Edinburgh College’s graphic design students got the chance to work with some of the city’s leading agencies on a real client brief as part of their annual intensive one-week challenge.
Design students had to respond to a professional brief set by international creative organisation D&AD, working against the clock over just five days.
#oneweek is an annual project, now in its 7th year, which gives students the opportunity to work in teams alongside top local design agencies. This time they spent long nights in the office with professionals from Lewis, Realise, Teviot, The Union and Whitespace.
The brief was to come up with design concepts to meet the brief from D&AD about the importance of courage in creativity, called Fortune Favours the Brave.
The students presented the results of their work to an independent panel of creatives from other agencies – Story and Leith Agency – who selected a winning group.
Helena Good, lecturer and organiser of the challenge said: “The one-week project is a real-life assessment of our students’ learning. They must be able to work in teams, produce lots of ideas, handle criticism and present under pressure. Most colleges and universities allow their students three months to answer these briefs – we asked our students to do it in a week.”
The winning team worked with their mentors intensively across the week to produce a series of workshops called ‘Bravestorming’, designed to help the industry keep their ideas fresh and work outside their comfort zones.
HND Graphic Design student Alex De Sousa, from the winning team that worked with the Teviot mentors, said: “From the word go, the whole week was a rollercoaster of emotions. Teviot were amazing to work with and really set the standard. They can come in and just tear an idea apart.
“It took us three days of agonising, then suddenly it clicked. Waiting until the right idea came to us was a brave move in itself.”
Gerry Farrell from Gerry Farrell Ink said: “The relationship here is fantastic – D&AD as a world repository for creative thinking, the students with new ideas and creative input and their mentors to keep it real and make those ideas achievable.”
Scott Burns, Digital Designer at Realise Agency and mentor said: “It was great to have the students on board and get them into the agency as fresh eyes on the day to day grind. The experience has challenged us as well –to bring their enthusiasm into what we do as a team. One day we might hire these guys so it’s good to start collaborating.”
Sheryl Newsome, Deputy Creative Director at Story added: “It’s credit to Helena and the college that this challenge returns every year. Having the students present to industry at this stage in the game is an innovative move – they’ll have to do this in real life and it’s a tough skill to master.”
All teams are now encouraged to develop their final concepts and enter into the D&AD New Blood Awards, which culminate in a major awards ceremony next July. The race for the coveted yellow pencil is on!
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