On day 3 of our forthcoming conference week (Wednesday 14th February) the BBC UX&D team from Salford will be visiting our studios to introduce themselves, and also to run a series of all day workshops on idea generation. These will be based around their current live D&AD Brief.
Year 2 Graphics were briefed to design the branding for a restaurant, café or street food stall. The students were all given different countries to research and find a unique selling point or type of food specific to the country.
As well as an identity and appropriate application of the branding, they also visualized the layout and navigation of a website.
The concept was ‘Slow Food, Fast’ for a French snail café.
BRAND APPLICATIONS
website
A play on words for ‘The Wurst’ German sausage stall.
brand applications
website
The concept for a Bang’ladesh street food restaurant. This was also changed to Bang’ladash for takeaway food.
brand applications
website
Here we feature our speakers for day 2 conference week 7 - Tuesday 13th February
Here we feature the first 2 speakers from the conference week line up who will be spreading their 'words of wisdom' on Monday the 12th February.
Join Forepoint for an exclusive screening of the InVision-produced documentary DESIGN DISRUPTORS, brought to you as part of Conference Week in association with Creative Lancashire & Forepoint and supported by UCLAN Innovation Zone.
DESIGN DISRUPTORS reveals a never-before-seen perspective on the design approaches of 15+ industry-shaking companies, and how they’re using the power of design to disrupt billion dollar industries.
Grab a drink, some movie treats, and be first to see the film. Then take part in the Q&A discussion with our expert panel representing Forepoint, Creative Lancashire and UCLan, plus a special marketing guest from an internationally renowned business.
18:00 – 21:30 Thursday 15th February, The Continental, South Meadow Lane, Preston PR1 8JP
Seating is limited so reserve yours now!
This year heralds our 7th annual conference week event and we have an outstanding selection of guest speakers from the world of Graphic Design, Illustration & Advertising who have all kindly agreed to come into our studios here in Preston.
With it being our 7th annual event, this years theme is based around the 'role of chance & luck within the design process'. The week commences Monday the 12th of February running through until Friday the 16th.
The week is kicked off by Gary Holt, founder & creative director of Someone - London followed by Mark Elwood, executive creative director of Mullenlowe - London.
On the Tuesday we have Karen Hughes, founder & creative director of Edit Brand Studio - Manchester who will be teaming up with Rachel Simpson, founder & creative director of Bird - Preston. Then in the afternoon we welcome artist, illustrator & writer Paul Davis.
Wednesday sees the traditional visit of Paul Crowley and the BBC UX&D team from Salford. This will be their fifth year at conference week. They will be running a series of workshops that give our students an insight into how they approach idea generation.
Thursday is somewhat of a show stopper as we have two double-headers. In the morning we have Garry Blackburn & Simon Elliott, co-founders & creative directors of Rose Design - London. Followed by Jim Sutherland founder of Studio Sutherl& as well as copywriter and poet Nick Asbury, partner at Asbury & Asbury.
Also, in the evening we have a special screening of Design Disruptors at The Continental public house hosted in conjunction with Forepoint, Creative Lancashire & UCLan.
Then if that were not enough we round the week off with Ben Tallon, illustrator, art-director and host of the podcast series Arrest All Mimics, followed by Jack Renwick, founder & creative director of Jack Renwick Studio - London.
All talks will start at either 11am or 2pm daily, but we advise you to take your seats early to avoid disappointment. It just remains for us to say watch this space for more information as and when we get it.
You lucky people!
A new year and a new start. Today we sorted and sifted through our extensive printed ephemera archive in search of inspirational layout examples. Five hours later we had a wall of interesting compositions that was a composition in itself.
Staff chose a variety of layouts that demonstrated some of the basic rules of page layout and composition.
The wall of visual inspiration will remain up for the first week of the project for all our Year 1 students to study closely and use as a 'touchstone' for their page layouts.
This project is the Year 1 students first chance to really get to grips with the basics of typography and also InDesign (not Photoshop). Each student has been given a well known designer or typographer to research over the Christmas break and on their return they will be producing a series of DPS's, a front cover design and a contents page, as well as an actual physical mockup.
Here are a few shots of last years final critique session
Here are a few examples of their designs:
Here we feature a few off the cuff creative responses by our final year students where were inspired by the recent Greggs nativity.
Senior Lecture Andy Bainbridge recently gave a talk to the staff of DesignBridge Amsterdam based on his recent Typographic Specimens project. You can read more about how the evening went on the DesignBridge Blog here.
Nice to be welcomed by some hand crafted type.
The reception being transformed prior to the talk
Books were on sale and signed
In early September I was approached by DesignBridge Amsterdam who wanted to commission a typographic illustration of a white horse, as a way of a seasonal thank you and gift to all their clients & staff.
Sinterklaas is based on the historical figure of Saint Nicholas who traditionally rides a white horse called Amerigo. You can check out the story on the DesignBridge blog here.
The following images show the design development of the horse.
Once the final design was approved 3 separate woodblocks were laser etched.
Once the blocks were etched the process moved on into the Print workshops.
There were 3 separate colours used Red, Blue & Black
Here we have a short clip of the Red one being printed.
In total there were 150 original prints of each colour.
Blue
Black
Red
There were also a small run of embossed horses.
My personal favourite was the Black & White version
The Disciples Of Design are a global collective of design academics, practitioners, artists and students. We have one common thread – UCLan in Preston, UK; and one common aim – the creation of an ever evolving visual hub for the sharing of ideas and thoughts.
