The Graphic Student

More often than not, when you’re playing, something wonderful comes out of it.
This great part 1 of a 4 part series of Designing Minds, features the students of The Art Centre of Pasadena. The graphic design students collaborated with the illustration students to put out a magazine, wrap, with some fantastic results. Watch this episode, and then catch the next 2 here, here, and part 4 should be released onto Youtube any day now.

I’ve always loved the idea of collaborating with students from another department. We have an advertising department somewhere in our school - I would love to receive art direction from them and see what happens… But I think what would be most exciting, is to team up with kids who publish our school paper. Send the graphic design students in for one issue, and see what happens. This video series really shows what potential collaboration has with students. Inspiring!

At the Institute, we envision a place where students, teachers, industry and community experts come together not only as creators and designers but also ambassadors of hope. We imagine how to live, learn, work, and play together as a global community. Our goal is to find alternative development patterns and a viable path to a sustaining future, and allow the world to re-envision the designer as a problem solver with the ability to effect positive change for humanity.

How incredible does that sound? Institute Without Borders is a program run out of the School of Design at George Brown College where students interact with professionals to solve world problems. Their first project, Massive Change, explored all things about the future of global design. Their second project, World House, explores methods and practices to developing sustainable shelter for the future. Incredible projects, and what I can only imagine would be an incredible experience. This program is an opportunity for students to learn an incredible amount, and to apply what they’ve learned in a meaningful way. They can step away from using their talents to sell shoes, and do something they are honestly passionate about. 

If you can see yourself doing this, check out the website. Students must have an undergraduate degree, and the tuition is around $13,000 - $22,00 (depending where you live). 

This is a showcase of what the School of Media Arts‘ students put out in 2007. I don’t think the work is very great. It looks like another class heavily trained on where to click and drag the mouse - but not why. Have a look for yourself and tell us what you think.

The Cranbrook Academy of Art just commissioned Elliot Earls (not a student) to design posters for their school’s courses: 2D Design, Ceramics, Painting, Fiber (shown above), Photography, Print Media, Sculpture, 3D Design, Metal Smithing, and Architecture. 

These are what art school posters should look like. This is how an art school should market themselves to students. I have never understood those college posters of happy students sitting on the grass having a picnic with their books open. An art school’s brand should inspire students - especially in schools where branding is taught! It’s not often that beautiful art/design school promotional material shows up, so it’s always refreshing to see it. 

Go check out all the posters, and become as jealous as I am of Cranbrook’s students…

(link via Design Observer)

This student designed website for University College Suffolk is pretty neat. Click around and you’ll find student work, videos related to their school, and some other neat easter eggs.

I came across an interesting site today: myocad.com. Basically what looks like a facebook for OCAD students/fans (is fans the right word? I just mean you don’t have to be a student to join the community). The part that grabbed my attention was the Art. There is a whole database of student-created and added artwork that you can browse through and comment on. I wish all design schools had places like this. I don’t know why showcasing the students work isn’t a top priority for schools, because it is really the most encouraging/non-encouraging factor in choosing a future school. 

The other thing I found on myocad was a strong hatred for the students’ own school. There is more than one comment with the same attitude as this: And I think people on facebook still love ocad cause they haven’t graduated yet and have yet to see how totally full of shit most of their classes were in terms of helping them be employable. 

Man, chill out, you get to live in Toronto!

The School of Visual Arts graciously has a section on their website dedicated to showing the work of their students. It seems to me like every designer who’s on the verge of being a household-name has gone through this school at one point in their educational career. Anyway, check out the work.

The above piece was done by Amanda Spielman.

While browing the web tonight (smallrspcs to be specific), I came across this great talk about creativity and education by Ken Robinson. In his presentation, he talks about how schools and education are basically killing the creativity out of students. He’s mainly speaking about students in elementary school, but I think his point is also valid for college/university - especially in design programs. He makes a number of points that I completely agree with, but one that really stood out was when he said “creativity… happens through the interaction of different disciplinary ways of seeing things”. It makes you wonder how much more beneficial it might be to attend a design school where you are surrounded by artistic, creative people from other fields. Robinson’s entire talk is fascinating (and very funny thanks to his jokes), so if you have 20 free minutes, watch the video. In my opinion, he’s hit a nail right on the head.

Hochschule Darmstadt’s website isn’t in English, so I don’t understand a word of it. But a fluent friend of mine directed me to the faculty of design section. I love seeing student work from around the world. It all has such a different feeling and voice to it. There seems to be something so practical about the work coming out of the school. The type is legible, the decoration is limited, and production isn’t glamorous - it’s just enough. At the same time, this is the type of work I’d have a hard time convincing a local (Ontario, Canada) client to go with… and that might just mean it’s better work than anything you’ll see in my hometown. The above piece was designed by student Frederic Beier (you can see other images of this work here).

I met an OCAD (Ontario College of Art & Design) student tonight who told me I can find a bunch of OCAD Student work on their website. I went there, and found a great archive of work from students, alumni, and the faculty. If you’ve got a few minutes, you should visit the link and have a look around. There is work from many categories, including graphic, industrial, and environment design, illustration, photography, printmaking, and many more. The piece above is a space designed by Victoria McGlade. I thought the illustration work was phenomenal. I don’t know how I feel about much of the graphic design pieces - a lot of them seemed cold. But still, some beautiful work by talented students.