Kirsty Carter from APFEL at Camberwell

Second year FdA students are currently working on an editorial design project with Kirsty Carter from ‘A Practice for Everyday Life’. The project involves them reinterpreting a job that APFEL worked on in 2007 called ‘Cineclub’ for the Venice Biennale. Kirsty kicked off the project with a presentation of APFEL’s work, stressing the importance of an understanding of content to successful typographic design. To illustrate this she took the students through a case study of the redesign of the ‘Architecture Journal’ highlighting the importance of the input of the editorial team at AJ to this project.

Key Ideas: Word

‘Key Ideas: Word’ took place on 12th May 2010 and was again organized with the help of Eye Magazine. It took the spring issue of Eye (Eye 75), which featured interviews with Anthony Burrill and Fraser Muggeridge, as its starting point. The day started with a series of 30-minute provocations delivered by Burrill and Muggeridge as well as Marcus Leis Allion and Camberwell Course Directors David Coventon and Derek Yates. The provocations attempted to assess how the trend that seemed evident in ‘Typography Now’ has developed. Staff and students were then given an opportunity to respond to these provocations through discussion and the production of a series of large-scale hand-drawn typographic sheets. This then formed the content for a publication that was designed by a student team led by FdA student, Astrid Joublanc.

Typography

We believe in the importance of good typographic design and the feedback we get from our industry partners is that graduates do not always have the required expertise in this area. For this reason we have built a programme of workshops and lectures that ensure our students have a sound typographic grounding at stage one. At stage two they are encouraged to enter the International Society of Typographic Designers Student Assessment Scheme and last year Veronika De Haas achieved a highly prized Merit award. She was presented with this award by Eric Spiekermann at the Design Museum in June.