First year students recently took part in a project that enabled designers and illustrators to work together in teams to explore how designers can add value to the marketing of music. To do this they created packaging designs for compilations for record labels like Stiff, DefJam, Deep Medi, Trojan, Warp and Ninja Tune.
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."
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 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.
