Tag Archives: 53 degrees north

12/06/2012 · 2:13 pm

53 Degrees North – Part 2

So yesterday I showed you work from the main room:

Emma gave it a thumbs up! Now it’s on to the rest of the exhibition…

Above, is work by the boys from the ‘web team’ responsible for the 53dn website. They happen to be playing monopoly/’looking after’ the exhibition until 4pm today so I’m sure they would appreciate some visitors if you can make it down to TPH – just under 2 hours left if you have nothing else to do!

On the right are Oli Phillips’ and Luke Turner‘s vinyl designs blown up large, which really helps to see the details. I really like the style of Oli’s illustration and it kinda reminds me of one that I pinned onto Pinterest the other week by UoL Illustration student Nicola Porter - I just like line drawings I guess!

On the left is one of Paul Wormleighton’s typographic quotes from ‘The Worst Thing Is…’ series. He had a couple dotted around the exhibition, the one below was in the main room:

But I think my fave is the one about Lunch - I can relate!

There was also a collection of vinyls, for which each student chose their own song to represent. It was great to see such a variety and you could tell that the students had really engaged with the project – a lot of great finishes used! My faves include:

By Jason McDonald, Matt Taylor, Kate Johansson, Oli Phillips, Lucy Goodwin, Danielle Smith, Amy Barden, Ruth d’Andilly-Clune and Mereltje van Oord.

One that I found particularly clever was Ruth’s:

I love all that kind of 3D red and blue(well in this case green) image tricks – very clever.

Something for those with a sweet tooth; an edible calendar by Karlijn Burm…

…typography that looks good enough to eat!

Moving into the last room…

…a variety of innovative packaging solutions for the YCN Google brief. The above by Dan Ridgway, Anouk Kools and Lucy Goodwin. A few of the smaller pieces are displayed on a table:

Jason McDonald‘s was simple but effective and Sam Hartill used mugs which I thought was clever and something a bit different to all of the paper engineering! The YCN results are yet to be announced but I have my fingers crossed that some of these will be rewarded!

Sam has also had her work featured on Lovely Package…

… because it’s lovely!

Daniel Waterhouse‘s typographic sea food restaurant branding is simple but clever…

and the same can be said for Danielle Smith‘s Lomography campaign. Great colours, energy and style – could definitely feature in any fashion magazine!

And last but not least, Melissa Edwards‘ Obsessive Tissues:

I’m a sucker for hand drawn type and I love the humour and quirkiness in these little confessions.

Oh and I can’t forget portfolio corridor:

Such a great idea to display everyone’s portfolios – helps to make connections between students and work and see the progression. I really enjoyed looking through them all! It made me nervous but motivated at the same time. It’s a big and exciting but scary world out there and I can’t say I envy the 3rd years at the moment. I’m glad I have another year left because I feel like I still have a long way to grow yet!

So that concludes my visit to 53 Degrees North. So much great work! I’ve got to know quite a few of the 3rd years since doing the Inter-year challenge and it’s been a short but sweet experience. They’re a great bunch, with some really interesting characters and I know they will go on to do some great things (so remember me when it comes to offering placements etc)! I hope they haven’t found me too annoying and come back to visit our show next year…

… but there’s still time for you to visit their show! It’s the last day on Friday (15th) so make sure you take advantage and go to look at all of their hard work. 10 – 4pm… go, go, go!

53 Degrees North – Part 1

It’s 2012 – the year of 53 Degrees North.

Emma and I spent 2 hours looking around the exhibition on Wednesday and took nearly 200 photos! There was so much good work that when it came down to choosing what to blog about I found it really hard. I managed to whittle it down to 32 photos and 14 videos (the reason I have decided to do videos is so that you can see multiple pages and really get a feel for the publications. The videos are set fast but you can pause them to look at details!) – that’s still a lot so I’ve decided to split it into 2 posts… now where to begin!?

Each student contributed their own version of 53 – Lee‘s money caught my eye because it was so different.

Designers were also asked to contribute some creativity and submissions from Hat-trick, Aboud, Music and Syzygy were displayed.

The first work on the right when entering the exhibition was a series of posters entitled ‘Consumed’ by Dan Ridgway.

As well as these posters, Dan had produced an accompanying book including data and info graphics. They detail everything he consumed within 24 hours, such as food; electricity; time; media; water, hygiene products etc.

I thought Paul Wormleighton’s sweet shop style paper bags were cute (not sure he will appreciate me saying that, but hey!) and the concept behind ‘Everything’s a Pound‘ is really interesting. What can you get for a pound nowadays? Some fruit, a spanner set and 7 birthday cards (if you have enough friends):

My fave? You could become a millionaire – feeling lucky?

