London College of Communication blog

Congratulations to London College of Communication (LCC) students from the FdA Design for Graphic Communication and BA (Hons) Graphic & Media Design courses on their recent success in this year’s International Society of Typographic Designers (ISTD) Student Assessment scheme.

The ISTD is a global organisation that works closely with graphic design educators and professionals to maintain and promote typographic standards through the forum of debate and design practice across the world.

The ISTD Student Assessment is rigorous in that it considers the overall design process of research, reflection, strategy, design development, technical and production specification of a project – not just the final proposal. Therefore, membership is only awarded to those who through their work demonstrate their commitment to achieving the highest possible quality of visual communication.

This year, four of the College’s students have been awarded entry into this globally respected society for their contributions of excellent typographic merit, they are:

Asa Elmehed, 2^nd Year FdA Design for Graphic Communication.

Kira Slepchenkova, 2^nd Year FdA Design for Graphic Communication.

Jay Jung Hyun Yeo, 3^rd Year Graphic & Media Design.

Caroline Claisse, 3^rd Year Graphic & Media Design.

The students, along with their tutors Paul Bailey, Jack Blake and David Phillips, will receive their certificates at a special event hosted in London this coming June.

To find out more about the ISTD Student Assessment Scheme, visit – http://www.istd.org.uk/education

At the beginning of March, London College of Communication (LCC) held its first interdisciplinary PhD exhibition entitled, Research in Progress: Pushing Boundaries and Practices. Nineteen students exhibited a variety of different works in areas of film, photography, design and sound arts, here LCC Research Administrator Dr Jennifer Tomomitsu, reviews the show.

It could be said that putting together the Research in Progress: pushing boundaries and practices exhibition was a rewarding, but sometimes, daunting task. Working with limited resources and a tight schedule meant that the students had to be innovative and constantly revise the planning of their exhibits. Such exercises may have been difficult, but some students indicated that the preparations were a useful practice to “test out a new installation project and tweak it for future exhibitions” (Magz Hall, Sound) or to “test ideas out and see how they might go together in a space that also plays to other ways of thinking” (Louis Henderson, film).  Others said that “creating practical work for the exhibition was a catalyst to try out some methods which were coming up from recent literature and practice reviews. Sometimes you just need to make things, and it was very liberating” (Chris Twigg, Design).

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For the first time four research disciplines taught within London College of Communication (LCC) are brought together in one PhD exhibition, ‘Research in progress: pushing boundaries and practises’.

The exhibition is a celebration of interdisciplinarity and the coming together of different artistic practices in one event. Nineteen students will be exhibiting a variety of different works in areas of film, photography, design and sound arts from 3rd to 16th March with a Private View on Friday 2 March.

Author: Rosalind Fowler, 3rd year full-time (Film)

Filmic installations will explore topics related to archive, space, place and belonging. Rosalind Fowler, 3^rd year Film student showcases work that comprises extracts from a feature length documentary currently in production. She says: “It is about performative folk traditions, senses of place and belonging in England, from the perspective of a fictional female character living in the city. The research is strongly informed by ideas surrounding experimental and auto-ethnography, phenomenological experience and the embodied camera.”

Author: Corinne Silva, 3rd year full-time PhD student (Photography)

In photography, images deal with issues of memory, domestic space, geo-politics and identity. Third year Photography student, Corinne Silva, tells us about her work: “The landscapes of southern Spain and northern Morocco share many geographical features including climate, flora and fauna, as well as a history of trade, migration and invasion. To consider these interconnected Mediterranean landscapes I photographed northern Morocco landscapes and then installed three of these images on billboards in Murcia, Spain. The act of placing one landscape inside another – the southern hemisphere into the northern – creates a space to contemplate not only their shared topography but also the complex web of their ongoing connections of mobility and colonisation.”

Author: Francico Laranjo, 2nd year Full-time (Design)

Design students will showcase various works related to data visualization, space and branding, screen typography, and communication design. Franciso Laranjo, a 2^nd year Design student explains his research: “The Architecture of Gambling is an unfinished project that seeks to analyse and map visual tactics used by aggressive ‘brand-led businesses’ that occupy a significant part of today’s urban landscapes. They have been contaminating public space with promiscuous and obsessive relations with sports and finance whilst operating in tax havens such as Gibraltar, Isle of Man or Malta.”

