One of the most ambitious live briefs the course has worked on, has just been successfully completed. Dartington Hall Trust contacted us to commission 3 illustrations hat communicated the relationship between sustainability, social justice and the arts, a challenging brief that presented a great opportunity for the students to create images that connect and explore the future growth and development of the trust. The icing on the cake, was that we would be working with Mervyn Kurlansky founding partner of the Pentagram design group and a seriously experienced graphic designer and author of several significant books on graphic design and typography. A team of students that wanted to consider the commission took a trip to Dartington and were given a tour around to experience the work of the trust first hand. Then working to a really tight deadline, they created rough concepts for the three interactions to show to Mervyn. Fortunately Mervyn was able to come to our studio and speak directly to the students about their ideas, a great experience for them that also served to push the project forward rapidly.
Four students, Jack Gingold, Mark Smith, Hannah Watkins and Ciaran McFadden, worked on three final double page spreads that then went through a tough selection process at the trust. Unfortunately real world briefs come with real world breaks and only artwork by Mark and Ciaran made it to press, although Hannah was given a fresh commission to produce end-papers for the review. Heres one of Jacks images , we all thought it was a bad call rejecting his work BUT rejection is, unfortunately a part of being an illustrator.
The final book looks amazing, clever design and great illustrations working very well together to create
a futuristic ambitious feeling publication.
Download Final_16pp
download the final publication as a pdf here.
Mark Smith
Ciaran McFadden