Howdy, so we’ve been keeping a slight radio silence over the last week or two, but don’t think we’ve been resting on our laurels, oh no. In fact we went … up north. I know. Like, further than Watford even. In a mad few days with D&AD we visited Newcastle and Leeds, holding portfolio crits, workshops and the odd lecture (like above yeah?).
We met some cracking students from unis spanning the breadth and length of the North (and bits of Scotland), even learning what an interactive media course gets up to (there’s some mind-boggling work coming out of Northumbria this year) and witnessing a guy spit his gum on another person’s iPad (mid Angry Birds), pick it up, pop it back in his gob and wander off down the train. Waste not want not.
We’ll follow this post with a couple of the students we met whose work shone, but rest assured the state of design education in the North is very much alive and kicking (and it’s WELL CHEAP!).
Last week, after a memorable trip up north, we held our London VS event. The industry team made a resurgence, however the overall victory still went to the Grads, winning 109-102 with standout performances especially in the drawing competitions. We managed to once again give away lots of prizes for such bizarre reasons as pegging, drawing vegetable-based superheroes, dance-offs, getting Stephen Seagal to endorse Aldi by doing in-store butchery and playing an R-rated game of Richard and Judy’s Midday Money. Cracking music from Dave Rudnick, flowing beers, foam shapes and yet more hand-drawn willies allowed everyone to get acquainted fully. Super.
Our Liverpool VS night was a huge success, resulting in (amongst other things) rude sketches, wall sitting, bloody noses, free t-shirts, posters, magazines and books, a lot of beer, even more chat and many new acquaintances both young and old(er). We hope to go back to Liverpool in the near future, but for now our sights are well set on London’s equivalent next Tuesday. So far the grads are up 76 points to 53, so industry had better buck their ideas up.
To check out more Liverpool photos head to our flickr page.
Yes, that’s blood. At our Liverpool VS event, Stockport student Ashley attached 35 clothes pegs to his face in order to win a copy of Vice magazine’s new book (reviewed below). We didn’t suggest he put them up his nose, and even a basic knowledge of challenges of this kind would have allowed him to attach them to folds of skin, but Ashley was having none of it.
We were very happy to thrust one of our two GIVEAWAY COPIES of this brilliant book into his bloody mitt, however we have one further unsoiled copy to give away at our London event. So without further ado, here’s the challenge. If a man, woman or child (not child, it’s over 18s) can match or better this total at our London VS on the 7th of December he or she will win the other copy. Blood optional, humiliation essential.
Back in February we held an event called ‘VS’, allowing practicing creatives, graduates and students to face up in a fierce battle. Despite teams of equal numbers the grads crept ahead, excelling particularly in the artistic challenges (willy drawing being a forté).
It’s now about time to find out not only whether the pros can regain some honour but also which creative hub is more passionate and game for a laugh, Liverpool or London.
Amidst a haze of beer, chat and music, once again we will be encouraging participants to compete in micro-challenges, notching up valuable points for their teams, as well as some new additions of staged professional and student grudge matches and team challenges, with the usual prizes and giveaways throughout. Regardless there will be countless opportunities for those on both sides to meet and discuss the finer aspects of football, politics and the relative merits of various weights of Akzidenz Grotesk.
UPDATE: Here is a list of just some of the creative agencies coming along.
It was made in 2004 and it’s in French, so it’s infinitely cooler than W+Ks Cravendale rip-off. A film about a horse, a Cowboy and an Indian being delivered ‘Le Relax’, a new chair, it’s being revisited as part of Future Shorts’ ONE festival which is kicking off in early November and involves events in 50 cities across the world celebrating brave and innovative short film.
Here’s another Future Short, one of my favourites – the video for The Temper Trap’s ‘Love Lost’.
The album cover. A square of pure expression with, client allowing, no rules and the opportunity to enter into history. Two men that have literally lived the dream and produced some of the most iconic album covers of the last 50 years are Storm Thorgerson and Roger Dean, the darlings of pop and album cover art’s golden age – the 60s and 70s (though they have remained prolific ever since).
Lucky then that they’re doing a talk on the 28th of October in conjunction with our mate Adrian Shaughnessy’s Unit Editions at Logan Hall, London. Tickets are available from www.uniteditions.com priced at £12.50, a snip compared to some of the other conferences and wotnot going on at the moment.
One of the events we ran last year, a mishmash of students, graduates, industry, music and beer, went by the name of ‘VS’. The promotion for the event (see below) consisted of a poster of which we were very proud. So imagine our surprise when we got an email from Falmouth student Alice Saunders asking to redesign it. The cheek!
