Hasta La Ideas

I popped along to the swish environs of The Royal Society of Arts building on John Adam Street in London last night to check out the Ravensbourne College of Design and Communication’s Graphic Design degree show’s London leg. The show was in the basement where the lighting was poor (the bad photography is my own, apologies) and each graduate only had little over a square metre to show off their work. Here are some projects that caught my eye…

First up is Charlie De Grussa‘s 3 minute project – a response to a brief set by ISTD (International Society of Typographic Designers). “The brief asked to explore the meaning of 3 minutes,” De Grussa explains. “I decided to look into 3 minutes in two jobs that have the same principles of handling calls and dealing with the public: A 999 call handler and a cold caller.” The only restriction imposed by the brief was that the response should be restricted to a single A1 sheet of paper, which was folded to present the information in a magazine-like format.

As I checked out the show, the next piece of work to grab my attention was the hand drawn type posters by Mark Goss created for his Curious Fiend project. “The idea behind Curious Fiend,” Goss told me, “was to create a handmade, independently published magazine that showcases new alongside already established artists and designers – as well as curating exhibitions to further showcase the artists involved.”

Goss’s portfolio further showed off his love of illustrative, hand drawn type. In it I found type samplers for each of the fonts he drew up specially for titling in the Curious Fiend magazines.

I was also drawn to the work of Eilin Bergum…

…whose work on display had a distinctly tactile theme. She had screenprinted illustration work onto a T-shirt and produced a journal entitled Touch issue 1 – complete with a punch cut black card cover:

“The project is designed to work for both the seeing and the completely blind, as well as visually impaired people,” explains Bergum of Touch. “Using and applying techniques that they already use in the education of blind and visually impaired, like swell paper, screen printing, normal braille punching – as well as art and craft supplies like puff paint – with the support of braille and audio I have created products that can stimulate all sorts of creatives, seeing or blind.” The magazine also had a CD with it as part of the content. “The project’s aim is to help bridge the gap between seeing and visually impaired people,” adds Bergum.

Continuing the tactile feel, she also had these colourful, screenprinted felt business cards…

To check out the work of all of this year’s graduates from Ravensbourne College of Design and Communication, check out the dedicated site