we have moved…

Yep, we have moved our blog over to Tumblr. We ask all our current students to have a Tumblr to present certain aspects of their work, and to have some form of online portfolio… plus Tumblr is a bit more 'social' than Blogger, so there you have it! For those that keep an eye on this blog, we would love it if you followed us over to our Tumblr for more of the same… find us here :)

Hopefully catch you on the flip side. And remember, we're always watching…

happy accidents…

As we approach half-term (already?!?!), we would like to share some advice/inspiration. As always, we don't want you to just take our word for it, so we have chosen a quote from someone a lot more 'famous' than team EDGD. Scott Adams originally said this about 'art' (He is the guy that created the Dilbert comic strip), but it has been paraphrased over time by designers…

Making mistakes is part of the creative process. Get all your ideas down on paper, even the 'rubbish' ones. Don't be afraid to experiment and make a mess, and don't ever throw things away! Becoming a designer is learning about this mistake making process, and then recognising which mistakes are actually solutions…

heart-broken…

Unfortunately, Blackburn College has had to cancel our planned trip to New York next March. This is a great shame, and we think all the students who were going to be involved from the graphics, photography, art & design, music, and interior design courses are all disappointed. However, we aren't beaten just yet… we are looking at other possible destinations slightly closer to home. We don't want to give anything away, but the EDGD favourite choice is a city somewhere in Europe… that speak French.

Stay tuned for our holiday updates…

changing tune…

Waaaaaaaaaaaaaay back in March, we mentioned that our first years were working on a live brief with the Red Rosettes choir. Well, over the summer the Red Rosettes rolled out the new logo that we had designed for them. The winning logo was designed by Tom Simpson, who is now in our second year. His final logo is pictured here, along with a couple of shots of the identity in action. We want to say thank you to the Red Rosettes choir for giving EDGD the opportunity to work on this project. We hope they are happy with the end result…

big it up 2013…

September has flown by already here at EDGD, so much so that we have forgotten to keep you posted with our goings on!! Our new first year is the biggest one we have had for a few years, and with the addition of some late starters, we are actually struggling to fit them all in the base room! As always, we did a quick 'game' of Big It Up, to get them all working together and loosen up a bit. Here are the tasty final results, with Team Milky Bar crowned the winners by a group vote :)

the ultimate inspiration…

The time has arrived already… Both our first years and our second years have their respective FMP deadlines today. First years are finishing up their fanzine projects, and of course the second years are finishing up their self-initiated, super-huge final projects! Nothing like a bit of pressure and a looming deadline to get inspired and be creative… good luck everyone!

And remember, we're always watching…

exhibitionism…

The 125th anniversary celebrations are still going on around the college this week, and since we mentioned it the other day, these are the prints that Sue and Tim contributed to one of the art & design exhibitions. As you can see they have both chosen to go with what they know: branding logos, and typography!
The first poster is by Sue, focusing on famous British brands and their identities from the past 125 years… how many can you recognise?! The second poster is by Tim, and is a typography timeline that focuses on some of the most notable typeface designs of the last 125 years, and some of their most famous uses… with no Comic Sans in sight!

The exhibition is still on show in the atrium area of the Beacon Centre if you want to take a look…

make a wish…

This week and next week mark a very special time for Blackburn College… it's our 125th anniversary! To mark the occasion there have been, or there will be very soon: visits from V.I.P's and royalty, staff vs student football matches, exhibitions, tea parties, variety show performances, victorian brunches, celebratory dinners, and many other events. Here in Art & Design we have put a special exhibition together that focuses on art, design, photography, meda production, textiles, and fashion over the past 125 years, with Sue and Tim producing special prints to contribute to the cause.

Here's to another 125 years…

every dog has his day

A 'well done' goes out to one of our first years, Kasim, for his extra special work yesterday. Kasim took over from Mandy for the morning, and ran the weekly tutorial session. He focused on proverbs, idioms, sayings and phrases etc with the focus being to make the rest of the students think about the use of these in their own graphic design work. The session went really well, and we think Kasim secretly enjoyed all the 'power'… well, every dog has his day!! Who knows, maybe one day soon Kasim might actually be one of the Graphic Design team here at Blackburn College…

portfolio peek

Tim has very nearly finished the new course portfolio to promote the UAL EDGD. Here are a couple of sneak peeks of some student work. The whole portfolio will be going up on our Facebook page as soon as possible!

Click on the images to get a closer look. To view the full portfolio, check out our Facebook here

Sniffing Glue(books)

Our first years are currently working on their FMP for the year which is a fanzine project. One of Sue, Mandy & Tims favourite inspirations for projects like this is always Thomas Schostok and his Glue-books. Although technically not fanzines, we love the experimentation that goes on with the cut and paste techniques throughout his work. So if any first years are reading this, check out his work for some possible visual inspiration!

You can see more from the Thomas Schostok glue-books here

it's time…

It's official. It's that time of year again… Final Major Project time! Or referred to by us lot as FMP, and sometimes Fuh Muh Puh. All our students are underway working on their big, amazing, final projects for the year… the second years have already written their proposals and project outlines before the Easter break, and are now working on ideas generation for their campaigns, books, charity initiatives etc. We don't want to give anything away at the moment, because we want to make sure you come down to the end of year exhibition in June… which sounds a loooooooooooong way off, but trust us, it will be here in no time!!
The first years are also working away on their version of the FMP, which is a Fanzine project. 8 solid weeks to pitch, research, write, design, and make an entire first edition of their chosen favourite subject!