Thank god we said yes. We just received the finished piece fresh from Alice’s degree show and have been playing with it for the last hour. Playing up the ‘VS’ aspect of the theme, she has instead made the viewer the superhero, allowing them to don their mask in order to read their tailor-made instructions. In our opinion she’s nailed what we’re about and we’re truly honoured with the effort she’s put in.
Forgive the photography, it was done very early in the morning by a very tired man (not by Alice). We’re going to be holding our next one of these in the next couple of months – eyes peeled mofo’s.
On Tuesday we were lucky to be able to go along to the first of Sanky’s offerings as president of our partners D&AD, this one presented by Danish design supergroup KiBiSi.
Made up of Bjarke Ingels, the young architectural maverick founder of BIG architects (front of the above image), Lars Holme of Kilo Design (back right) and Jens Martin of Skibstead Ideation (back left), these guys painted a picture of the future full of angular utopian cityscapes populated by floor-lit driverless cars as well as present day solutions of sustainable furniture and intelligent bicycles.
What became apparent though throughout the lecture was that rather than hypothetical spouting, this stuff was actually going to happen and these three gentlemen were at the forefront.
The section that really got me was the concept above from a project they are working on with Audi. A thin glass film coating (a tech that already exists) would be placed on city streets which, as well as providing massive amounts of sustainable energy, can be embedded with LEDs and sensors, allowing for a truly interactive experience. The implications on road safety and congestion as well as interactive advertising and gaming are pretty mind-boggling.
The next D&AD presidents lecture, Pecha Kucha, is on the 3rd of November and features a plethora of design luminaries including Neville Brody and Kate Moross. MIMO.
…and it’s a shocker. I mean, the event was mega, a gruelling, intense and ultimately overwhelmingly satisfying 5 days of competitions, rickshaws, beer, chat, heat, football, films, magazine launches, curry and so much else. But this video, is, well, the haggard music splice at the end has to be heard to be believed.
Of course we could post-rationalise the decisions made when editing this piece (‘we decided to keep it fast and loose, just get it out there’ doesn’t really hold up a month later) but instead have decided to rejoice in its forthcomings, nay wrap them around ourselves like a comforting reminder that humans at their very core are fallible, no video is perfect, and we’re all insignificant blobs of matter on a dying planet etc.
Still, it’s under two minutes, it crams a lot in, it has a soundtrack that was released in the heady days of January 1995 (true that, just two months before the PS1) and arguably doesn’t bore (the longest scene is about 3 seconds).
The day has finally arrived when we can announce our print mag – 64 pages of B5 glory wrapped in an Eboy original limited-edition-for-this-magazine-only illustration which also extends onto a B3 poster (included for free, naturally) all for £2.50. It’s taken tiiime to get to this stage and we’re über-excited to bring this beast to life.
The launch party is being held at our stand at the D&AD New Blood fair at the Truman Brewery on the 26th of this month (Saturday innit) – get there for 5.30 to ensure you get some of the booze. At 7 we will then trundle of for a curry and a serious pub sesh.
If you’re keen, check our facebook event here – If you can’t make it do not fear, there will be plenty left to pick up a copy at your leisure from our shop or from various other outlets. If you sign up to Stack by the end of the month you even get it for free!
Some of the topics covered:
Cake, ITV’s Gladiators, paid placements, Eboy, Glug, Moustaches, Haikus, “Industry-ready?”, Adrian Shaughnessy on lobsters in shoes, rickshaws, nudity, FFFFUUUU, Are D&AD any good at pool?, creative tics, idea vs execution, mums on Facebook and much much more. We’re so proud of it, we put our name on it.
With speakers from AKQA, Superfad and Proud Creative, this Thursday you’d be a mug not to get in on Outside In, an event right in the middle of Shoreditch, all proceeds of which (£5 a pop) go towards the Ravensbourne College degree students.
Also worthy of note is the video they made for the first of these talks (though you can’t fault anything set to The XX in my eyes).
After the success of previous lectures (including Harry Pearce, see our recent post), the Student-run Designers Society based at the University of Plymouth brings its next round of events, including a lecture/portfolio review/shmooze by mega Illustrator, Designer and ‘Master of Swirls’ Si Scott.
Plymouth is pretty far from … well, anywhere, but this event should be worth any trip, especially as the cheapo £5 ticket will make up for petrol money spent on those winding Cornwall roads. We just wish we could come along ourselves…
