I’ve just come back from my final trip as external examiner to the Visual Communication Degree course at The Dublin Institute of Technology. This is my last of three years there (see
Dublin Institute 2008) and I was pleased to see a wide variety of work from the students this year. It was also good to catch up with Yves Cotinat again, the courses’s other external examiner. Like last year Yves was examining those tutors with a strong illustration background, whilst I was looking at those with a bias towards graphic and interaction design.
We had quite an intense first day going through all the work and talking to all the students in turn. They presented very well, with some strong stand out projects but unfortunately some poor work in places also. Those projects that caught my eye included a lovely branding project by
Lorna Melody, taking an old tea shop and giving it an interesting twist – mixing old fashioned china tea cup patterns over a modern paper coffee cup.
Orla Byrne had, for me, the best piece of interaction design work – a seed packet that slides of open making the typography and information grow as it opens.
Also of note were some very emotive sketchbooks from Maeve Flynn in her instant sketching style.
Some strong poster typography and layout work from Bobby Tannam and Paul Guinan. The highlight of the day was a really adventurous animation piece by
Daniel Cantwell, his response to a D&AD brief to create a music video for a new Damon Albarn track. His entry has been nominated for a student
D&AD award – good luck Daniel!
That evening I caught a very inspiring lecture at the college by Vanessa Ahuactzin, from Design 21st Century, who worked with Bruce Mau on
Massive Change. She’s kick starting a project in Dublin called Designing Dublin and putting a call out to the design community to find a team of willing volunteers prepared to tackle some of Dublin’s biggest social issues. We will hopefully be doing some work to help her with the project so watch this space...
The next day was spent going through and discussing the student’s work with the other tutors and adjusting any marks. I also managed to catch an interesting exhibition by Reza Adebini at
The Factory Space. As always the college was very hospitable and put on their yearly tutor’s BBQ with the Fine Art faculty – thanks once again to Peter and Antony for their now legendary BBQ tiger prawns!
At the final day’s exam board meeting I congratulated them again on a good student year, in particular their excellent standard of teaching in the traditional disciplines of layout and typography. On a less positive note, I felt the need to mention the disappointing selection of interactive work on show – a number of students just happy to take their static graphic layouts and plonk them on screen with no real thought to user flow, architecture, interaction, animation or sound. It’s something that I’d like to improve at the college and hope to nurture with a series of workshops next year.
If any of the students are reading this then I strongly suggest (if you haven’t been already), to check out the Infectious exhibition at the
Science Gallery. I managed to catch it before leaving and it’s a great example of physical interaction design outside of the web – taking an otherwise complex subject matter and making it accessible and engaging by using collaborations from outside artists and designers. Worth seeing not only for the digital work but for the graphic identity too – created by
Detail – with a special mention to Stephen McCarty, a DIT student from the first year I taught there, now a designer at Detail. It was a great finish to my three years there to see an ex-student doing so well in the real world.
Thanks again to everyone at the College especially John, Kieran, Brenda and Brenda. Look forward to staying in touch and seeing how we can keep our relationship going for the future.
Kev Palmer
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