First Years, Tenth Project - Type Play and Poster

Our first year students have just spent a challenging and fruitful two weeks working alongside our 'national treasure', H.R.H The Typographer Royal, Dame Rhiannon Robinson OBT*.

As you probably know, Dame Rhiannon is a demanding taskmistress with a ruthless, critical eye that can spot the slightest typographic imperfection at more than twenty paces. 

Luckily for our novice students she took them through the fundamentals of good typography through a series of lectures, on-screen tutorial sessions and lots of experimental play (see previous post).

This is but the start of a very long journey, but even after such a short time the students can all spot loose tracking, unfortunate apostrophes, orphans, widows and line lengths that are too long or too short.

The project was deceptively simple. Take some information about a typography event that looks like this:

- and turn it into something beautiful like this:


Tim (21), Year 1 Graphic Design 
Like all our two week projects, we put great emphasis on the journey (the ideas development work) not just the destination (the final poster), so here are lots of examples of what can be achieved during two weeks...

First, let's have a look at some of the results of the type-play workshops:

Max (21), Year 1 Graphic Design 

Beth (21), Year 1 Graphic Design

Beth (21), Year 1 Graphic Design


Shawna (21), Year 1 Graphic Design

Connor (21), Year 1 Graphic Design

Connor (21), Year 1 Graphic Design

Connor (21), Year 1 Graphic Design

Marc (21), Year 1 Graphic Design

As ever, we design on paper before we go digital...

Hannah (21), Year 1 Illustration

Now let's have a look at some of the final posters...

H.R.H checks everything looks 'ship-shape'.

To induce a bit of friendly rivalry we decided to introduce a leader's 'hot seat' (like they have in the Winter Olympics snowboarding).

Dan (below) was an early leader - just look how happy it's made him!

Here's his poster:

We should point out that the students produced some fantastic typographic posters of a quality and attention to detail that would shame the work of most third year students (nationally).

Marc (21), Year 1 Graphic Design

Ellie (21), Year 1 Illustration

Max (21), Year 1 Graphic Design 

Connor (21), Year 1 Graphic Design

Dan was joined by two-others on the 'hot-seat' (yes, it got a little cramped) and it looked like the honours would be shared. However, late in the day Beth (21) produced an outstanding piece of work that took the top award and left one bottom only on the by now, very hot, 'hot seat'. Here's the victorious work...

...and here's an ecstatic Beth -  Queen of all she surveys.

Applicant's Visit Day - All the Fun of the Studio!

Today was applicant's visits day, a day designed to give everyone who has applied to study with us a further chance to sample what makes us different to other universities. The sessions were lead by Design and Illustration tutor Tony Peart (33) ably assisted by two plucky first year students, BT and Marc.



In the first session we explored ways of experimenting with image making by making small line drawings of one another in small sketchbooks. these were radically transformed in scale by copying them onto coloured paper. After that the scissors and glue came out for some serious collage making!!!





Let's see the colourful and striking results...

I think he's wanted by police in seven counties...




More suspects currently on the run from the authorities...

After lunch we conducted a workshop devoted to idea generation and producing effective visuals (see below) and yes, that is Donald Trump.




We hope everyone got something of value from the day and hope you all had a safe journey home. Best wishes and thanks from coming from all of the Grillust team.

Studio Randoms - Thursday 15 March, 2018

Expensive easel...

Aggressive knitware

Hair colour has nothing to do with the consumption of Irn-Bru

Year 1's preparing for tomorrow's Typo Poster feedback and assessment

Year 2 Illustrators taking part in a 'Pictionary' challenge.

'Homelessness' - a Pictionary challenge

Year 1 type-play

More Year 1 type-play

The remains of a type-play workshop

A 'bad back' in later life...

Busy studio

Year 3 Illustration weirdness...

Note fidelity to humongous scale

Lovely lino...

The Typographer Royal in action

Year 1 Graphic Design Students Get Their Thinking Crowns On...

"Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them."
William Shakespeare

The Graphic Design students have been working closely with our very own Zoe Garnett-Scott (so posh she's got a hyphen), while the illustration students have been doing life drawing. She's been leading a module that encourages and develops an ability to experiment/play and push graphic imagery to the limit.

Anyway, back to the quote above and it now becomes evident that Zoe favours the 'thrusting' approach to greatness by unilaterally creating the award of 'Kings and Queens of Idea Development'.

Let's have a look at some recent recipients and how they handled the acclaim...


B.T. (21) "Gobsmacked"


A three-way tie between Tim, Marc and Beth (all 21). 

Tim is obviously "over the moon" whereas for both Marc and Beth it would appear that "three's a crowd" and the plotting of foolproof ways to 'dispatch' the other two winners has already begun...


Connor (21) takes it like a Medici prince...


Kiana (21) as laid back as ever, takes it in her stride but decides to wear it on the way home (if she can get her head to fit)...