Congratulations to Andrew Dowd who has been shortlisted for the 2009 Penguin Design Award.

This year’s brief required students to design a fresh and bold new look for Donna Tartt’s cult classic The Secret History.

The Penguin Design Award was launched in 2007 to encourage students on a Degree or HND Art or Design course to engage in design for publishing during their studies and to experience real jacket design briefs first-hand.
Andrew’s success follows on from last years BA Digital Graphics graduate Stuart Harris. Stuart was shortlisted for last year’s award (see related article)
View more at:

www.penguin.co.uk/static/cs/uk/0/minisites/penguindesignaward/index.php

St Helens College | College of Arts Final Year show 

Private View 19th May

Public Viewing 20th - 22nd May | 9.30am-4.30pm
The Forum | Town Centre Campus
Brook Street Entrance

So you think you have the winning design and fancy the chance of winning £500 as well has having your design put into mass production?

All you have to do is go to www.theuni-box.com and download the brief. Then follow the simple guidelines to enter the competition.  Give it a go, it's free!

The closing date for this competition is 4pm on the 9th March 2009.  All entries must include signed copies of the Application Form and Terms and Conditions which are included within the design brief. (You can select the pages to print if you don't want to print the whole document.)

Bring on the uprising!

A free downloadable 'Creative, Cultural and Digital Industries Guide' published by Business Link is available online.

Direct link: http://snurl.com/azpxp

The Guide was written by David Parrish, author of the book 'T-Shirts and Suits: A Guide to the Business of Creativity'.
Commissioned and published by Business Link West Midlands, the Guide features four creative enterprises from the West Midlands region to illustrate good practice in marketing, intellectual property and other business matters.

Following the Year of Intercultural Dialogue in 2008, next year will be the European Year of Creativity and Innovation. The Year aims to support the efforts of the Member States to promote creativity through lifelong learning, as a driver for innovation and as a key factor for the development of personal, occupational, entrepreneurial and social competences and the wellbeing of all individuals in society.

Designing Your Creative Business Workshop: 22nd January 2009
Successful creative enterprises integrate creativity and business in harmony. The challenge when planning and developing a business is to bring together creativity and the best business ideas in a way that adds up financially and is consistent with your values.

Following the success of the 'Creative Advantage' programme, Merseyside ACME in association with the Working Neighbourhood Fund is able to offer young creative businesses a one day free workshop 'Design Your Creative Business'.

The V&A Illustration Awards, sponsored by the Enid Linder Foundation, are the premier awards for book and editorial illustration in the UK

Entries are now being accepted for the 2009 Student Illustrator Awards. The Awards offers prizes for unpublished illustration or animation. They also support and promote the development of contemporary illustration in the UK at grassroots level.

In 2007, for the first time, student entrants applied and were judged online. The sheer range and high standard of entries confirm the exciting and varied potential of illustration.

Entry into the Awards is free

A new media gathering in Liverpool this weekend could be the biggest of its kind ever seen in this country.

Barcamp Liverpool is being held on Saturday and Sunday, at the Novas Contemporary Urban Centre, in Greenland Street, in Liverpool's Baltic Triangle quarter.

The event, billed as an "unconference", is designed to give people developing new technologies and working in new media the chance to share ideas in an informal environment.

Rather than being a traditional conference with a fixed agenda and a series of speakers, delegates will turn up on Saturday morning and either volunteer to speak themselves or choose which other people to meet.

MTV and HP are inviting aspiring digital artists across the globe to send in your brightest and best ideas for a chance to become the next special edition HP Notebook design !

Submit your entries before 5th December at www.mtvengineroom.com for your chance at the prize. Anything goes, from minimalist to avant-garde, monochrome to psychedelic we want to see what gets you going.

The top 5 designs from each region will be picked by the voting Engine Room fans (or your mates!) Specially selected judges will then chose a winner from each region. From these designs an overall Grand Prize Winner will be selected winning, not only the amazing chance to see your design go into production but an HP Notebook, a printer AND tickets to an MTV Event !

