D&AD 2010

Yesterday I travelled down to London to check out the D&AD 2010 New Blood exhibition, showing work from lots of different universities. There was a bit of a buzz about the place with some cool markets and stalls going on outside, as well as all the fantastic work inside.

The quality of all the work on show was extremely high, but rather than being daunting, it left me feeling completely inspired! After looking at all of the illustration work on show, I was struck by the huge range of different styles and methods used, and also a lot of really great use of type in the work. I collected many a business card whilst looking around; which in themselves had been really beautifully designed, along with books and other things they had made to show off their work.

I'll just mention a couple of the artists of they I saw there, whose work I loved -

Luke Pearson from Loughborough Uni had some really cool work up, his work has a retro feel about it and his use of colour and shape is fantastic. After checking out his blog, you can see his eye for colour runs through most of his work.

Miff Weaver from Falmouth uni had some really great book covers on show. These again had a retro feel to them, and the simple design were really eye catching. If you check out his website you can see there is a definite 50's/60's influence to his drawings.

I'll post about some of the other great illustrators I saw soon, otherwise this will become a very long post!
<><><><><><><><>

MMU Degree Show 2010

I had the opportunity to visit the MMU degree show on Monday and have a look around all the different work they had on display. It was really interesting to get a sense of what students are doing on other courses, and although I have to admit that whilst some of the work from the interactive arts course was a bit over my head, I think the show really came into its own with the textiles, and illustration and animation displays.

There were some really fantastic designs going on in the textiles room, as well as quite a range of styles. The work of Charlotte Eaves particularly caught my eye. She had used 60's/70's style patterns and colours (browns, oranges, yellows) to create some really bold designs which she had also applied to bags, and made some really great dresses out of.

There was also some really great textile surface design work (by someone I unfortunately can't remember the name of!) that had been applied to some aeroplane seats, which looked absolutely fantastic, and was some of the best use of pattern and colour I saw in the exhibition. I think that having the work shown in context on the seats was a fantastic way of displaying the design.


In the illustration and animation room there was again some really lovely work. There was a lot of what I guess I would call 'traditional' illustration; hand drawn or painted. You could see a lot of time had been put into the work and it was also nice to see some original work on display as opposed to printed copies. There was less of a range of styles, with hardly any looking as if they had been created digitally or edited dramatically digitally, whether this was due to the course (as from the course info, it seems to pride itself on teaching different processes), or just the students, I can't really say. To me this did make it seem as if something was missing, as digital work often lends itself well to really bold and colourful designs which I'm often drawn to and which there weren't many of, but that's neither here nor there really, as it's not just about creating a balanced exhibition, but showing the best of the students individual work, which I think it did.

There was a particularly nice piece by Rylan Kilkenny which incorporated some nice use typography, and some really nice drawings by Ruth Faulkner of different towns, which she had then put together in one large piece to create a map. Looking at her blog there is a strong sense of place running through a lot of her work, and the way in which she draws using just pencil for line and to create block colour gives her work an almost childlike quality which I love.

So all in all it was a pretty good exhibition, and I think its always good to keep an eye on what other students are upto!