Final Student Project 2009

Perhaps more than ever we are undergoing huge shifts culturally, emotionally and economically. Whether we live, work, play or visit, this years final students have developed positive concepts while looking toward an uncertain future. What characterises their work is their aspirations, their desires and most certainly their identity.

For this years final project I tasked my students to use information gathered from their experiences in London – this give them the opportunity to select from a wide variety of rich resources and develop ideas within the areas of their personal interest.
They initially choose one word randomly from a list of 'given' Primary Words and and another random word from a selection of Secondary Words. The combination of the two words for example Clubs & Science, Film and Gender, Art and Travel and so on, would be the starting point from which they would develop their concept. The unique combination of these words, however could be used only once by one member of the group and therefore they needed to ensure that no one else in the group had chosen this combination or negotiate an exchange with each other if they did.

Students recognised that visits to any commercial environment provide enormous scope for exposure to new or existing experiences, products, travel etc. Probably the least of the reasons for their appeal is that customers’ confidence is secured by retailers, experience or service providers deliberately playing down the immediate sales angle. These spaces come in all different shapes and sizes and as a result they mean different things to different people.
The students task as a 'new' designer was to develop a new concept using two of the random words selected to develop a new and exciting concept for an identified target group. They also needed to consider where their concept would be place and therefore were expected to record this through the use of a visual audit.
As this is their final project, after two years at college, they also had to consider as a team, as well as individually how they planned to exhibit their work and launch themselves as the 'New Designers for 2009'. Here represents a small selection of their work.