Tag: graphic design

Six of the best for College students!

Graphics students learn from the best in new Edinburgh College design partnership

Graphic Design pic

Some of the city’s top design agencies have teamed up with Edinburgh College to show students the inner workings of the industry and help them become the next professional stars.

Six design agencies have signed up to a new partnership scheme with the college to give graphic design students industry experience and insight while they are still studying. Mentors from the agencies will coach students over the next year, giving them work placements, setting them briefs and advising on projects including work for real clients.

The agencies – Whitespace; Blonde; Teviot; Union Direct; Equator; and LEWIS – will in turn get access to the best graduates, working with them to ensure their skills and knowledge meet the needs of the industry and support its growth.

The new partnership builds on the success of the HND Visual Communication: Graphic Design course’s existing mentorship programme, which has been pairing students with mentors for the last seven years and now works with 13 agencies. The six agencies now signed up as official partners will provide further opportunities over and above mentoring so students can experience all sides of the industry, as well as sponsoring the students’ end-of-year show.

The project launched with an event at the college’s Granton Campus, where students got to meet their mentors for the first time.

Graphic design lecturer Helena Good said: “Bringing the design agencies on board as partners will be great for the students as it gives them new ways of getting the knowledge about the industry that they’ll need when they enter the workplace. Having access to professionals working to incredibly high standards in the latest practices, including digital, and getting their honest feedback and guidance is invaluable to their development.

“The mentoring project we started seven years ago has really taken off, and we’re lucky to have so many great companies so keen to be involved. Formalising these partnerships is a natural step and really embeds this project and the students themselves firmly within the city’s design community.”

As well as allotted time with mentors throughout the year, some partners will provide up to a month’s worth of work experience placements. They will also each set groups of students one-day ‘guerilla’ design projects, where mentors will turn up unannounced in the morning and set a design challenge to be completed in a day. Mentors also help students work on intensive one-week design projects working on real briefs from real clients, which in previous years have included Innis & Gunn, Edinburgh Zoo and GF Smith.

One of the mentors at partner Teviot, Kirsten Murray, who studied the HND at the college and graduated in 2007, said: “Whatever stage you are at in your education or career, having a mentor to support you, challenge you and ask you hard questions is invaluable. I have watched the mentoring programme go from strength to strength over the last five years. The success of the programme is clear when you see the quality of the ideas and the design work being produced by the students.

“As a former student of Edinburgh College, it means a lot to me to be able to give something back to the very place that kick started my career in design. The future of design in Scotland will soon be in the hands of these students. That’s why it’s so important that we help them to become industry-ready graduates.”

Student Alex De Sousa, 18, from Bonnyrigg, said: “This doesn’t happen anywhere else and it’s really exciting. It’s incredible that we get to spend time one to one with people with such great experience and it’s such a good opportunity.”

Gillian Grant, an account director at LEWIS, said: “The more you work with and get to know the students the more you can see that they are hungry to learn in all areas. There’s lots they can learn from an account management and project management perspective to complement the creative side and help them understand all sides of the industry. You can offer process-driven advice and recommendations on pitching, and demonstrate how all areas of an agency work together to achieve a goal.”

Hampden hat-trick for Edinburgh College students!

Anti-racism treble for city students

CEE_0219Edinburgh College students came out top in the Show Racism the Red Card Scotland design competition, taking the top three spots in the Further Education category at an awards ceremony at Hampden Park last week.

Jennifer Grieve won the category, with fellow students Liam Philip and William Blake being highly commended for their designs. They are all studying NC Graphic Design at the college, and impressed judges with their poster designs interpreting the competition theme ‘Celebrating Diversity’.

Show Racism the Red Card Scotland runs an annual competition challenging young people to come up with a creative way of promoting their messages of anti-racism and anti-sectarianism.

The students were presented with their prizes by Liam Craig, the club captain of Hibernian FC, and Rangers FC’s Bilel Mohsni.

More than 4,000 young people across Scotland took part in this year’s competition with entrants coming from as far as the Isle of Skye and Dunoon as well as schools in the central belt. The competition sends a clear message that young people want Scotland to be a welcoming and multi-cultural society.

The students’ lecturer, Helena Good, said: “I am delighted that our three talented students were recognised with awards by Show Racism the Red Card Scotland.  I was very impressed by the quality of the poster designs they produced, which really captured the core of the campaign’s anti-racism message using exciting well-thought-out visuals.”

Vicki Burns, campaign manager for Show Racism the Red Card, said: “I am amazed at how creative our young people can be in finding ways to get the anti-racism and anti-sectarianism messages across. Everyone participating in the competition should be congratulated for their inspirational work.  The 4,000 young people who took part in the competition are giving Scotland a clear message – the country they want to live in has no room for racism and sectarianism.”

Art and Design students at Edinburgh College are given a range of opportunities to develop their practical design skills through entering design competitions and taking part in design challenges.  HND Visual Communication: Graphic Design students take part in a yearly one week design challenge with design briefs set by high profile organisations such as Innis & Gunn, Cutty Sark Whisky and Edinburgh Zoo.

Edinburgh College offers a range of art and design courses, from entry level courses for students with additional needs to HND level courses in illustration, graphic design and 3D animation.  Applications are currently invited for these courses and more than 900 other courses across the curriculum offered by Edinburgh College and starting in August on its four campuses.

See www.edinburghcollege.ac.uk for more information on how to apply.

Star student shines with national marketing award

starsAn Edinburgh College student has been crowned Star Creative Student at the Marketing Society Star Awards, a competition that celebrates Scotland’s top marketeers.

HND Graphic Design student Andrew Palfreyman fought off strong competition from across the country to win the award for his outstanding advertising campaign for John Lewis.

This is the third consecutive year that an Edinburgh College student has scooped the prestigious Star Creative Student award, with Jonathan Walton taking the coveted award at last year’s competition.

The Marketing Society Star Awards is an annual celebration of Scotland’s marketing community and highlights the best people within the industry, from up-and-coming FE and HE design students to well-known graphic design agencies such as the Leith Agency and The Union, and major players such as Tesco Bank and Standard Life.

As part of the Marketing Society Star Awards, students from universities and colleges in Scotland were invited to submit a creative brief for the high-profile client John Lewis. The brief challenged students to devise a creative campaign that will establish an emotional connection with John Lewis’ consumers, to build upon the success of the high-street brand’s famous Christmas campaigns and adverts.

A delighted Andrew said: “I was really pleased to find out I had won Star Creative Student. It’s a bit of a hat-trick for the graphic design course as I’m the third student in a row to have been given the award. I think winning a competition like this will really help me when I graduate, and eventually become an art director, which is my ideal job.”

He added: “The idea for my John Lewis campaign was to lead on from the previous Bear and Hare national advert. My advert links into the Commonwealth Games and how the event will affect a British family, as seen through the eyes of a child. It encourages viewers to form an emotional connection with the child and by association the John Lewis brand.”

Andrew will now get the chance to work alongside industry-leading graphic designers at the John Lewis headquarters in London.

Helena Good, design lecturer at Edinburgh College, said: “This is the third year running that our students have won Creative Student of the Year at this national competition. We’re incredibly proud of Andrew for winning and we know he has a really exciting career ahead of him. His success is an illustration of the highly creative, motivated and employable students that we are dedicated to producing here at the college.”

For more information about the awards, visit stars14.marketingsocietyscotland.com/.

Picure: L – R Nick Noble of Sales Force, presenting the award on behalf of Gus Chalmers of The Union, HND Graphic Design student Andrew Palfreyman, and BBC presenter Edith Bowman.