Jason McDonald‘s Scarecrow was full of personality and I think the way in which it was displayed really helped to show the energy of the typography – it jumped into the middle of the room! Definitely much better than boring beauty shots!

Across the way, it was onto the publication section. I think this is my favourite section because I like looking at the details up close and I think it’s also just a case of ‘designer syndrome’ – I’d rather have a real book over an ebook any day:

I looked through the top shelf (Oli Phillip’s Work Harder Manifesto in photo)…

… and 4’11″ (Emma) looked through the bottom shelf (Matt Taylor’s ISTD winner - The Somme in photo). We spent at least an hour looking through all of the books – a lot of great work but here’s a selection of my favourite bits:

Amy Barden‘s ‘What If’ about siblings had some lovely wooden letterpress type and tip in sections - I’m a sucker for anything with tip ins!

More beautiful wooden letterpress type in the form of Ryan Fisher‘s ISTD award winning publication for ‘The Waitress’:

Nice!

Mereltje Van Oord‘s ‘A new England’ was very cute and appropriate with it being the weekend of the Jubilee…

… and her report on ‘The Stamford Prison Experiment’ showed nice experimentation with shapes and textures as well as a striking colour theme:

And then to the other end of the colour scale:

Beautiful photography and simple typography from Luke Turner, to illustrate his Dad’s expedition to Spitsbergen, Svalbard…

…and crisp typography for ‘In my humble opinion’ – simple and understated with great details!

I couldn’t resist a peek at Ian York‘s ISTD winning publication of ‘The Waitress’:

A great response to the brief! It definitely challenges the ‘new reader’ and traditional book format, with various page sizes and pull out sections – instructions for how to assemble a chair included too! The typographic detailing was ok too I guess… ha

I was really interested when I picked up Danielle Smith‘s Evolve Magazine – I didn’t get a good photo of the cover but it has really nice die cut detailing (look here). I liked what I found inside even more: simple, striking typography, great use of space and creative ways for the reader to interact with the design – great stuff:

In response the ISTD brief ‘It happened on this day’, Sam Hartill‘s typographic exploration of Anne Frank’s diary from 4th August 1943:

I really liked the format of this: it includes Anne’s secret feelings hidden within the french folds. Very interesting and a great way to represent the words!

‘The Print room is an integral part of a design student’s development’ – I couldn’t agree more with that statement from Rob Cronshaw‘s Compass Magazine. Really like the choice of font and the structure of the pages:

Alice Hines’ response to ‘It happened on this day’ combined image, typography and layering to great effect:

(My other photos came out badly so for more images look here.)

And last but by no means least, I absolutely loved Mariska Reen‘s modern day interpretation of Romeo and Juliet…

… from the heart on the cover of the Mac to the facebook txt language used in the messages.

So much variety and great work – I felt so inspired/under pressure after looking through it all! But this is only half of it – the show is still on until the end of this week (Friday 15th June) so you should go and check it out yourself if you can!

As I said, I’ve got another post planned for the rest of the work so if you can’t make it to Lincoln to see the work in person, you will have missed out but will still see a good chunk of it!

Party Time ’12

Excitement running high and booze flowing – the private view of the 53 degrees north show was in full swing Friday evening! As mentioned before, I was going to help out/be nosy/network and I had a great time.

The keen team: Tom, myself, Emma, Talveer, Harry, Dave, Sophie and Jack.

It was a really exciting but scary just to think that in a year it will be my turn! Chris and Barrie gave emotional speeches and Student of The Year was awarded to Sam Hartill(deserved)!

I am going back to have a proper look around and take some decent photos but I thought I would show the work from the 2nd year space now…

Jack Slater‘s ISTD winning scarf response to The Waitress alongside some Penguin Book covers by Tom Bishop, Amber Hadley, Ash Watkins, Chris Jelinek, Jack Slater and Lucy Perkins.

Emma and I had a good chat with Ben Willers (info graphic expert – he’s been featured on The Guardian and in Paris!), who is checking out the following… Sam Weston’s ISTD winning response to ‘It happened on this day’ (top) with Dave Morris‘ conflict, Leanne Kitchen‘s info graphics, Dave Morris’ D&AD Nominated Typographic Circle Supplement and Amber Hadley‘s D&AD Typographic Circle Supplement.

Harry Winfield‘s Conflict gained a lot of compliments through-out the night.
Oh, and how could I forget….

… YCN work by moi (which I still need to blog about actually!) – so painting the wall was worth it in the end!

It was nice to see some old faces too – I found ex-Lincolners Scott Oxley and Ric Gravina chillin’ by my work (they did ask me not to use this photo but I couldn’t resist!).