Good news for applicants wishing to apply to the programme for 2009. If you are starting from September 2009 onwards, St Helens College will be charging £1,575 per year for all full time fees for BA Honours Degrees. This will total £4725, (plus a small increase for inflation) for the full three years of your study and compares favourably with fees charged by other institutions offering a similar degree in the region where fees of approximately £9500 for the three years are common. The lower fees should help towards accommodation, living expenses, graphic design equipment and overseas residential cultural visits.

BA Digital Graphics graduate Mark Chapman demonstrated his versatility by taking second place in the Graham & Brown sponsored Design competition.
Graham & Brown are the UK's leading luxury wallpaper manufacturer, based in Blackburn but with operations in the US, France, Canada, Holland, Poland, and Russia. Last year the company celebrated their 60th birthday and puts its success down to being innovative and consistently investing in new design, which is why designers like Julien MacDonald, Laurence Llewellyn-Bowen and Wayne Hemmingway, all continue to work with them

2008 has seen the opening of the world's first Graphic Design Museum in Beyerd Breda (Netherlands) This institute is intended to act as a museum, knowledge centre, teaching environment, shop for image culture, designer café and production house for graphic design. It offers established designers an international stage and is, at the same time, a spring-board for new top talent.

The mission of the museum is to gather, manage and maintain information and knowledge about the history of the graphic design profession. This knowledge will be passed on in an accessible and comprehensible way to the general public and design professionals.

Recent BA DGD graduate Stuart Harris was shortlisted for this years prestigious Penguin Design Award.

Launched in 2007, Penguin Design Awards are intended to encourage students on a Degree or HND Art or Design course to engage in design for publishing during their studies and to experience real jacket design briefs first-hand.

This year’s brief required students to design a book jacket for the iconic novel ‘On the Road’ by Jack Kerouac.
Stuart provided the following explanation for his work:

Phill Swaine scooped top prize in the annual Channel 4 E sting design competition. Phill beat over 1000 entries (internationally) to win a £15,000 commission for channel 4. The winning entry (starring his twin brother Paul & an E4 fridge monster called eGOR) was a 10 second sting/advert promoting the channel.

During an interview with 4Talent Magazine Phill explained more about the work: 

"One of my lecturers suggested our class make entries for the competition as personal projects. We weren't expecting to get to the final stages, so I went in with a fresh attitude and just decided to have fun with it. I was gob- smacked to be the runner-up, it feels like my degree is really paying off."

The 2008 Liverpool Design Symposium took place at Liverpool’s St Georges Hall (23rd Oct)

It was formulated by D&AD and DBA together with Design Initiative, Merseyside ACME and three of Liverpool's hottest design agencies (Smiling Wolf, Black&Ginger and Uniform)

The highlights of this year’s symposium included:

The D&AD Student award talk 

‘Space and light and order. Those are the things that men need just as much as they need bread or a place to sleep’ 

Le Corbusier

Le Corbusier ‘The Art of Architecture’ is on at Liverpool’s Metropolitan Cathedral. This exhibition explores the extraordinary career and enduring legacy of Le Corbusier (1887-1965), iconic architect, designer, writer and artist in the first major exhibition of his life and work seen in Britain for over 20 years.

Liverpool's Pilgrim bar played host to the first of this year's DGD course parties. Student Rep Andrew 'Snoop' Dowd was responsible for organising this shindig. Beer was drunk, shapes were thrown and a good night was had by all 

Deep in the park, as dusk falls, old gramophones spin glittering sounds whilst clicking insects cast vast moving shadows. Haunting whistles rise and fall and luminous balloons breathe gentle sighs. A Victorian glasshouse shudders, and sparkling flowerbeds dance to their own tune….

For five nights, the Victorian leisure gardens of Calderstones Park, Liverpool will be transformed into a bewitching nocturnal world with one of the largest audio visual installations ever to come to Liverpool.

Berlin is the destination for this year’s BA study trip. Taking place in early November, this will build upon previous successful trips to Madrid in ‘07 and Granada in ‘06. With an itinerary that includes a visit to the world famous Brandenburger Tor and the infamous Checkpoint Charlie, Berlin ‘08 promises to be an unforgettable experience for all involved.

Full report to follow...

* See Features section for more information