Welcoming new MA course coordinators

Two new course coordinators join the School of Communication Design this term. We’re pleased to welcome Robyn Cook  (MA Communication Design) and Jack Kramer (MA Creative Advertising). Jack will be taking over the post from Chris Waite who is retiring at the end of January. Chris will be greatly missed by staff and students and we wish him all the best for the future.

Jack Kramer is an experienced Creative Director / Art Director, having spent over 25 years in agencies large and small including DDB, Y&R, Bates and Grey.

He’s passionate not just about great ideas, but the craft and execution of those ideas, too. He’s landed over 150 national and international awards, across all media and regularly sits on awards judging panels.

Jack’s experience spans most sectors and channels, including consumer, b2b, digital and design. He joins Falmouth University this month straight from industry bringing current practice and fresh ideas with him

Robyn Cook was born in Johannesburg, South Africa in 1980.

Since graduating, she has worked as a designer at a number of small award-winning studios, such as Disturbance, and as an art director for larger agencies including Ogilvy & Mather.

After almost 10 years in industry, Robyn moved into academia, teaching at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels at the University of Johannesburg. She has recently completed her PhD, researching post-Marxism, alternative economies, and institution-building in the arts.

Robyn also runs the Sober & Lonely Institute for Contemporary Art with co-founder Lauren von Gogh (since 2011). Sober & Lonely are currently working on a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure novel, The Last Unstitute, in association with Botkyrka Konsthall (Sweden).

Robyn Cook

 

London Agency Visits

In November, MA Creative Advertising students visited several agencies in London for an insight into the advertising industry and to meet and hear from Falmouth University Alumni about how to end  up working in advertising. We went to two agencies a day – some big, some small, some kind of mid-sized. All interesting.

MONDAY

BBH // Alumni Lambros Charalambous & Felipe Guimaraes / Class of 2010

Karmarama // Alumni Rachel Holding / Class of 2010

TUESDAY

WCRS (Engine) // Alumni Tom Dixon & Jo Griffin / Class 0f 2014

Grey // Alumni Sander Vos / Class of 2012 & Joe Arnold Class of 2015

WEDNESDAY

The Corner // Alumni Jack Denyer / Class of 2013

McCann // Alumni Dom Butler / Class of 2012

THURSDAY

Mother // Alumni Hannah Tarpey / Class of 2012

Publicis // Senior Creative Team Ben Smith & Dan Kennard & Creative Director Richard Baynham

FRIDAY

M&C Saatchi // Executive Creative Director Mark Goodwin & Creative Liam Campbell

Ogilvy // Creatives Ran Stallard & Max Maclean

 

D&AD Award Success

At the 2016 D&AD Global Student awards ceremony, Falmouth students won 16 D&AD pencils, the most from any single University in the world.

 

All of our winners were from the School of Communication Design. Graphic Design students, Jamie Quantrill and Matthew Churchill were each winners of the coveted yellow pencil for their submissions. A total of six graphite pencils were won by Falmouth students: Tom Austin and Jessica Nineham (Graphic Design), Ryan Ho, Jonathan Tubb, Alycea Marx-Blackwell, Jon Coates and Josh Welton (MA Creative Advertising).  A special mention must go to Ryan Ho, who not only won two graphite pencils and one wood pencil, but also received the white pencil, for his submission for the Ford mobility brief. Wood pencils were also awarded to Jonathan Tubb, Sanjana Dora, Gabby Prawl, Jon Coates and Dimitrios Dimitriou (MA Creative Advertising) and Louis Knight, Matthew Caldwell, Emma Jeffery and Becki Sewell (Graphic Design).

The ceremony was the final event in the week, following the D&AD New Blood show case exhibition of students work in Shoreditch, London. The exhibition presents student work from the leading courses in Graphic Design, Advertising, Illustration and Photography and attracts thousands of visitors, including professionals from the top agencies and design consultancies, all there to find the best of the best of this years ‘new blood’. At the exhibition Graphic Design student, Matthew Caldwell and MA Creative Advertising students Lucy Wai & William Boehm received a Best of New Blood award (‘Ones to watch’). Lucy and William also were announced as the overall winners of the ‘Pitch yourself’ brief. Additionally Creative Advertising students Ryan Ho, Josh Welton, William Boehm and Lucy Wai were accepted into the D&AD New Blood Academy.

The D&AD champions excellence in Design, Advertising and communication. Our continued success across all of their award schemes and measures of success, place Falmouth University amongst the best of the best.

‘Our success should not be a surprise to anyone who has met our students. Their drive and commitment is matched only by their creativity and passion for learning. Equally our approach to teaching provides a learning environment that is infused with industry connections and delivered by tutors who bring their extensive professional experience, creativity and commitment to every facet of the student’s learning experience.’

Jon Unwin, Director, The School of Communication Design.

D&AD New Blood 2016

TUESDAY 5th July

We’re here! Old Truman Brewery, Shoreditch. Four hours to put the show up. Easy. Chaotic scenes as dozens of willing hands from every university imaginable try to do the same thing and succeed in getting in each other’s way

Two hours later and we’re all done and ready for the judging and the Private View in the evening.

WOW!!! We’ve only broken all records! Yellow stickers everywhere. Eight Nominations!!! What a haul! Unbelievable. Students are on a real high.

WEDNESDAY 6^th July

First day open to the public – pandemonium all around us. Agency big-hitters, wannabees and parents collide in the melee. Lots of portfolios are reviewed, business cards are swapped and hopes are raised.

THURSDAY 7^th July

Another day open to the public and more portfolios reviewed – followed by the Awards Ceremony in the evening. Drums roll, lights flash and the ceremony begins, the pencils and the winners are announced. All eight of our Nominations get translated into Pencils of one hue or another – including a super-rare White Pencil. Astounding! Eight Pencils is more than we’d ever dreamed of dreaming we’d dare to dream of. Woo-hoo! A quantity of alcohol gets consumed!

