This is a summary post

So.. As you might know by now I start most of my blogposts with a ‘so’. So this won’t be an exception. 

I’m going to reflect on my first year as a graphic communication student at LCC - can’t believe it’s already coming to an end. Guess they weren’t lying when they told us on our first day that time would FLY and we should make the most of it. 

One of our first task was actually starting a blog - and keeping it updated throughout the year, formally till today the 18th of May. It’s a really good way of forcing people into it, it takes time to learn to enjoy blogging, but at this stage I think most of us have come to enjoy it and intend to continue. Having your own place to curate what you find or make  and reflect on it is really useful and strangely pleasing.  

The first weeks of the first term we had various workshops - many of the practical. I must admit I didn’t always feel that challenged and they were quite basic. But looking back at it, it was nice to have a bit of a slow start, and I produced some okay things - like this worm-in-apple-print. Pauls text and image workshop was really good, and marked the beginning of me looking differently at type and layout - something I’m definitely less scared of and more intrigued by today. 

To counter-balance the slow first weeks I kept myself busy with other things. At some point Campusmoviefest visited uni and I took advantage of the free equipment and made a short film in a few days, called wednesday we play with fire. I genuinely think it was quite a strong little film, but it didn’t get on to the next round - I think it was too violent and real *shrugs* Oh well. 

One of the highlights of the first term was definitely getting the opportunity to go to TYPO-london. My first ever conference, packed with super interesting talks by famous people in the industry I’d never heard of but now saw live. ChipKidd (above) being one of my highlights.  It was a lot to take in at once, but I learned more than I realise, I think. The best part (and this is always my best part of anything) was making friends with DGC people from different years, it’s been really helpful being able to get their advice and see what they’re up to and so on. I also took part in the Visualizing marathon with three others from our course, and we produced our first ever infographic in 24 hours - Whose Olympics is it anyway?

The first ‘real’ project was the Graphic Design Fundamentals project aka GDF. Hello client and target audience, hello inDesign and HELLO first of many PDFs. All things we’re familiar with now, but back then they were new concepts. I chose to kill two stones with one bird (yes) and combine the project with one of the YCN briefs - sneakily making Feel Good Juice company fit in to our client sector: ‘health and wellbeing’. I got away with it, but kept being pestered about posting something of it on my blog - something I couldn’t do as the YCN deadline was in March and we were not allowed to share it before then. So, sorry. There you have it. 

Our first project in the new year was a Mapping project. We had to choose between one of two areas of the design industry that interested us, and come up with a question and map out our finding somehow. Art Direction has always been something I thought I might want to go into later, so this was a good opportunity to define what it really entails. My question was something along the lines of ‘which principles of Storytelling can be implemented to art direction’, and the final outcome was a time-based piece of advice for designers.

As a result of this mapping project I’ve found myself keeping narratives in mind whenever I design. 

Alongside course-work I decided to respond to one of the D&AD briefs - in the social design category. It was a really last minute decision and the execution was so-so, but I was lucky enough to win a ‘best of year’ - proving that good storytelling of an insight-based idea really works. 

The cool thing about FdA’s is that we get to work on projects directly with the industry. Everyone really upped their game, when we got the first industry-set briefs. Because each project had limited space, the sign-up morning was utter madness. I was hoping to do a project with LBi, but I was a nano-second too late. BERG London turned out to be a really exciting project though, and we got to go crazy on ideas by imagining how future technologies might merge in the future. My final outcome ‘Altered Reflection’ - was crazy, yes but not impossible I believe. I recently went to a tech-conference in Amsterdam and realised that all our ideas weren’t so far of after all. In fact, I think we might be a head of things which is quite exciting.. One of the key speakers - Mark Randall from Adobe really inspired me to aim for magic when you’re coming up with ideas. 

At the moment we’re busy with our final major project - we have to create 100 outcomes and make a catalogue showing the ten best. The theme is ‘The City’, and I’ve been experimenting with layers, grids, and visualising sound. Although it’s hectic I’m really enjoying the freedom to experiment in this project and an excuse to try out new techniques. Below is my first attempt at a risograph print - RISO being my new favourite machine of all time. 

Reflecting upon my first year as a graphic communication student I’ve learned a LOT. It has kinda creeped up on me lately, and I’ve realised I see the world differently. Although no one ever tells us “this is good design” or “this is bad”, the constant exposure to visual solutions and all the in-between talks with mates or discussions with tutors really has an impact on how you see design. It’s no secret that I love tools in general, but some of the more abstract tools i.e for idea generation must be on the top list of useful tools I’ve learned this year. I’m thrilled by the fact that you can actually work as an ideas-person. I wasn’t aware of that before, it’s amazing. Next up is hustling an internship over the summer and hopefully act as a useful tool to someone, somewhere.