One week project: Copywriting

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As we approach the final third of the semester, the latest first year brief asked the students to directly engage with the concept of copywriting; to put words front and centre of a communication.

Each student was asked to research and immerse in a given area of interest: ornithology or philately for example. Then, whilst imagining themselves as a keen pursuer of their given field, write an advert seeking like-minded individuals on campus.

Mountaineering

One week project: 3D

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Graphic design first years have recently completed their fourth creative brief roughly halfway through their first semester here at Preston. The latest task was to produce an invitation to the opening of an exhibition, at a Museum or public space.

This year staff were presented with a bumper crop of responses in both creativity, and craft. Also pleasing was the thought given to the copywriting and how that supported the idea (and on occasion was the idea).

Surrealism at The Tate

Sir John Tenniel at The Pencil Museum

Sir Antony Gormley at Yorkshire Sculpture Park

Heinz at The Packaging Museum

Wallace & Gromit at The Harris

Hacienda at Manchester Art Gallery

Sir Antony Gormley at Yorkshire Sculpture Park

Surrealism at The Tate

The Flower Show at Tatton Park

Alexander Fleming at The Wellcome Collection

One week project: Image

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Our most recent first year project was image, taking a theme - high & low for example - and bringing the two opposing ideas together in one composition. The brief is straightforward, but this is a project which requires depth of thought, research and craft. Being a hard brief (this is a regularly used technique, so to be original requires digging deep), many were of a good standard, but only a handful truly surprising.

light and dark

One week project: Typography

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Inspired by the Reverend’s good book, this year’s typography brief took the raw materials of letters, numbers and glyphs; and asked the students to create faces and animals from them. The premise of the project was to instil the notion that through taking a seemingly everyday object and looking at it with fresh eyes, you can create a completely new idea. This is a fundamental lesson in lateral thinking, and a primer in the ‘art of looking sideways’.

One week project: Research

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Here we share some examples of the first Year 1 creative thinking project – research. This year marked a return to the physical. So the potential for exploiting the space and format available were far beyond the perceived restrictions of the digital realm.

The above example takes the word house, and through research exploited various definitions of the word. A doll’s house opened up, the archetypal version of ‘The House at Pooh Corner’ featured an opening cover, and the representation of a full house in poker was set on real gaming cloth. With the research topic clearly being communicated as the given word, staff were also encouraged by the crop of a light house, as a visual reward for the canny viewer.

The above was a response to the word language, and the below to paper. Though less physical, the interpretations for language were deemed to be the most cohesive suite within the crit.

For the following example, there was visual interest in the gift wrap, the actual origami and shredded paper.

A further two good examples below for the words table and bear. Staff highlighted both of these responses due to their graphic nature; particularly the gingham and timetable on the first image; and the road sign and the flag on the second.