Graphic designers dissect robotic robins in visiting lecture

Our Graphic Design students were visited by artist and researcher Lee Nutbean as part of their interactive project – Teach Me, Learn Me, Promote Me.

Lee is an interactive artist working at the interdisciplinary intersections of art and participation, across academia, research and the creative industries.

He is currently completing a PhD to explore the potential of smart networked technologies – topically described as the ‘Internet of Things’ (IoT) – to map and evaluate the movement and relationships of people and resources across geographically distributed communities.

“This workshop with Lee will hopefully open our students minds to the interactive world and how technology can be used in design,” said Andy Way, BA (Hons) Graphic Design lecturer.

Lee had an artist residency at Plymouth artspace KARST last year and also took part in Tate’s Hackathon – where he worked through the night in the famous Turbine Hall to make a piece of digital art using data.

His current project entitled “Zeeeeup: A fist full of dollars” is a wireless flock of electronic birds that contain a variety of bespoke sonic and sensing communication technologies. The word Zeeeeup is a descriptive term for a robins call - and references the projects low cost, hacked manufacture approach.

“I found it exciting looking at how design is used. Lee’s work is not paper based, its not digital, its this whole other level," said Allie Couch, Year Two Graphic Design student.

Lee explained, “The robins playfully respond in both chorus and light to public interaction.
 
“Perched on traffic lights, garden fences, within urban trees and parks, these small electronic interventions interact through the mundane to reveal a hybrid layer of ambient intelligence. That waits patiently for public engagement.”

The visit involved a one hour talk from Lee about his work ethos and current projects followed by a workshop, with students making the interactive robins which they could place around the college or keep for themselves.

“I found it exciting looking at how design is used. Lee’s work is not paper based, its not digital, its this whole other level.

“It’s physical and interactive, it speaks to you. And its not stereotypical of usual graphic design,” explained Allie Couch, student on the BA (Hons) Graphic Design programme.

The level of interactions with the robotic birds vary, from curiosity to physically interaction, with Lee describing how one of them was attacked by a magpie!

“The robins are a cool way of using technology that is low-tech to make interactive objects,” says Lee.

Jamie Wynn, BA (Hons) Graphic Design student said: “It’s good to have an external source viewpoint as they interact with the industry and are often collaborating with really interesting artists, which is always cool to hear about.”

The day resulted in the students placing their robins in the trees outside of the college as a flock, with the hope that they will start chirping away to passers-by.

“The interactive flock works well in its location at Plymouth College of Art and I thoroughly enjoyed working with the graphic design students today," said Lee.

“They were attentive and fully engaged in the workshop with questions, collaboration and enthusiasm.

"It was an absolute pleasure, and I would gladly return at any opportunity in the future.”

Dalton Maag holds workshop on the science of typeface design

Plymouth college of Art Graphic Design students were treated to a two day workshop with font studio, Dalton Maag.

The font makers are known for their work with handmade cosmetics company Lush, as well as working with international companies such as Intel, Red Peak and Burberry.

With more than 35 students attending the workshop, Damien Collot and Eleni Beveratou from Dalton Maag discussed custom fonts, font modifications and logo refinements.

They let the students in on the font creation process, “we draw, discuss, design, check, engineer and hint” and tasked them with configuring their own font by taking the first 2 letters of their first name and surname and creating a brand logo out of them using typeface.

James Usill, third year BA (Hons) Graphic Design student said, “I find design theory fascinating and having Dalton Maag visit is great as its always been something that I wanted to hear about from an industry angle.

“I like the technical aspect of it all and the design rules, font design is something that strongly adheres to that.

“The Q&A session was also good as it meant I could ask more direct questions and its great to get ideas and advice from professionals in design.

“They discussed their various processes for different projects and I found it interesting how each project can be on completely opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of timescale.”

Dalton Maag spoke to students about the design of the Lush font and the importance of researching your client.

With Lush they modernised their branding but kept the handwritten style Lush is known for. Before this digitised font Lush used to hand write labels and then scan and print them.

They have also worked with Red Peak, a design agency in New York, to redesign Intel’s font. Intel wanted a font that worked on screen and that wouldn't look dated for at least 15 years.

Damien explained how sometimes clients don’t realise the importance of the font, but after their work for Intel a video was made to demonstrate the new font and the effect it is having on the company.

