aspire to enquire

D&AD New Blood 2009

We had a stand at New Blood last week, in the boiling-hot-but-much-better-space-than-last-year Kensington Olympia. 

I think we all found it similarly awesome and daunting to be alongside creative students from around the World, all showing the results of years of studying and working. 

Our stand design strategy this year was to invite people in with an open central area and lots of little things to play and interact with around the space. I would say that strategy was 60% successful. There's clearly a balance to be struck between inviting & intimate and big & visual. In many cases the best new blood winners were all four of those things. Worth thinking about for next year's third years.

That's the other sad thing, that we don't get another go. I got the impression that those of us who didn't go last year were completely overwhelmed and awestruck by the scale and talent of the show and their position within that. It's a symptom of studying in a town with misjudged opinions of itself, I guess. Even though it's outside of term time, all 2nd years should come to get a sense of what's expected of them as New Blood next year. It should be a school trip.

Some more observations / tips:

1. People mostly check the name of the college before the work on display.
2. Covering your wall space with huge work stops people from going in for a closer look. 
3. Scottish (4 year) courses had consistently more considered spaces and work.
4. A well designed overall space was far more inviting than leaving it to individual work. 
5. Some work that we didn't take with us would have done really well. 
6. Too many students in front of a stand means people can't get in and look. 
7. Having business cards or take-away items that actually feature your work is a good idea. 
8. Print work was the main focus - real opportunities to show great 2.0 concepts.
9. Check that your power isn't going to be switched off before the judges look round.
10. Not many people seemed to be taking advantages of the talks and workshops. 
11. Stands worked better when they were staffed by students.   
12. Hardly anyone was using the #newblood09 twitter tag, or even tweeting about it at all. 

There are write-ups on Form Fifty Five, and Creative Review.

Did anyone else go along? What would your tips be?

The end of the beginning

It's been a while since our show in Cardiff wrapped up, but I thought I'd share some of the photos I managed to get of the opening and the space.

All the CSAD courses open on the same day, so there's a real buzz around both campuses as all our family and friends browse around.

If you could survive the awful music there were quite a few nice things to do outside as well; a barbecue, a 'make your own puppet' stall, and lots of cakes and drinks prepared by 2nd year students saving up for their big shows next year.

My space looked like this:

I thought it would be good to put a little link to my website, seeing as that's a lot of what I do, rather than just the graphics.

Here's some other parts of the show:

Gemma Roberts.

Matt Hilde.

Stuart Lee (same brief as my authority piece).

John Wiltshire, James Phillips, Adam Bourne.

Lots of people. 

Laura Scull

Jo Williams, Matt Hilde.

Dave Cuvelot.

Chris Welsby.

Matt Case, Becky Cooke, Gemma Siely and Ben Macey. Becky's piece was so good I'm going to do a whole other blog about it. You can't see it here.

There was loads more, Matt took better pictures than these. All in all, a fairly successful show.

Well done everyone and good luck with all your future endeavours!

Aggressive inarticulation

This video struck a major chord when bexx sent it over to me yesterday. Not really because of the typography (lucida? really?), Not just because of its observations on what I would say is textbook hipsterism, but also in terms of my own feelings about what I've been doing with this blog recently. Namely, nothing.

Just as everything should have been winding down and turning into a new life of observations and blogs completely unrelated to student life, I've been more involved in the mechanics of promoting creative students than ever. First there was our final hand-in deadline, then our degree show, which somehow morphed into preparations for New Blood, which in turn has resulted in quite a major personal transition that I need to make over the next week.

I'm sure it's not bothered anyone particularly, but I'm really hoping to get back up here very soon. Sorry for the delay. 

Incidentally, I'm always reminded of this clip of Stephen Fry on Room 101 when I think of language, you know? About 8 minutes in.

Transparency is Good

The last few weeks have been pretty much some of the most continuously hectic weeks I've ever had, even though the outcomes seem pretty small right now. It's funny that as uni was meant to be drawing to a close I've actually been in nearly every day and working evenings on uni related things. (Perhaps we should have had a degree show at the beginning of the course!)

