This March, as part of their Curate & Build module, the MA Communication Design students travelled up to London to attend a number of exhibitions and workshops. Highlights included the Fear & Love exhibition at the Design Museum, a tour of V&A’s Rapid Response Collection with curator Corinna Gardner, and a trip to the St Bride Foundation to explore their vast typography library and collection.
Special thanks to Lauren Bassam, Corrina Gardner, and Mick Clayton for hosting us!
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.
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.
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.
Friday. This time we head for uber-cool Shoreditch and The Biscuit Building – home to one of the most avant-garde agencies in town – Mother.
Our ex-students Hannah and James have been doing nice stuff there together for nearly two years, now . Since they graduated from Falmouth in 2012 Hannah had previously been at BBH, while James had been at Agency Republic. James had to rush off to do some work but Hannah and Ben Heap took us through the Mother ethos and showed some great recent work they’d been doing. Being the guy who controls the hiring of new people at Mother, Ben was a good person to learn from too.
Finally, we shot over to Hatton Garden to meet Dom and Joyce, ex–students from 2011 and 2012 respectively. Joyce was a fairly recent recruit at Grey, but Dom has been there for almost three years, now. They introduced us to one of Grey’s Creative Directors, Jamie and a fun hour’s presentation of Grey advertising madness culminated in a few beers and wine. Thanks, Jamie!
To round off a highly successful and pleasantly exhausting week, that evening we all headed over to The Chandos, a huge pub near Charing Cross, for a several beers etc. No photos of this event, sadly, due to the effects of said beers.
Thursday – and we set off for Great Portland Street where Engine reside. The main part of the Engine group is the agency WCRS, founded by the charismatic Robin Wight way back in 1979.
We were met by our grads Tom and Jo. They’ve been doing unbelievably well there since graduating in 2014 – winning impossible numbers of awards for their ‘Missing Type’ idea for National Blood Week (see earlier blog). We’re very proud of these two, needless to say. They introduced us to their ECD Ross Neil. Ross gave a highly entertaining and very full-on presentation, illustrated by some hilarious animated gifs, followed by a quick-fire Q&A.
Then it was time for a quick bite to eat and off up the road to Fallon’s offices to meet our grad from 2011/12, Caitlin. She’s now working at Saatchi & Saatchi after a spell at the Body Shop as a copywriter. All of Saatchi’s boardrooms were booked out for client presentations, which is why we were at their affiliate agency, Fallon. Caitlin gave us a very helpful talk and was joined by one of the mid-weight teams there – Ben and Jenny, who talked about the various advantages of working at a big-name agency like Saatchi’s. They also promised to give the class a brief to work on, which they said they’d come down and crit next term. Excellent!
Wednesday. And this time we darken some hallowed doors over in Golden Square – M&C Saatchi. The CD, Mark Goodwin gave us half an hour of his time before handing over to Ashley and Andy – grads of ours from 2011/12 and 2012/13 respectively. They’d hooked up together as a team after each of them had been with different partners and it’s all clicked for them ever since.
We also heard wise words from Liane, another grad of ours, this time from 2008/09. She’d been working up in Manchester at BJL until about 18 months ago when she joined M&C. Part of their presentation was a lovely film they’d all made showing various people at all levels within M&C introducing themselves and describing what their jobs entailed. Useful and fun at the same time. It was so nice to see our people hooked up and working hard at a big, famous agency.
In the afternoon, we popped over to Farringdon to an agency with a totally different and, frankly, bonkers personality – Karmarama. Working there are more grads of ours, Daniel and Rachel (although Rachel was actually off on holiday). Daniel did a splendid job of holding the fort on his own though, describing their ‘journey’ since graduating from the course in 2010 (a journey that started at the creatively hot agency ‘180 Amsterdam’) and giving a slick, funny presentation that included the various classic pitfalls that advertising students should avoid.
10.30am on Monday morning and we were all gathered in Cabot Square, Canary Wharf as the busy, busy week begins. The day kicked off with a visit to Ogilvy, where we were regaled by Mike and Jon, one of the senior teams there. Funny guys. We then got an introduction to Planning and the importance of strategy from Tara Austin – followed by a talk from Chelsey, one of our ex–students from the class of 2012/13. She’s busy doing great stuff at Blue Hive, one of Ogilvy’s affiliated companies http://thebluehive.com/europe/.
Phew – then it was a quick scramble to the Jubilee Line to get across town to Carnaby Street and BBH for 3pm. Freddie Wood and Ric Hooley – both grads of ours but from different years and now freshly teamed together (it’s a funny old world of coincidences) – gave the class a brief history of their journeys since graduating as well as a snapshot of the world of BBH’s superb advertising. Then we were given a tour round their building.
Finally, we tip out onto the street as it starts to get dark and we head back to the hotel.
[MA Creative Advertising London Study Week -2nd-6th November 2015]
Bryan Clark, Head of Graphic Design:
“Just a quick update on news from London at the D&AD NewBlood event.
We had the private view last night and found out on arriving at our show that we had won 8 Best of New Blood awards; one of the most in the whole show – this is an amazing achievement for the students and for the whole course team. A proud moment for everyone and a great story for the end of this year – thank you to all for your contribution both up in London and back in Falmouth.
You may know we also have 3 pencil nominations which will be announced at the awards ceremony on Thursday evening… so fingers crossed and I’ll send more news as and when.”
http://newblood.falmouth.ac.uk
One week to go!
The School of Communication Design exhibition stands:
BA(Hons) Creative Advertising
BA(Hons) Digital Media
BA(Hons) Graphic Design
MA Creative Advertising
We hope to see you all there: 30 June to 2 July 2015 (free and open to the public on 1-2 July, 10:30am to 8pm)
Old Spitalfields Market, Brushfield Street, Spitalfields, London E1 6AA
http://www.dandad.org/en/new-blood-festival/
Cover photograph: D&AD
This year we took 62 students to London for our study trip and visited nearly 30 studio’s over three days.
Students were given inspiring tours, and insights across the design industry. Visits included:
OPEN AGENCY, B&B, Unreal, A+B, Pentagram, BBH, BISQUIT, Mother, D-Studio, Dragon Rouge, Lewis Moberly, SAS, SKYPE, Hat Trick, Springetts, The Partners, Ustwo, Carter Wong, Purpose, Design Bridge, Johnson Banks, The Brand Union, The Allotment JKR, Turner Duckworth.
theschoolofcommunicationdesign.wordpress.com 