onwards and upwards…

And here we go again…UCAS time! Our second year students are currently busy applying for university places for next year, to further their quests for fame, fortune, and employment as graphic designers! We have people applying for courses as far away as Coventry & Loughborough, and of course, there is a number of our guys who want to keep it local, and are applying to go ‘across the road’ and study at The University Centre at Blackburn College. They are also starting to get busy with preparing their (soon to be) marvellous portfolio's of design work, ready to wow the interviewers and gain the university places they are hoping for. Good luck guys, and watch this space for updates on where our second years are all going to be heading to next year…

something old, something new…

On Tuesday a group of the staff from Creative Arts went over to our brand spanking new building, to get a bit of a guided tour of our new homes. The foyer is very big and impressive, looking very fancy… there was very little furniture or fittings in when we visited, but we got to see the library (which will be huge!!), the new mac suites, the staff rooms, and most importantly our new EDGD classrooms! There was lots of ‘ooooooooooohs’ and ‘aaaaaaaaaaaaaahhs’, and we have started planning what areas are getting used for what etc… all we need to do now is finish packing up all the boxes at our old space, in time for the Big Move next week…roll on Monday!

living in a box…

Cupboards have been emptied, boxes have been packed, and reluctantly, lots of things have been thrown away. We are nearly set to start moving into the brand new Art & Design building, which will get underway next week hopefully!! It has been a long time coming, and we are equal parts excited to get a much needed new home, but also a bit sad to see the old place go - there have been lots of action in our three little rooms over the years! We will try and get photos up of the move and the new space as it all happens, but for now, it's “back to the sketch” as we try to finish getting packed up…

Yesterday was our official Movember day, so what better thing to do than don a moustache!! Everyone got involved, staff, students, even Spongebob!! It's hard to not smile when you are wearing a moustache, fake or not, plus we all helped raise a bit of money for some worthwhile causes. Hope everyone has joined in at some point this month…

Check out the official Movember page here

attention seeking ads…

Here's some food for thought for all the second years with their current advertising project. Is your campaign currently missing something? Does it 'do' enough to sell your product? Does it have a great idea at the centre of the campaign? If not (or even if it does), take a look at this article published by Adweek back in June. It focuses on 10 magazine advertisements that don't just have good looks, or have clever copy and straplines - it looks at ads that do something, or make you do something about them…

You can take a closer look at the article, and all 10 advertisements here.

this thing of ours…

Have you been following the Computer Arts Studio Life series? Well we have, and can greatly recommend it for anyone who really wants to get into the design industry, because it can give you a great insight into what working for some of the bigger names can actually be like. The second video in the series stays down in London but wanders over to interactive media company Ustwo. A bright, fun-looking studio co-founded by John Sinclair and the seemingly singular named Mills. During the interview with Mills, he drops one very simple, yet inspirational statement (at least we thought so anyway):

“The business of design is simple: Do great work…”

Don't get carried away with learning the entirety of Photoshop, or becoming rich and famous… concentrate on good ideas, that produce fantastic work. You can take a look at some of the work that Ustwo produce, by visiting their website here.

You can also watch the whole Studio Life clip here.

a nice glass of red…

Just a little bit of extra help for the second years, who are in the middle stages of their packaging project. For some more inspiration with your designs, there is a really great website called The Dieline that you could check out. It is a blog style website all about really clever and beautiful packaging. It is even broken down into specific areas of packaging, one of them being wine and champagne! Another good website you may want to check out is called Packaging Of The World… hope this helps a little bit and we are looking forward to seeing your finished designs.

You can check out the Dieline website here

You can check out the Packaging Of The World website here

it's the taking part that counts…

the letter ‘A’ generally means only one thing to second year EDGD students…Advertising!! Yes, the advertising brief for 2011-2012 is underway. We are still in the early stages at the moment, the guys have been given their products by now, but it is all still research, terminology and word-play so far. However, one of the first stages is always to test the second years knowledge of advertising with Sue's Big Bad Advertising Quiz. With the quiz came an opportunity to fill up two more slots on our Star Awards wall, by naming and shaming both the class winner, and the unfortunate class loser.

A pat-on-the-back goes to Martin Hay for winning the quiz with the most correct answers, and our ‘it's the taking part that counts’ crown goes to Liam Davis for his unfortunate score in the quiz. It's onwards and upwards from here - good luck to both lads, and the rest of the group in producing some amazing advertising campaigns!!

green with envy?

Our favourite magazine, Computer Arts got a bit of a re-design recently, and with that came some new features. One of these is that the magazine now goes into a different design studio or company each month, interviews the designers and explores the type of work they all do, presenting all this as a video for you to watch with popcorn!!

