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…

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…

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…

showing off…

All of the end-of-year exhibitions are still proudly on show around the Beacon Centre. Just in case you can't make it down to the college to have a look, or you just want to look from the comfort of your own computer screen, ipad, mobile phone or whatever else you look at pictures on these days, we have uploaded an album on our facebook page. Above is a quick selection from some of the show highlights, but if you want to view the full photo album, you can do that here…


There is still time to come down to the college and view the show in real life, but don't wait too long, it's only on show until Wednesday 4th July (the date we mentioned before for public viewing was wrong, sorry!)

come on in…

Well, it's done and dusted once again. Last night marked the grand opening and private view of the Extended Diploma Final Show 2012 (along with all the other art & design courses at Blackburn College). We had a fantastic theme for our yearbook (British Summer/The Seaside), which carried through to our exhibition… we had our very own ice cream van set up in the studios, serving ice cream cones & lollipops! The work on display was great as always, and well done to all our second years. Hopefully some fantastic photos are to follow…
The exhibition is now open to the public until next Friday, the 22nd June, so come down and have a look if you can. It will be next year's show before we know it!

printed matters… 2012

The end is nigh for the current first years - their progressional interviews are fast approaching, and they should be bringing all work produced this year together in a shiny portfolio! Just before Easter they had the deadline for the magazine design project, so we wanted to give you a peek at some of their final designs…
The selection above shows work from Jack Bullen, Danny Mazzolai, Krissy Kelly, Phil Thornback & Lauren Maher.

my type of teacake…

Last week we put a link on our FB page to the most recent Studio Life video on Youtube from Computer Arts / Adobe. The video focuses on the design studio Teacake, based in Manchester and interviews Rob Walmsley about design, type, competitions and projects…
Rob studied his degree in Manchester, but guess where he started out? Yep, Rob was, once upon a time, a student on the EDGD course! Wow. Oh Em Gee, and other such statements. He may have done lots since his time at Blackburn College, but it is still great to see one of our own out there getting recognition for being a top graphic designer. You can see the video profile on Teacake studio here…

curtain call…

The second years are currently working away on their FMP’s, but we wanted to show some work off from one of their recent projects, poster design 2012. The brief was to create a set of three theatre posters for musical productions. Here is a selection of the best ones…designs from top left are by; Martyn Hunt, Ryan Grady, Jordan Coverley, Ryan Hammond, Samantha Johnson & Kirstie Gilleade. The full poster sets can be viewed over on our Facebook page here…

printed matters…

Our current first years have their magazine project deadline TOMORROW, so with that in mind, we wanted to share some of the final designs from last year…The selection above shows work from James Green, Eiren Carr, Adam Dempsey, Luke Jones, Ryan Grady and Kirsty Connor.


We wonder what tomorrow's deadline will bring, and if any of the designs will beat these great examples…