Always enjoy visiting one of my favorite London stores – Fortnum & Mason – especially around Christmas time when their window displays are just wonderful.
Sightseeing then down to business
Day two in London always starts with the wonderful morning sightseeing tour on a coach. Always informative – I learn more each time I go on them and out tour guide Phil and his driver Sean were excellent.
After a lunch break it was time for my first class session. Always enjoy delivering my ‘Creative Strategy’ course and expecting great things from this particular group of students. It’s an important ‘bonus’ to their regular courses but I also want them to enjoy the challenge.
First Day ‘running’
So how do you avoid jet lag… Keep moving.
The 2017 J Term Study Abroad to London kicked into action with a group of weary travellers stepping off the Unite Airlines ‘Red eye’ and immediately embracing the local culture – well, they are taken out to various destinations in London, and then abandoned to find their way back to their hotel. So we lose a few along the way, but it certainly acclimatizes them to their new environment.
In the case of my Art300 Creative Strategy students, I took them out to Borough Market, via Tower Bridge. Not too difficult to find their way back from, but not straight forward either. The big disappointment for me was that the market was still closed for the holidays until tomorrow 🙁
After settling into the hotel, I finally made it back out for a quiet pint and this wonderful homely dish at the Lamb on Conduit Street – a consistent favorite haunt of mine.
Art 300/London 2017 is close!
Watch this space and ‘Mind the Gap’.
Creative ‘Journey’ Process Book
Always an interesting final project for the Editorial Design students. Essentially, take all your creative process for the first three assignments of the course and use them as the content for this, final project. Display your process in a clear, sequential way, while at the same time ensuring you are presenting it as a ‘Personal’ creative journey. If the students have worked hard throughout the semester, with an abundance of ideas, from sketch to computer, then this is a really nice Editorial Design assignment to conclude the semester with – however, if they have very little thought process from their previous projects… then it gets tricky!
And here is a selection of finished Creative Process pieces:
Pre Press Piece
Create a keepsake piece that is both a strong editorial piece and also presents a variety of pre-press steps and processes in a clearly defined and accurate way. This guide should be the ‘go to’ for any up and coming design student or young professional designer who needs to know the correct way to set up files, convert to cmyk, select paper etc.
The students worked in teams of three. Here are examples from all three finished pieces:
Library Wayfinding System
A wonderful opportunity to work on (potentially) a real life Information Design project. In this case, the senior students had to work in teams to create a complete way finding/signage system as part of the library ongoing renovation. Initial research, including walk-throughs and a thorough understanding of the environment and foot traffic was imperative. The deadline presentations were in front of several ‘clients’ and the hopeful outcome will be the development of selected student team concepts through to the final implementation of the system throughout the library.
Here is the complete presentation from one of the teams The other two teams were equally wonderful – just not enough room to include all of them!:
Shakespeare 400 Years. Paper Engineering
As always, once the students have an understanding and appreciation of working with grids in their editorial design, I introduce another element – paper engineering. Often considered simply ‘pop up, and children’s books, it is in fact a very sophisticated art. The brief was to create a book jacket and three paper engineered spreads for a publication celebrating 400 years of William Shakespeare.
Here are some of the results: