Design Dice

‘…Design Dice are a tool to help the creative process – to aid design thinking, idea generation & problem-solving…’

Created by Andy Neal (Senior Lecturer, and former course co-ordinator at Falmouth University) they are the result of over 25 years of experience as a graphic designer & teacher, and have grown out of a deep belief in the value of encouraging creativity in others.

‘…The main idea is simple. The dice work when you need a change in direction, are feeling stuck, or want to take a lateral leap in your thinking. You roll one (or more) of the dice – which offers a key-word ‘prompt’, and invites a series of creative responses, encouraging breadth and depth to your thinking. Every word is ‘interpreted’ by you in the light of the project you are working on, so the meaning of each suggestion changes due to the context. Even though there are a ‘fixed’ number of words, there are arguably an infinite number of combinations…’

The resulting dice have been tested over the past three years with undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate designers from a range of creative disciplines (not just graphic design), and are now live on KickStarter (hopefully) ahead of going into production.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/303501430/design-dice

 

 

Stage 1 Graphic Design Oscars 2017

Stage 1 Graphic Design were set a collaborative film project entitled: I’ve Never Seen Star Wars. The project was based on a comedy talk show broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and hosted by comedian Marcus Brigstocke, where in each episode a celebrity guest tries out experiences that are new to them, but common to many others. The title comes from the show’s producer and creator, Bill Dare, having never seen the Star Wars films.

Teams were asked to deliver a 60-90 second short film demonstrating playful, compelling story telling. Continuing in the spirit of Stage 1, they were asked to embrace risk and experimentation, (but, it also had to be: a. within the law, b. safe and c. decent for public viewing. Most of this criteria was met!).

We celebrated the films at our annual Red Carpet Oscars event on Thursday 25th May. The films were funny, beautifully shot and edited with some skillful post production techniques. They revealed great talents, showed brilliant collaborative practice and were above all thoroughly entertaining. It was a great end to a great year group who now enter into Stage 2 in Sept, looking forward to the next set of challenges and new experiences on offer at Falmouth.

18 Films were shown and the judges had a very difficult job of shortlisting the Oscar winners down to 5:

Best Cinematography and Post Production

Avtur- A film based on the first impressions of the writings of J G Ballard: Alex Bassett, Paul Merritt, Reuben Morley, Dylan Young.

Best Action Movie

Learn to skate. Emma Barraclough, Martha Galilee, Annie Haines, Rachel Potter.

Film that most honoured the brief! (+ most records broken).

Never have I Ever. Millie Hacket, Andy Horner, Fern Partridge, Amy Shortis.

Best Directors Cut

I’ve never danced in public, I’ve never cooked before, I’ve never drawn a perfect circle. Tom Benford, Abii Birkett, Matthew Cannon, Suin Lee.

Best Film

I’ve Never Made a Film. Connor Edwards, Tom Heath, James Hopkinson, Emily Sorrel.

Various Writings + CAST

Various Writings is an art- and design-based research project initiated by Maria Christoforidou, Lizzie Ridout and Dion Star. It is both a research platform and programme of projects investigating acts of writing.

In February Maria, Lizzie and Dion were invited to undertake a short residency at The Cornubian Arts & Science Trust (CAST), an educational charity based in Helston, Cornwall. The residency was an opportunity to explore what writing is and what writing might become, through the creation of a taxonomy of writing acts and gestures. Various Writings asks the question, how do we write in the first place and why? What are the tools and surfaces that we find ourselves using? How do we define the media that we write with and how does that media, in turn, define us?

As a result of the CAST residency, many of the tests, responses and critical observations have been developed into workshops for a Collaborative Practice project. Various Writings: Collaborative Practice is a four-week project in which Stage Two students elect to work in conjunction with staff on specific research projects.

Dion, Lizzie and Maria will deliver a collaborative performed presentation in April at Please Specify!: Sharing Artistic Research Across Disciplines, the annual international conference of The Society for Artistic Research. This year the conference will be held at the University of the Arts Helsinki, Finland.

www.sarconference2017.org

In July they will also be delivering a paper about their research and collaboration at MIX2017 – Writing Digital, a conference to be held at Bath Spa University and examining the intersection between creative writing, storytelling, media creation and technology.

www.mixconference.org

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Dion Star is Stage Three Coordinator and Senior Lecturer on BA (Hons) Graphic Design, Lizzie Ridout is a Senior Lecturer on BA (Hons) Graphic Design and MA Illustration: Authorial Practice and Maria Christoforidou is a theory lecturer across Fine Art, Illustration and Graphic Design at Falmouth and Plymouth Universities.

The central narrative

Each year, our first year students embark on a project that explores the idea of storytelling – the foundational premise upon which most graphic design (and arguably communication in general) is based. Understand the place of storytelling in our craft, and you are likely to build strong, believable visual narratives.

We explore pace, flow, rhythm and tone of voice to aid the engagement with (and comprehension of) a given story or message. We encourage the students to begin with a personally authored piece of writing, to then research within and beyond graphic design (film, poetry, creative writing, photography, and so on…) and experiment with a wide variety of visual responses. The hope is to nurture diverse and experimental approaches to narrative and move beyond conventions of (in this case) the traditional book.

At the end of the module this year (as is our practice), we created an exhibition of the work and invited the rest of the course to share in the fruits of the first year’s efforts (and scare a few second and third year students in the process!). Of particular note this time around was the care in production of many of the books (thanks again to Megan Stallworthy for the workshops), and the time spent considering the initial stories – many of which dealt with sensitive or poignant moments. The samples shown here were all produced by our first year students (who have been with us for just under 20 weeks), and they wrote, designed and hand-made the books in just 5 weeks!

Bodmin College: Graphics Taster Day

The School of Communication Design hosted a taster day for students of Bodmin College on Tuesday 22 Nov, this is part of an ongoing relationship to support and host students in our Graphic Design BA(Hons) course .

The students accompanied by their tutor Jamie Baldwin were given an introductory talk by Bryan Clark, Head of Graphic Design, followed by a one-day narrative brief. They were invited to create a book interpreting the story of Red Riding Hood using only typography and shape along with a limited colour palette of red, black and white. Working with staff, Nikki Salkeld (Senior Lecturer and Course Coordinator for Stage 1) and Darren Whittington (Senior Lecturer with Graphic design and Advertising) as well as first year students, they had to reach a deadline of 3pm.  There were some very beautiful and considered outcomes which, demonstrated breadth and creative enquiry.