It’s the 8th of march 2010. On a sunny Monday afternoon, the Design For Graphic Communication course assembled for the final year project briefing. It had been a long time since everyone had seen each other. There were a few minutes of catchup talk, a lot of us were enquiring about how each others projects have gone, how they think their current grade will affect their prospects of going into the third year and also the “did you see LOST” conversations that got a few people animated. I dunno if they just couldn’t contain themselves or if they were somehow impossibly mimicking the smoke monster.
The room fell silent as our bearded course director Darren Raven walked in, with a faint smile on his face. He seemed to be uncomfortably holding a laptop, sheets of handouts and cables, all of which looked like they were just about to fall out of his hands. He successfully places all the aforementioned items on the table and swiftly, if not magically, connects the laptop to the projector and behold the words “final major project” are gleaming on the wall.
You couldn’t hear it but the whole class took a deep breath. We knew we had a mammoth job ahead of us. For me, I shared that thought, however I also felt excited! The type of excitement Simon Peggs character from Star Trek felt when he arrived on the Enterprise. Back to earth tho, and minus J. J. Abrams horizontal lens flares, we watched and listened as Darren, along with his power point presentation, explain what our final project will be.
We learned that the final major project would be entitled FORMAT. Named Format because we were given the freedom to choose one of the following formats
- Posters/ folding broadsheets
- websites/screen based
- Maps
- Font
- Printed Matter (stationary, leaflets, bank notes etc.)
- Magazines
The project national is to produce a piece of graphic design and supporting research document that shows off the potential of the chosen format and your creative skills as a designer. Darren instructed that we are being asked to be creative and innovative with our chosen format. The client is ourselves and the audience is the design industry. He said he is in the process of getting some big name industry designers, he named a few, none of which I understood or heard. He also went on to say that LCC is organising getting alot of press to the show to view the work.
So that is how the start of this project went, we are all excited, scared, but raring to go!