Author: Mark Jackson, 5th year part-time (Sound)

Sound arts students showcase audio compositions and sound experiments who address issues of listening, performance, radio art, and the relationship between sound and light. Fifth year student Sound, Mark Jackson, tells about his work: “Exteriorisation Exercise #2: Playback Experiment #2 is the orchestration of a William S. Buroughs ‘playback’ experiment. It consists of individuals visiting the exhibition over the course of its run to covertly record and replay the exhibition’s audial environment with different generations of audio technology. The recording devices will not be visible and the data recorded will be played back at a level potentially indistinguishable from ambient noise. The exercise is a re-imagining of paranormal acts of metaphysical sabotage and the perversion of a not-art proposition. Potentially indistinguishable from its absence, it may nonetheless incite instances of interference, distraction and delusion.”

Download the exhibition catalogue that accompanies the exhibition.

A still from 'The Houseless Shadow'

‘The Houseless Shadow’ a short film by LCC Reader in Film William Raban has received a glowing reviews from the Evening Standard,  Times Higher and Radio 4s Today programme.

Commissioned by the Museum of London for the much anticipated ‘Dickens and London’ exhibition, the film explores the similarities of today’s London by night and the London by night described by Dickens over 150 years ago through his book, ‘Night Walks’.

Reviews hint at Raban’s film as being one of the exhibition highlights, with Times Higher saying: “It’s a good idea to begin the new Dickens and London exhibition right at the end, where William Raban’s short film The Houseless Shadow runs on a 20-minute loop.”

The exhibition opens today (9 December) and can be seen until 10 June 2012. If you get a chance, go. In the meantime here are some reviews to whet your appetite.

*Dickens and London (Times Higher Education Supplement)

*Doting on Charles Dickens… returning to his own words in his bicentenary (Evening Standard)

LCC Reader in Sound Arts Dr Angus Carlyle is co-artist on an exhibition titled ‘Air Pressure,’ which is on show at Manchester University’s Whitworth Art Gallery until 12 February 2012.

Funded by the Wellcome Trust, the multimedia sound installation explores the clash between traditional farming life in Japan and the technology and economy of international travel.

This is what Robert Clark of the Guardian had to say about it:

“…Focusing on two families who defiantly continue to farm at the end of Japan’s Narita Airport runway, the installation’s documentary credentials are confirmed in this being a work by Rupert Cox and Angus Carlyle in collaboration with Professor Kozo Hiramatsu – all of whom are leading scholars at university institutions in the UK and Japan. Yet, as an artwork, its audio-visual impact is more spectacularly immersive than academically informative. Dare I say it: the thrust and roar of planes can be uplifting after all.”

On 5 January Dr Carlyle and the creators of Air Pressure will be joined by speakers from Japan to reflect on the project, and discuss examples of disaster and disease in Japan and elsewhere. The symposium will be followed by a concert of contemporary sound art.

Find out more via the Air Pressure website

ISTD Premier Award

The research work of LCC design lecturers Paul McNeil and Hamish Muir – MuirMcNeil – has received two prestigious international awards.

MuirMcNeil’s ThreeSix typeface project has received a 2011 Premier Award from the International Society of Typographic Designers (ISTD) and their ThreeSix Unit Paper, U:D/R 03, published by Unit Editions, has been awarded an ISTD 2011 Certificate of Excellence.

Unit Editions U:D/R 03 by MuirMcNeil

Commenting on the ThreeSix project, ISTD judge Robert Boon said: “One of the surprising effects of this typeface is the remarkably different feel created when used at small and large sizes; when small you could easily mistake it for a simple sans serif whilst when viewed at large sizes almost every character could be an iconic logo. That’s a great achievement.”

