FdA Graphic Design, Camberwell: December 2012

13.12.12 Alt/Shift

On the 13^th December 2012 FdA Course Leader, Derek Yates realized his dream of creating a conference designed to explore the potential of ‘Learning with industry’. The conference took place at the headquarters of the world’s largest Digital Agency – LBi and was the first of what will be a series of Alt/Shift events. It brought together friends and associates from some of the projects that he has worked on over the last 5 years. These included Shane Walter (onedotzero); Matt Wade (Kin); Russell Holmes (Ico); Joe Macleod (ustwo); Nat Hunter (RSA) and Will Hudson (It’s Nice That!). Together they set out to explore the principles that are driving development and innovation in the creative economy and celebrate educational models that inform and respond to them. It was hoped that the event would open the doors to a frank and honest exchange of views between education and the creative industries, and help us work towards an educational environment that encourages engagement with the ideas and principles are shaping the contemporary world in order to influence its future development.

Here are some of the ideas that were put forward on the day

> Unstructured, informal, non-auditable education can build robust, practical creativity.

> We need to design for a circular economy

> ‘Bottom up’ rather than ‘top down’ educational models build better employability skills.

> H.E should talk to/ learn from/ inform tertiary & secondary levels.

> We should take care not contaminate the beautiful bubble of art & design education.

> We need to defend our secondary & tertiary creative education NOW or lose it.

> Primary level education is by its nature collaborative and cross disciplinary. HE could learn from this primary example.

> Industry does not want students who try to fit in with industry.

> Education needs to prepare students for industry not as it was or as it is – but as it might be.

> It is possible to be aware of commercial constraints and challenge those constraints.

> More cross college/ cross-curricular/ cross disciplinary practice needs to be encouraged.

> Beware of the economic rationale! Education is about more than employability.

> Education must be more dynamic – it’s time to embrace change.

http://altshiftual.tumblr.com

NoBrow chair Sequence & Narrative Platform

As part of the FdA professional Platform series, founding partner at NoBrow – Sam Arthur, recently set a project to second year FdA students.

The brief was to create a wordless image sequence depicting the theme of ‘Escalation’ using only 3 colours. Sam reviewed the best work with a view to the potential of future publication.

Tatiana augments reality

Since enrolling onto the FdA in October 2011, Tatiana Alisova, has taken full advantage of every opportunity that the course has given her. At the end of her first year she conducted research into the future of children’s book illustration and this research inspired a project that allowed her to develop a series of interactive illustrations for the Owl & the Pussycat.

Find out more about the project here.

FdA students go Loop de Loopy!

As part of the FdA professional platforms series, Rob Grieves ran a series of animation workshops. Rob has spent 10 years working as an animator in London & Sydney for clients such as Canal Plus, Channel 5, Cirque do Soleil, Engine, the History Channel, ITV, LOCOG, Madame Tussauds, Moving Brands, MTV, Natural History Museum, Samsung, UKTV and Unilever. Rob worked as a Senior Animator on the London 2012 ceremonies. He was part of the team that created the 'audience pixel content' - the animation in the Olympic Opening and Paralympic Closing ceremonies that was displayed around the stadium. This technology used 'pixels' placed on each seat to turn the stadium into a living animation. Rob’s showreel can be seen here.

Working with Rob, FdA students created a series of animations that are being showcased on the LoopdeLoop website.

‘LoopdeLoop is an animation challenge. Each month, animators from around the world create looping animations based on a given topic and upload them to www.loopdeloop.org. On the last Tuesday of the month all of the posted loops are compiled and screened to a live audience at Loop in Melbourne, Australia. During the screening a winner is declared, who enters the hall of fame and has their loop featured throughout the following month.'

Here are some of the FdA entries – their theme was BANG!