The first of these visits was to The Partners studio, based in London. While talking to one of the head designers, Jackie Renwick, she discussed what she looks for in a designer, and she said “…some work that makes me jealous, some work that makes me laugh, and good ideas”. Even though technically she mentioned the designer, we all know that the best representation of anyone's work is their portfolio…so we think this is a great little bit of advice for you second years since you will be getting your portfolio's ready for the outside world soon!

So, what are you waiting for? Get started, and make some people jealous… You can check out The Partners, some of their work, or their blog, right here.

all starry eyed…

The return of our second years last week also brought the start of a new trend…the EDGD star awards. Throughout the year we are going to present special design awards for exceptionally awesome, or exceptionally silly, displays of graphic skill. The first of these awards was to announce the Designer Of The Year for the previous 12 months, as voted for by the students. Congratulations to Adam Dempsey who consistently produced the best design throughout the first year of the course…or paid the most bribes!! Hopefully this first award will stimulate a competitive atmosphere in the second year base room, and we shall see some amazing work…mainly because we have 19 more awards to give out!!

So, second years - work hard, think hard…and do great stuff!!

And remember…we're always watching…

big treats…

It's induction week again already!! Where did that sneak up from?? Of course, induction week can only mean a couple of things: new first year students, Sue confusing everyone's names, and Big It Up! The new guys took to this task no problem, which is a good indication for us having some great designers again this year. All we need to do now is to get ready for the second years returning next week, and then it's time for some hard work… as we like to say “back to the sketch…”

read all about it…

One of our recent second years, Lewis Garforth made it into the news a couple of weeks ago. Lewis managed to land himself a design job at Pendle Leisure Trust, working on their promotional graphics and other projects. He is obviously very happy about this, as are we because we like to brag when our students go on to do great things. Although Lewis is apparently mis-quoted in the article, we are choosing to keep faith in that old saying “Any publicity is good publicity”. We are very proud of Lewis for displaying the confidence to go out and aim for a design job at such a young age, and hit his target… we wish him all the best for the future.

You can read the Lancashire Telegraph article about Lewis landing his job here

a close shave…

So our second years really got into the spirit of things on Friday: Michael Duddle made us proud and didn't wimp out, Mark brought in his clippers and a razor, we all wore something red, and Brandon even made a big Deadmau5 head to attract some more attention to our cause! It was such a nice day, that we set up our barber shop outside… We had loads of fun, and raised nearly £50 in aid of Comic Relief…well done guys - you all deserve a slap on the head!!

Click on the picture to get a closer look

A full photo album will hopefully surface on Facebook soon, so we can tag all your lovely faces!

hair today, gone tomorrow…

We are a nice bunch here at NDGD… so in the spirit of Comic Relief, tomorrow (18 March) we are trying to do our bit. We are all meeting in the Art & Design foyer from 10:30 onwards for a money raising event: Michael Duddle, one of our second years, is letting us shave his head for cold, hard, Red Nose Day cash! If you are around college, come down and help support us - and bring some sponsorship pennies!

You may even be able to get a hair cut yourself…

bookworms…

Our second years are currently creating their children's illustrated books. They have toiled away, writing some fantastic, original stories and are now beginning the really fun part of the project - coming up with the illustrations. As is always true with any project - the finest solutions come from lots of experimentation - testing out ideas and developing a unique style. The video above takes a look at the work of Axel Scheffler, most famous for illustrating the Gruffalo character. A great video that showcases how even the professionals start at the drawing board and have to work hard at developing their illustrations.

Hope this inspires some of you second years… remember to not be scared of making mistakes, and have fun experimenting.

Also for you guys to have a look at, there is a video of illustrator Emily Gravett talking through taking her drawings through into Photoshop… this video will make you want to start saving for a graphics tablet!! View Emily Gravett's workshop here

You get what you give…

print & sniff…

We can't believe this our first post of 2011… I know it may seem it, but it isn't because we are lazy, it's because we are the super-busiest people ever at the moment. However, we think this post is definitely worth the wait…

Posted with our first years in mind, but this is still definitely worth a peek for you second years - Little White Lies designers The Church Of London have just unleashed this little treasure on youtube… a two minute video that squeezes all the work that went into the production for their most recent issue (The Black Swan Issue). Great to catch a glimpse of the design process in industry - meetings, planning, drawing, computers, cups of tea, stressing out at technology, and sniffing a new print of your work!! Also, for those of you that like to know these kinds of things, the front cover for this issue was guest-designed by David Carson… the guy that produced RayGun magazine. Enough reading, grab a look at the video here

You can take a further look at Little White Lies, including the full-screen online view, here

You can check out design studio The Church Of London here