Second year student Megan Rouncefield said: “Damien and Eleni talked about the different languages they had to create fonts in and it really enlightened me on what is involved in typeface design.

“It was interesting to hear that they have native speakers on each project to make sure everything makes sense.

“And the fact they sometimes just edit their own fonts rather than creating a new one for each project was a great approach to hear about.”

Photographs taken by BA (Hons) Graphic Design student Allie Couch.

A new logo for the Design Hub

The Design Hub at Plymouth College of Art has launched a new logo.

The studio’s brand identity has been revised to reflect the growing diversity of the work Hub members undertake.

The work was done by Year Two graphic design student Max Burke who reviewed the Hub’s regional and international clients, and range of past and current work.

He said: “The scope of the  Design Hub is very broad, ranging from community based projects to international collaborations and projects, so the brand had to be flexible when applied to such a wide range of work. 

“The Design Hub is a well known and popular company and it is important that existing customers be familiar with the brand by association. 

“From this I decided to design an identity that is clear, simple, and familiar to everyone who knows the Design Hub.”

Graphic design student Megan in the headlines

Design Hub pitches for Sherford new town design work

The Design Hub team is pitching to produce the identity and design work for Sherford, the new town being built on the outskirts of Plymouth.

Initial sketches have produced and the team meets the Sherford consortium next week to present its ideas.

Jamie and Allie of the Design Hub working on the preliminary designs

Introducing the new Design Hub team

Here is the team who will be running the Design Hub for the next two years.

Six members from the second year of the Plymouth College of Art Graphic Design (BA Hons.) course have joined the group with third year student Tatsunori Ishikawa.

Project Manager

Name: Jamie Wynn
Age: 25
His design speciality is publishing and illustration, and his outside interests include fitness and photography.

Graphic Designer Gethin Oliver scores top in sports infographic competition

Graphic Designer Gethin Oliver has scored big and won £1,000  for a live brief competition set by Opta Sports –  the biggest contributors of sports data in the world.

Gethin was presented with the 1st prize of £1000 at the Opta HQ in London by Alex Edney, Senior Graphic Designer at PERFORM Group

Ash wins prestigous Sky prize at New Designers Show

PCA graduate Ash Henderson clinched a prestigous prize at New Designers - the London graduate show for aspiring illustrators, artists and designers of the future.

Team completes redesign for Plymouth's Clubhouse

The Design Hub team was invited to pitch for a redesign project for the Student Clubhouse, a professional-standard student residence in Mutley Plain, Plymouth.

The company asked the team to create advertising flyers to make the Clubhouse, which has a mix of 4 and 5-bed apartments, studio flats and an 8-bed loft, more appealing to students. 

A vector-based design was successfully developed, which will be continued for the rest of the project.

Team designs Fashion’s Look Book for second year

After a successful collaboration project last year, PCA Fashion Programme Leader Alison Braybrook and the rest of the fashion department asked The Design Hub to create design solutions or this year’s Look Book, posters and invitations.

After working on several different ideas, it was agreed the concept would be to use a fabric pattern throughout, with the main colour theme being yellow.

With this as the brief, a number of solutions were considered. The Look Book was eventually developed using newsprint, with the Design Hub team having creative control on the document size and on imagery used throughout.  

The fashion team decided to use our concept for more visuals for award certificates, projection slides, wall vinyls and also two different flyers advertising the fashion course and the new fashion, media and marketing course.

These flyers were taken to Graduate Fashion week in London June 1-4, and will be used at other events over the next year. 

The feedback from the fashion department, students and lecturers was positive and a number of the Design Hub members have been asked to help with other tasks for students such as looking over portfolio layouts.

Tatsunori Ishikawa was asked to help with photographing the collections of two students as well as creating a stop motion video using these photos.

The Look Book team was Claude Compere, Tatsunori Ishikawa, Eliot Sleep, Zara Walker, and Sam Donohoe.

Sambhali Trust Rebranding Project

The Sambhali Trust is a non-profit charitable organisation based in Jodhpur, India, whose focus is the development and empowerment of women and girls in Rajasthan.

The Trust which provides underprivileged Rajasthani women and girls with an education in English, Hindi and Maths, as well as training in vocational and social skills, asked the Design Hub to refresh its identity.

