New Designers

Again, a little overdue but I went to New Designers in June 2016, which is a showcase of the graduating talent from UK university design courses. I mostly went because my friends from Birmingham City Uni were there but it turned out to be a really interesting event to learn about the standard expected of students, plus some of the projects were really neat.

The bottom floor (of the Business Design Centre, which by the way is a really nice venue and I wish more of the events I frequent as a trader would use it, it's like the Olympia but in a nicer area and with nicer toilets) was all product design etc, which, while interesting, didn't really make much sense to me as an illustrator. Also it's very much more a male subject and I got overlooked as a visitor a lot down there?

This one was pretty cool, it made for a neat unconventional advertisement (though apparently the ciragette butts used weren't collected from the beach ahah).

Please buy me a printer like this?? Holy heck!

The event had buyers and companies representing as well as the students, with a few students having their work picked up over the course of the show, which was interesting to see who and what companies were interested in.

I feel like the furniture design/textile design/illustration rooms were the nicest and most professionally laid out. 

I remember this one being Falmouth, who had really nice illustration work but I guess, a bit of a boring set-up, particularly lacking to use the middle of the room, which was really bare. The students didn't seem that interested in the going ons either, though admittedly it was very warm and the event ran for a good few days with long hours. I did talk to one girl who was cool though, she told me she didn't see where her work was going until the December of final year, which, for a student like me who feels so lost in the university system, was something of a relief to hear.

My friends' work from Birmingham City Uni! I think it was smart to set-up a shop, it meant students could reimburse themselves for the cost of the trip. I was told by other students from other unis that they had the cover the cost of the pitch too (around £2k) which was wild- aparently BCU didn't have to. 

A lot of the textile design as part of illustration was really strong, whic is cool but intimidating, since I quite like textile design.

I liked these display cutouts (both made for the show specifically to pitch the artist's work, and as a pitch in themselves as potential promotional material for fashion companies etc.

I'm not sure this was a student's work but it sure was a neat project on letterpress and the Underground.

This was an interesting rebrand of Flybe! Showed a nice use of mockups and UI design.

This was probably the work that stuck with me most- an ad campaign for domestic abuse awareness. The semantics of this project were really well thought out- the idea of scars and the truth as something so easily hidden, while also specifically not trivialising it and allowing for alternative versions of the poster by pointing out it wasn't a game. How these would work in the real world is a difficult one but it was still much sought after by attending buyers and companies, as you can tell from the business cards stuck at the top of the project.

The show had a really nice range of work (and expertise) and although I couldn't summarise exactly what I learnt, I feel like I picked up a few things here and there, and it was nice to connect with students further along in their university experience and learning what they'd done with their time on the course and what they'd learnt.