Stay tuned for updates and sneak peeks of FMP progress, and keep your diaries handy for when we announce the opening night of our exhibition :)

i heart new york…

Hope everyone had a nice Easter break, and ate loads of chocolate!! We are glad to be back at 'work', and are super excited to announce that… we are planning a trip to New York!!

Open to second year Creative Arts students, and hopefully taking place in March 2014, this is going to be amazing. Statue Of Liberty, Empire State Building, MoMA, Central Park, 1WTC, Grand Central, Soho, plus many more are all on the list to visit during our 5 day trip. Current first years that are planning to come on the trip next year, we need your £100 deposit asap… you then have an entire year to pay of the remaining balance for the trip (well, 10 months actually!)

Exciting times :)

get it off your chest…

We are soon going to run a taster project to give people in Yr10 or Yr11 an opportunity to work with us on a design brief. The taster project will take place in three sessions running on Saturdays over a six week period in April and May. The brief will be to take a social issue that you are passionate about, and to visualise your thoughts and feelings by creating a challenging and exciting design for a t-shirt.

This is a fantastic opportunity to come and have a go at Graphic Design, so if you are reading this and you're in Yr10 or Yr11, or have any younger brothers, sisters, cousins, or friends who might be interested, then please get in touch with us and sign them up! All the details are on the poster above…

We are looking forward to meeting and working with some fresh, new, design faces!

logo love…

Our first years are currently working on a live brief. They have been asked to create a logo design for the Red Rosettes Choir from Burnley. The choir is an all ladies, all ages group which has members as old as 8, and as young as 80! Our first years have all pitched initial logo ideas to Chris and Hannah from Burnley council, who visited us recently to discuss the designs, providing feedback and mentioning some of the ideas that they liked.
The clients are coming back into college on the 17th April to view a final logo from each of our first year students, hopefully to pick a winning design!
Good luck to all our first years :)

perfect pages…

To promote our shiny new UAL Extended Diploma Graphic Design course to prospective students, Tim has been working away on a new course portfolio. He is keeping it very close to his chest, but has been working away at collecting together examples of student work from the past couple of years that helps best communicate the skills and projects covered over the new two year course.
We will have some pages up to view soon, stay tuned…

highly animated…

Right about now our first years should be busy working on the final stages of their time-based media project. So far they have created a photographic timeline/story, as well as illustrating lots and lots of frames to make an expressive type flick-book. Now they are focusing on producing an animated GIF to present an on-screen version of their expressive type…
While we wait for them to meet their deadline for the project, we thought we would share this fantastic example of a typographic GIF. This is part of a series of typographic GIFs created by MountStar, entitled Hidden Typography. You can see both parts of the GIF series, as well as other examples of MountStar work here

Deadline on Thursday guys. Get cracking…

apples and pears…

Recently most of the EDGD team went out on the road… taking a course trip to London. We all had a great time, visiting the Tate Modern and Saatchi galleries as well as acting like tourists and going on the London Eye, and a Thames boat cruise. Some members of the group also went to the Barbican Centre to experience The Rain Room, while other members of the group went up The Shard, Graffiti spotting at Leake Street Tunnel, Vinyl shopping in Soho, as well as seeing Camden, Covent Garden, Leicester Square and China-Town. Luckily after all that excitement we had half-term to recover!

There was quite a few photos snapped, which will work their way onto our Facebook soon, as well as a couple of other stories we might share on here too! Remember, we're always watching…

blast from the past…

Just before February half-term, we had a visiting lecture here at EDGD from ex-student Rebecca Morris. Rebecca graduated from our very own Extended Diploma Graphic Design course way back in 2009, and we wanted someone to talk to our current students about the challenges and experiences they may face after completing our course. Post EDGD, Rebecca went on to start a degree course at UCLAN in Preston, but eventually transferred back to Blackburn to complete her BA studies here at the college University Centre. 
After graduating from her degree course, Rebecca did a couple of work placements in design studios before landing a job at Source Creative, based here in Blackburn. This has obviously made her very happy, and it was great to her Rebecca talk about her experiences as a student here at Blackburn College, the challenges faced when studying at university level, as well as the drive and motivation that is needed to become an employed and exciting graphic designer! She brought along her college portfolio and examples of her current graphic design work. 
We here at EDGD want to say a great big thank-you to Rebecca for coming back and paying us a visit :)

back in black(burn)…

We are back on our blog, after what seems like forever!! We are all still here, and all still working hard… We are in somewhat of a transitional period here at EDGD, which has been one of the reasons for the lack of updates. The course is changing… again! We are still an Extended Diploma, and we will remain as a Graphic Design course, however now our qualification is accredited by UAL (University of the Arts London) rather than being a BTEC/Edexcel course. 
Our current second years will be the last students to complete the BTEC version of our qualification, while our current first years are studying the new UAL version, and in September we will be completely running both years as UAL students! Exciting times…
Some things change, but don't worry - some things still say the same. We will explain the changes in more detail in future blog posts, but we will continue doing fun, exciting projects as always… plus, there is still going to be an FMP, and an exhibition :)

You will be hearing from us again soon. And remember, we're still always watching…