The Trust asked for imagery such as leaves and women to be included, so the idea of Sambhali growing and nurturing women, and helping them grow new life in their children as well was developed.

The design was finalised as a woman, one arm holding a baby; the other sprouting leaves representing life, care and the future. The gentle curves of the arms form an S.

Here is the development of the work using traditional Indian symbols and colours.

The work started with initial sketches:

Which developed into outline ideas:

These developed into digital vectors:

The client approved the concept and the team started developing colour concepts inspired by Indian culture.

The quality of the logo was improved by modifying the design to simplify and streamline the design.

This was the final design which the client approved.

"Thank you very much for your kindness of putting together this wonderful logo for Sambhali Trust. We had the Deputy Director, In-charge of the Department of women and child development of our town Jodhpur officially inaugurate the logo." - Govind Rathore

The Design Hub team was: Dan Wylie, Allie Couch, Daniel Day, with the guidance of Eliot Sleep and Claude Compere at PCA and Corrine in India.

Graphic design students preparing for Summer Show

Graphic design students at Plymouth College of Are are preparing to display their work - a culmination of three years hard study.

The Plymouth College of Art Summer Show opens on Wednesday and the last-minute touches to the exhibition are being made.

Designer returns to his College to give a masterclass

Alumnus Tom Gordon returned to the College in spring to give a masterclass on graphic design in the music industry.

Tom Gordon at Plymouth College of Art

Tom, who attended the BA Hons Graphic Design course is a successful freelance designer and works mainly in the music industry, specialising in artwork for band tours and merchandise.

He has worked with well known bands including The Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney, Katy Perry, Bastille, Queens of the Stone Age, Cypress Hill, Deftones, Avenged Sevenfold, Cher, Rod Stewart, Rudimental, and the Red Hot Chilli Peppers.

Tom specialises in T-shirt design for band members and merchandise and his advice to students who wish to work in the music industry was to focus on extensive research.

He said he frequently looks at clients’ interests on social network websites to see what T-shirts the band members wear so that he can relate to them even more when he is pitching his designs.

He said: “A lot of research is the best way to know what the client likes.”

He also looks at similar bands to his client and uses websites which show other similar bands to make sure he knows what is potentially the best style. 

Other advice included always having a point to a design otherwise the design is probably not going to be very efficient. 

And type is very important as is learning the basics of type such as kerning and weights.

Technical advice included cleaning up layers when using Adobe Indesign, because if you sent a client a messy document it will look unprofessional. 

And work big instead of small, because if an image is needed to be enlarged it won’t cause a problem in the future. 

And finally, do not get hung up on detail either, work fast and polish later. Less is more, if you have to add detail to a design then it is probably a bad design.

In terms of client relationships he said it is difficult at first to take criticism, but don’t take it personally and react, as you could regret your reaction later on. 

After the talk Tom ran a workshop for students who were asked to design a T-shirt for a band called Bring Me The Horizon, Katy Perry or Haim.

Graphic Design lecturer James Edgar shortlisted for ABCD award

Graphic Design lecturer James Edgar made the shortlist for a prestigious award following his work on a series of books.

James attended the ABCD's (Academy of British Cover Design) Annual Academy Awards in east London last week - to find out that his designs on Bateman series made a shortlist of six in the Series category.

"I'm not sure if i'm allowed back at the college as I didn't win," James joked. 

"But it was a great night I'm delighted to have been shortlisted."

The awards took place in a bar in Hoxton last week, attended by a wide range of some of the best graphic designers in the country. 

Despite being in its first year, the awards attracted over 750 entries across 10 categories - representing the full spectrum of British publishing.

The long-list was whittled down by a highly experienced and well-respected panel of industry legends to 60 shortlisted designs.

The final winner for each category was then decided on the night through public vote by fellow graphic designers.

Congratulations to James on the fantasic achievement!

Source

Screen Print Poster Sale at The Bread & Roses

Graphic Designers from the college will be selling limited edition, hand-printed posters that celebrate the character of Plymouth this weekend - raising money for their trip to a graduate design show in London.

Third year students on BA (Hons) Graphic Design will be selling the original screen-prints at Bread and Roses - a pub and community arts hub on Ebrington Street - from 1-6pm on Saturday, with all funds raised helping to pay a visit to New Designers in June.

Join the Facebook Event here.