Unit Editions U:D/R 03 by MuirMcNeil

Paul McNeil works as course director on the MA in Contemporary Typographic Media at LCC and as an independent graphic design consultant. He specialises in type, information and systems design. Hamish Muir, likewise, works as a graphic design consultant alongside his teaching at LCC, and was a founding principal of 8vo and co-editor of international typography journal, Octavo.

For more about the project visit the MuirMcneil and United Editions websites.

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LCC Reader in Film William Raban’s film ‘About Now MMX’ (2010) has been selected by the Helsinki Photo Biennial to be shown as an installation for two months from the beginning of March until the end of April 2012. The film has also been picked up by the Athens Biennial where it will be shown in an online programme themed around ‘Architecture’. This runs from mid-November until the biennial closes on 11 December 2011.

Raban says: “The invitation to show at the Helsinki Photo Biennial came direct from one of the curators. He was showing the film in a programme called CITY AND SURVEILLANCE and he possibly had seen the film when it was shown in a programme called ‘Surveillance’ during the EXPOSED show at Tate Modern in 2010.”

According to Gareth Polmeer in SEQUENCE magazine ‘About Now MMX’ could be read as a dialectic of the city and its image, an argument between how it is and how it might be re-imagined. The project is one of fundamental engagement and makes necessary a critical reappraisal of urban space, our relationships to place and the promise that film might hold for a transformative relation to the city.

Raban has just finished his new film THE HOUSELESS SHADOW for the forthcoming Dickens and London exhibition at the Museum of London that runs from 9 December 2011 until 10 June 2012. More information on his work can be found on his website.

William Raban is working on the BA Film & Television course as well as the MA Documentary Film course. In addition Raban is supervising four research degree students to PhD.

Brighton, Sussex, May 1974 © Daniel Meadows

A photographic project by Professor Val Williams, Director of the Photography and the Archive Research Centre (PARC) at LCC, has been featured in Financial Times Magazine.

The article has been written in anticipation of an exhibition curated by Williams entitled, ‘Daniel Meadows: Early Photographic Works‘, opening at the National Media Museum in Bradford on 30 September before travelling to Ffotogallery, Birmingham Central Library Gallery and LCC.

Daniel Meadows was a prominent and enterprising member of a new grouping of young British photographers in the 1970s who were interested in the ‘ordinary’ and fascinated by working class culture. The exhibition showcases Meadows’ major projects, as well as recently discovered work from his archives.

A book, ’Daniel Meadows: Edited Photographs from the 70s and 80s,’ accompanies the exhibition and will be published by Photoworks on 30 September. Written by Williams, It traces Meadows’ development and analyses the growth of independent British photography from the 1970s.

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Dr Cathy Lane and Dr Angus Carlyle receive the Sir Misha Black Award at the RCA

The Sir Misha Black Award for ‘Innovation in Design Education 2011′ has been awarded to the Creative Research into Sound Art Practice (CRiSAP), a University of the Arts London (UAL) research centre based at the London College of Communication (LCC).

The award was presented to directors of CRiSAP, Dr Cathy Lane and Dr Angus Carlyle (pictured above), at a special ceremony held on Tuesday 8 March 2011, at the Royal College of Art.

The annual Award is presented to design educators in the UK who have contributed to the development of design education through innovative teaching, course design or the relationship between education and professional practice. It also recognises innovation and achievement in the developing culture of design education.

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Following the highly successful ‘Pop-up Reading Room’ held at London College of Communication, we are pleased to announce the addition of over 100 new fanzines to the LCC Library Zine Collection. The Collection was established in 2009 to provide students with a hands-on opportunity to see a examples of zine creation and to recognize the significance of these self-published independent publications.

Leila Kassir, Information Services Librarian, comments:

“The Zine Collection is popular with and well-used by students from across the University and elsewhere who find the diversity of approaches, subjects, content and use of visual languages found within zines not only interesting but inspiring. We would like to thank the contributors for their hugely generous gifts to the Collection and for continuing to support the development of an important and invaluable resource.”

The LCC Library Zine Collection may be viewed by appointment by contacting Leila Kassir, Information Services Librarian, LCC Library (Telephone: 0207 514 6722 or email: l.kassir@lcc.arts.ac.uk)