Yay time!!

To cap the fantastic successes our students had this year in the D&AD Student Awards, we now hear that we have four winning teams at YCN too. Brilliant!

Congratulations go to Billy, Lucy W, Inger, Charlotte, William, Tubby and Lucy H for their excellent work on the Toyota, WRAP and Independence Day briefs. This kind of thing will certainly go a long way towards helping them get good placements in agencies.

    

Visit by The Talent Business

Today we welcomed Nikki Hall from The Talent Business to the studio. The Talent Business is a one of the best recruitment companies for the advertising business with offices all round the world.

Nikki met our class and explained how she can help them in their search for a job in advertising. She also explained how Cream, their famous portfolio competition, works  Every year in July and August, The Talent Business selects Creative Directors from top ad agencies around the world to judge the 20 best student portfolios. People who get selected, almost always get immediate placements on the back of it, so well worth doing.

Big thanks to Nikki for taking the time to come down to see us.

MA Creative Advertising graduates from Falmouth sweep the board at the Young Lions

The winners of the prestigious ‘UK Young Lions’ awards 2016 have just been announced. This competition is open to young Advertising Copywriter/Art Director teams – creative professionals under the age of 30.

Entrants were given a creative brief devised by the Red Cross, the organisation’s selected charity for 2016.

In the ‘Print’ category, out of a total of 13 shortlisted UK entries, no less than five were created by former students of Falmouth University’s MA Creative Advertising course.

These included the overall winners of the Print category – Naresh Subhash and Michael Outhwaite (Falmouth class of 2014-15). Naresh and Mike have been invited to the final judging and awards event in Cannes in June. Here they will compete on behalf of the UK against winning entries from all over the world.

In addition, there were three Highly Commended entries. All of these also involved ex Falmouth MA students – Alex Nash and Francesca Miani (class of 14-15), Joe Arnold (14-15) and Jo Taylor (12-13).

Yet another 2012-13 ex Falmouth MA team, Matthew Beevor and Katherine Middlemas, were among a further nine, short-listed entries.

All great news for postgraduate study at Falmouth, announced on the Guardian website on 5 May.

 

Falmouth University on top of the world

Students from the School of Communication Design at Falmouth University have won no less than 16 D&AD pencils in this years awards This represents the most from any single University in the world.

The D&AD award scheme attracts student entries from all over the world. The briefs are written and ultimately judged by leading professionals and are designed to challenge the student’s creativity, craft and communication skills. It arguably represents the ‘Oscars’ of the Design and Advertising industry.

Eight of the pencil winning student entries are from the BA(Hons) Graphic Design course and eight from the MA Creative Advertising course.

‘We are extremely proud of our student’s continued success in national and international award schemes. It not only reflects our student’s commitment, creativity and ability to challenge conventional thinking, but also endorses our approach to teaching, that places creative problem solving and strategic thinking at the heart of the curriculum.’

Jon Unwin, Director of the School of Communication Design

The winning students will be invited to a gala ceremony in London this July, where they will discover whether their entry will win further accolade.

Drum roll please for the following students…

Tom Austin, Matthew Caldwell, Matthew Churchill, Jon Coates, Sajana Dora, Dimitrios Dimitriou, Ryan Ho, Emma Jeffery, Louis Knight, Gabrielle Prawl, Jamie Quantrill, Alycea Marx-Blackwell, Jessica Nineham, Becki Sewell, Jonathan Tubb and Josh Welton,

Visiting Professor, Rory Sutherland, visits Falmouth 21st April 2016

Today we were delighted to welcome Rory Sutherland (Vice Chairman of Ogilvy One) to the Woodlane campus. As our Visiting Professor, Rory has been coming to give talks to the Advertising and Graphic Design students for the past 3 years.

Rory’s role at Ogilvy One centres around understanding consumer psychology and encouraging clients to realise that, quite often, simple inexpensive changes can benefit them immensely. In fact, it was as a result of listening to Rory’s talks over the past couple of years that got us thinking we should include this subject on the course. A lot of advertising money is wasted because people don’t necessarily think what they feel, they don’t say what they think and they don’t do what they say. So, before talking to the MA students, Rory popped into our office to meet our new Behavioural Studies lecturer, Martin Hosken. Trained as a psychologist, Martin is obviously very well qualified to help our MA students understand what goes on in the consumer’s mind.

Rory meets Martin Hosken

As brilliant, entertaining and fascinating as ever, Rory gave our students an hour’s off-the-cuff talk in the studio before everyone made their way to the packed-out lecture theatre for his hilarious and riveting main talk to the whole of the School of Communication Design. His lecture overran slightly but, judging by the grins on people’s faces afterwards, nobody minded in the least. Then it was off for a quick meal with staff at a beach-side restaurant before he was whisked off to the station to catch the Sleeper train back to London. Visits from key industry people like Rory are what helps to make the courses at Falmouth so exceptional.

Rory Talks to the MA Class

Rory in full flow to the whole School

D&AD Student Award winners announced!

Woo–hoo!

Fantastic news just in – D&AD have announced the winners for this year’s Student Awards. And it turns out that EIGHT of our current crop have been selected. Some, more than once!

They’ll each be in receipt of a nice, squat, fat, Pencil at New Blood on 7th July. Of course, exactly what type of Pencil they get will be revealed on the day in true Oscars-style, so we’re all waiting with bated breath.

Together with the Graphic Design course, who also had eight winners, that makes Falmouth the most D&AD-awarded University in the country so far. Maybe even the world – maybe even the entire universe.

MA Creative Advertising D&AD Student Winners 2016