Hasta La Ideas

New Designers, much like D&AD New Blood is quite a slog. The Business Design Centre where it is running until July 9 in Islington is vast. There’s a lot of ground to cover and there’s a lot to see. All the Visual Communication stuff was upstairs, allowing the main floor of the building to host the bulk of the product design exhibits where motorbikes, wooden speakers, sleek futuristic concept cars and at least one robotic drawing device vied for visitors attention.

Up the stairs I trotted to find the vis comms stuff. I looked around all of the stands before doing a second round photographing stuff and picking up business cards. I’d say graphic design-wise, Nottingham Trent University came out as the strongest overall, with Falmouth’s illustration course boasting much new talent. There was of course many other nuggets of joy to be found (including the collage work of Dawn Gardner of Havering College’s graphic design course, above and below). Without further ado, here are my picks of the show…

Above and below: more work by Havering’s Dawn Gardner. See more of her work at dawngardnerdesign.com

I also really liked the experimental typefaces created for Sidonie Bajic’s Pangram posters which I found in Northbrook College Sussex’s display area.

Sidonie can be contacted on sidonie.bajic@gmail.com

From Falmouth, a number of illustrators’ work appealed, first up is Charlotte Trounce. I liked her book jacket designs such as this (above) for The Secret Garden and her entry for an AOI / London Transport Museum competition:

See more of Charlotte’s work at charlottetrounce.co.uk

Euan Cook’s work (also from Falmouth) was strong although rather disappointingly his website at euancook.com isn’t working properly. Love the opening page though, even though it doesn’t go beyond this:

Above: Falmouth’s Holly Blackman‘s poster promoting Eastbourne. Her website is very nicely done too (homepage below). Fellow graduates, take note!

This poster by Meryn Cobbin (of Falmouth) also appealed:

As did Kate Scott‘s embroidered illustration of everyone’s favourite red condiment:

Another illustrator from Falmouth’s bumper crop of talent, Scott’s hand-drawn illustration has a charming touch of the Quentin Blake about it. Check out her work at katescottillustration.com

Eliza picked out some work by Nottingham Trent graduates in her New Blood post earlier in the week, but there was more great graphic work investigate. I particularly liked Sophie Garwell’s branding solution for an independent shop called Time & Time Again which sells recycled art, design objects and furniture. Old and new letter Ts were used and also screenprinted onto old book covers to create instore displays and old playing cards were printed with the shop’s details.

See more of Garwell’s work at sophiegarwell.com

Above: Vicki Mansley‘s drawing of various dwellings was one of the stars of Glyndwr University’s illustration group.

And last, but not least, Laura Weeks’ Urban Bandit illustration (above) and 3D resin figures (complete with packaging) were my favourite works in the Plymouth College of Art’s area. See more of Weeks’ work at laurajayneweeks.blogspot.com

It’s a huge show, there’s an enormous amount to see and, of course, it goes without saying that this selection is only a tiny fraction of what’s worth checking out at this year’s New Designers . As well as the visual communication stuff, there’s spatial design, product design, and furniture. The show runs until July 9 at the Business Design Centre in Islington. Full details can be found at newdesigners.com

CR in Print

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