Anyway. I have a ton of posts to start getting up here and get back into the swing of things, one of which was a post about this awesome visualisation I saw last week on GOOD magazine:

You can see it bigger here, on GOOD's website. I think they do a new one every week?

I love this style at the moment, Monocle do a lot of similar things, there's something about that condensed typeface and the shapes. It's also so much more engaging than a bar chart, without being at all complicated. 

We had a brief in uni that could have come out this way, but no-one really came close. My outcome was a silly video. A few of us are very good at fancy looking graphs, but it's a really powerful skill to be able to visualise in this way. If it's done properly.

Speaking of which, Katiemaybe posted a very similar blog earlier which inspired me to get on with this one. You may recognise her from the father christmases in the park advert. Her blog is good. Check it out!

D&AD New Blood 2009

I'll, like, totally be there, with 8 other friendly colleagues from the Graphic Communications course at Cardiff School of Art and Design.

You can look at my little profile page here. See you there?

Welcome to Cardiff

I never really realised, until my excursions last year, how much difference a 'port' could make to a travel experience. They are so often the first and last point of reference for visitors.

I'm amazed that in this day and age of branding, touchpoints and city marketing that station and transport environments are still allowed to be the way they so often are.

Cardiff, ever the hub of innovation in public space design, is no exception.

These shots were taken by me over two days this week while Take That were in town. As you'll see in the distance of that last pic, the stadium is right by the central bus and train stations. It makes the stadium a lovely venue for people to come to for events, because it's right in the middle of everything. It's good for banter.

But it's not so great for the other 260,000 of us who wanted to do something else that day. You know, something like get a bus into town, drink out of a real glass in a city pub, drive across the city or get a taxi from the train station.

I get that 74,000 people is a lot of people. There are safety things to think about. But we've had the stadium for 10 years now, these are not one off events. Whatever we think about whether it should have been built or not, it's there and it's not going anywhere. Oasis, Take That, Bryan Adams and Monster Trucks are here to stay.

I think it would be good if, as a city, we could accept that, and figure out a way to make this work without pissing off anyone who tries to move on a major event day. Or without a new visitor wishing they'd stayed on the train.

Unashamed self-promotion

One of the things our tutors have been very keen for us to do this year is to start getting ourselves out into the world with nice looking portfolios and websites. Trying to get jobs and placements, and generally being more like professionals than students. Selling ourselves as the designers and enquirers we aspire to be. 

It's been a tough ask, but I think that when the exhibition opens on Saturday a load of us will be able to show that we've done just that, even if there's no other professionals there to see it.

In my own case, I guess I've kind of been 'getting out there' to some extent through this blog, meeting people I admire from the blog world and getting a chance to put my opinions together and discuss them in public. But the great thing about the uni requirements is that I've now also got a lovely little website and portfolio, which I'm very happy to announce today.

My home page hub of all things me: www.tom-harle.co.uk

My portfolio page: http://aspire2enquire.typepad.com/portfolio/

If you're reading this on an rss reader, you may not have noticed that I've also put a bit of work into the layout of this blog as well, with a cheesey picture of myself and everything.

And my exhibition space is going to look pretty sexy as well. Come along (more info) and have a look if you're in the area. If you let me know when you fancy stopping by, maybe I can come and meet you and show you round everyone's work :)

Things I will miss about being at university #4

One of the great things about studying in N-Block has been being alongside the other courses run here. Although there's not much formal or encouraged interaction between us all (although I think that's changing now in the lower years), by virtue of most of the undergrads living together in year one and by general association we have gotten to know a lot of very creative people from different backgrounds. 

The flagship course in our building is probably Contemporary Textile Practice, who produce a huge and very finely detailed body of work every year. Their exhibition has been going up over the last few weeks, and they've formally presented their work this week.

Alison Czajkowskyj has introduced some of her work, as well as work from some of the other people on the course. You should definitely click through and check them out, and come along and have a look in person if you can.

The beginning of the end

We're preparing the space for our degree show this week. The space is usually a teaching studio so there's quite a bit to do before we can get our work on the walls.

You should, like, totally come along between June 13th and 19th.

More details here.

Not just a clever name

Funny...

...because it's true: