Street Angels

Here we feature Fiona Hutching’s St Angels Identity which was a brief set by True North Manchester as part of our final year industry briefings.

Street Angels mission statement

Spontaneous hand drawn halo placed above the St abbreviation

Stand alone mark - Halo & Street abbreviation

Embossed type on all print

Lends the brand an ethereal feel

Personal cards

Lanyards allow room for the personal touch

Badge designs re-enforce what they do.

Hi visibility coats

Appropriate touch points re-enforce the brand

Ambient media concept for take away food packaging

Fund raising merchandising designs

Digital Ad Shell concepts

The Street Angels

A well considered brand identity with a classic mark that also speaks with an appropriate tone of voice visually. A great example for our year 1 & 2 students to learn from.

100 years of Nikon

Here we feature an identity design to celebrate Nikon’s 100th Anniversary by Heidi Woodhead, as well as some ideas for an exhibition layout.

Click to play

Exhibition ticket designs

The four main exhibition areas

Nickon close up

On entering the exhibition visitors collect a pair of interactive spectacles.

Microscopic images blown up large

Spectacles reveal hidden messages.

Interactive touchscreens reveal information and images in context

Swivel eyed, slack jawed loon

Tribal Ale

Here we feature Tom & Matt Buckley’s response to the Tribal Ale brief set by Oliver Wigglesworth from Music Manchester.

Above:- The brand Identity

Regular

Cold

Extra Cold

The set

Flat art work

Multi Pack Designs

Slip case idea

Pump Handle & Glass design

Interactive beer mat concept

Self presence

Van Livery - Day

Van Livery - Night

Social Media

The lot

A good solid brand development based on well informed research.

It's Alive!

Here we feature a series of first day cover stamps celebrating the 200th anniversary of Mary Shelly’s classic novel.

Composite Frankenstein’s Monster made up from several classic actors portrayals

This short film demonstrates the concept. Click to play.

First day cover design

Inside designs

A mobile app when placed over the insert brings the story of Frankenstein alive! Click to play.

Slapstick Rebrand

Here we feature Louis Murphy Hancock’s rebrand for the Slapstick Festival, an annual event that takes place in Bristol. This project was part of Louis’s degree show and cleverly intertwines typography with appropriate silent slapstick footage to great effect.

Stills mood board

Animated billboard

Programmes designed on celluloid & rolled up

Short advertising show start times

A short film outlining the theatres ground rules

Perforated tickets play with visual wit.

Short film advertising ticket sales

Outdoor Advertising

Ambient Ideas

Goodbye and come again soon!

Great work. Comprehensive, well crafted and appropriate to the subject matter.

Monster Project

Here we feature James Clarke’s brand vision for the Monster Raving Loony Party. The brief was one of our final year industry contact briefs set in autumn 2017 by Love Creative.

Identity - Referencing Screaming Lord Sutch’s (founder of the MRLP) iconic top hat

Utilising the four words in the title the brand was able to create a simple grid devise

Party political broadcast concept

All in all a top project and great example of connected, expansive & creative thinking for any student of Graphic Design. Words & image in harmony.

Good book, great advice

With record numbers of design and advertising students graduating into the job market each year, it makes more sense now than ever before to be fully armed to succeed. This book helps new designers make the transition from design school to work, giving them the ammunition they need for a successful start.

Here the reader will learn how to get that all-important first job, and how to impress their new employer. They will also have at their fingertips plenty of useful, practical information essential to know in the design studio and when working for clients. Enriched with quotes and advice from some of the best and brightest in the industry, this book is where you will find out what they didn't teach you in design school.

Phone ohm

Found - Observed - Contextualised

Paula Scher - Life Lessons from the Field

A couple of weeks back, Kev, Ted and a group of students headed over the Pennines to Sheffield Hallam where design legend Paula Scher was giving a talk: Life Lessons from the Field. In her early design career Paula worked as an art director at CBS Records where she designed many record sleeves (literally hundreds), in all styles and in all ways. Paula became a partner of Pentagram in 1991. In her time there, Paula has created an amazing amount of work, both for her clients but also as a practising artist. With such a career behind (and still in frront of) her, showing everything would be an impossibility.

More recent work in Pentagram has taken her down a path of creating environmental graphics, the exterior of Lucent Technologies Centre being particularly recognisable (and now almost 20 years old). This has led to newer projects, the Quad Cinema being a personal favourite.

The original building

The photoshop mock-up

The finished article

The talk broke down through ten salient points:

1. Fall in love with something that’s been designed

2. Have heroes and/or mentors

3. Push back against something

4. Defy the career staircase

5. Go the distance

6. Be a neophyte

7. Find a personal expression

8. Work for free

9. Hang around with smart people

10. Do what you do best but change with the times

Now I shan’t try and explain those points here. Luckily enough, they are self-explanatory to a point. But - for example - with point 3, Paula chose to push back against Helvetica. She developed a passion for scavenging and resurrecting old type in an era when digitisation was threatening to erase historical wooden type from history. Then using the type in an expressive manner, directly opposite to the teachings of Swiss typography. In fact this was a direct lesson she took from her teacher at art school - Stanislaw Zagorski - he told her three words to “illustrate with type”. See type as an illustration, and that letters have form.

I attach some photographs below, apologies for the quality, but they were taken from the rear quarters of a sizeable lecture theatre. 

One of the things I also took from the talk was in a response to a question after the presentation. Regarding the shear quantity of work outputted, how does she find the time to actually do it all to which Paula simply answered “I work fast, not long”.

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Record sleeve designs: art directed type, stained glass typography, pure typography

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Diagram of power

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Snippets from The Public Theater

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The New school typeface and aaa