Hasta La Ideas

Detail from Ben Cain’s The Road, from University for the Creative Arts, Maidstone’s display

Last Friday, CR visited New Designers where students graduating in visual communications courses were showing work. It was a decidedly illustration-heavy crop this year and with a lot of strong pieces around. Here are a few of our favourites…

As with previous New Designers, University for the Creative Arts, Maidstone had a particulary good show of work.

First up from UCAM, Ben Cain whose work inspired by Cormac McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic novel, The Road, offered up a striking print as well as a book cover:

We also really liked Kathryn Spreadbury‘s dark, claustrophobic images of city life that formed part of her Urban Jungle series. Bleak but brilliant:

Siri Frøseth-Rønning’s meditative paintings were in the mould of Anna Bushan‘s work, where much of the narrative is left to the viewer’s imagination. (Sadly, we can’t find a website for Siri’s work but an email is here):

And Tom Buddle‘s graphic novel, The Enormous Radio, looked very intriguing. (More pages from this can be seen at his website):

This piece stood out from North Wales School of Art and Design‘s wall display. It’s by Megan Hindley, who also blogs under the moniker, Stedhead:

University College Falmouth also presented a range of great work and we particularly liked Suzy Phillips‘ covers for the novels of DH Lawrence:

Two very different graduates from Cambridge School of Art also impressed: firstly, Jana Diemberger with her beautifully illustrated book, Monacello: The Little Monk:

On the opposite wall, Melissa Castrillon‘s delicate pencil illustrations caught the eye, too.

Apparently, her images document the story of a young woman who attempted suicide in 1885 by jumping off the Clifton Suspension bridge in Bristol, only to survive thanks to her several skirts which acted as a parachute. (She then lived until she was 84):

It was nice to see some physical products on show, in amongst the 2D art.

wemaket-shirts.com, a group project by several illustrators from Nottingham Trent looks to have a lot of talent beind it.

Their printed mailer was very nicely produced, as was this T-shirt (entitled The Game) which features two crafty characters playing cards:

Lincoln University‘s Wilf Hanson showed some great editorial illustrations of several musicians including The Beatles, Iggy Pop, Elton John and Graham Coxon:

Finally, and somewhat enbarrassingly, we really liked this mad-capped forest scene which was also by a Lincoln graduate, though we failed to take a picture of (or indeed write down) their name.

So if this is your insane creation, or you know whose it is, please do let us know via the comments so we can credit it accordingly:

Thanks to Satara Achille for her help with the photography.