their considerable design talent but also of the detailed research and development behind their concepts.’
In 2011 Graphic Designers and Illustrators from the FdA’s at LCC and Camberwell went head to head to design a branding strategy for the National Youth Jazz Collective. A group from Camberwell were chosen to take the project forward and are now working on final implementations with the directors of the charity. Another group from Camberwell have been chosen to develop a ‘NYJC Junior’ brand.
We have worked really hard to establish a studio culture on the course. This means creating an environment where students can work alongside and learn from each other. A base where they can produce work, meet staff, share ideas and plan their use of college resources like printmaking, the 3d workshop, Digital Media Centre and the Letterpress Studio.
‘We had an exhibition in the foyer space at Camberwell College of Arts, 1–26 October 2007. The exhibition was intended to be a physical representation of our website. We wanted to show how our observations, fascinations and self-initiated projects filter into our commissioned work. The starting point was a collection of photographic images of found compositions, documented whilst on various trips around the country and abroad. These images were projected in the space and elements taken from the images were reconstructed as furniture for display within the space. For another part of the exhibition, we deconstructed past projects, pulling out the geometric elements of the work for display on the gallery walls. A display case (one of the constructed items) housed a selection of printed material.’
Regular consultation with industry professionals has become a distinctive feature of the course. Camberwell’s location and the professional network of the tutors on the FdA has enabled input from some of the key figures in the contemporary communications industry. As a result designers like Matt Wade, Jon Jeffrey, Jon Hewitt, Roberto D’Andria, Russell Holmes, Sean Murphy and Tim Balaam have all made an extremely important contribution to the development of the course.
The FdA in Design Practice (now FdA in Graphic Design) was launched in 2004 with the aim to engage directly with the industry that would provide employment for it’s graduates. Patrick Roberts, former Course Director from BA Graphic Design, wrote the course, with help from Russell Pinch co founder of the branding and marketing consultancy the Nest. Derek Yates was employed as Course Director and soon began to create a profile based around building employability skills through live projects, work-based learning and regular input from key industry practitioners.
