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#25 Innovage
2008

School of Graphic Design at the London College of Communication

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The School of Graphic Design at the London College of Communication is a part of the University of the Arts, London, Europe’s largest university for art, design, fashion, communication and the performing arts. It is a collegiate university comprising the six London Art Colleges; Camberwell College of Arts, Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, Chelsea College of Art and Design, London College of Communication, London College of Fashion and Wimbledon College of Art.

KNOWLEDGE DESIGN
Throughout its long history of teaching the School of Graphic Design at the London College of Communication (formerly LCP ) has always encouraged students to explore information design. Over the last decade this has been developed as a specialist study focusing on the attributes essential for students wishing to concentrate on the design and organisation of information.

While the teaching on the course is still based upon many of the traditional and fundamental aspects of the practice of information design – those of organisation and structure, sequence and clarity of the data – students also explore the processes at work that inform the development of effective user-centred communication, and importantly that help them to find their own voices and identities as designers.

Projects within the course have an underlying philosophy based on the often overlooked human aspects of visual design – of user-centredness.
This focus has continued to produce designers who are less concerned with graphic design as a form of self-expression than with the exploration of the effective communication of complex information. By asking students to focus on approach rather than style, we are equipping them to be flexible, intelligent designers in the future – to be successful they will need to be adaptable and open-minded.

Much of the teaching on the course encourages students to view information design as being concerned with usefulness and functionality, informed by a wide variety of human and social factors. Human beings, and the ways in which they communicate, are not simplistic, and this understanding of the complexities at work is built into the exploration of design alongside the more formal teaching of typography, image and layout.

As well as absorbing the principles of ‘visual engineering’, students are asked to consider communication as equally influenced by the understanding of factors such as signification, connotation and denotation. Rather than reinforce the ideas that simplicity and subtraction are objectives best arrived at by imposing rigid structures, students are required to explore more organic and soft-edged approaches to the process which begins and ends with the user in mind.

THE INNOVAGE PROJECT
The project presented a number of challenges for the group working on the brief of Innovage. The philosophical basis of the underlying idea is a complex one and although all of the students are trained in the discipline of information design – to make the complicated clear and understandable in visual form, an approach in general emerged that outcome should be about interpretation rather than explanation or illustration. This in itself is a form of information design – one where an understanding is formed by the reader/user and the role of the designer is in suggesting and framing a meaning.

PROJECT’S PROFESSORS RESPONSIBLE
Prof. Ian Noble
Lead Tutor in Information Design
David Phillips
Lead Tutor in Information Design

STUDENTS
Oliver Bothwell, Thomas Brasington, Gyorgy Korossy, Vishaal Mistry, Sheeta Patel, Natasha Rodwell, Nicola Ryan, Dan Sayle, Mark Simmonds, Romi Yoo

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Images

  • INNOVAGE - Nicola Ryan

    KALEIDOSCOPES. Reinventing ideas of the past. Replacing the traditional glitter and beads with electronic circuit boards; creating a snippet of the future.

  • School of Graphic Design at the London College of Communication

  • The Innovage project

  • Romi Yoo

    INNOVATION AND VINTAGE, INNOVAGE. An innovation is a new thing or a new method of doing, and also it is the introduction of new ideas, methods. Innovage, I think that innovation and vintage both of them come from human’s desire. I could say that is the dream of people. New ideas, new method and so on, all new creative things come from people’s dream and desire. When people step on something or step in a particular direction, people put their foot on the thing or move their foot in that direction. So, in my design, the feet, which means step on people’s dream. Get into people’s desire and dream. I hope that all come true in very soon. That is the Innovage I think.

  • Mark Simmonds

    DRAWING IN THE WIND. The wind is an invisible force. Yet one can experience it’s immediate effects, such as the sight of a lonely floating plastic bag or the glistening sound of golden leafs in the autumn. A system was devised that graphically captures the wind. Due to the dynamic nature of the wind, each drawing is unique.

  • Mark Simmonds

    DRAWING IN THE WIND. The wind is an invisible force. Yet one can experience it’s immediate effects, such as the sight of a lonely floating plastic bag or the glistening sound of golden leafs in the autumn. A system was devised that graphically captures the wind. Due to the dynamic nature of the wind, each drawing is unique.

  • Mark Simmonds

    DRAWING IN THE WIND. The wind is an invisible force. Yet one can experience it’s immediate effects, such as the sight of a lonely floating plastic bag or the glistening sound of golden leafs in the autumn. A system was devised that graphically captures the wind. Due to the dynamic nature of the wind, each drawing is unique.

  • Mark Simmonds

    DRAWING IN THE WIND. The wind is an invisible force. Yet one can experience it’s immediate effects, such as the sight of a lonely floating plastic bag or the glistening sound of golden leafs in the autumn. A system was devised that graphically captures the wind. Due to the dynamic nature of the wind, each drawing is unique.

  • Dan Sayle

    Illywords Write up. VINTAGE INNOVATION. Designs of an age that today can still be classed as innovative. Zig Zag Chair. Gerrit Rietveld. 1933. EKCO Bakelite Radio. Wells Coates. 1933. Zippo Lighter. George G Blaisdell. 1933.

  • Mark Simmonds

    MUSIC TRACE MACHINE. Visualising music. David Bowie’s 1979 album ‘Lodger’ interpreted by Music Trace Machine. The machine converts sound to motion, which is carbon paper traced onto sheets of newsprint. The outcomes of the drawings are dependant on the length and intensity of the particular piece of music. The machine consists of four components, sound to light converter, light to motion converter, stereo headphones and a music player.

  • Mark Simmonds

    COAL COVERS. In the 19th century British buildings in cities usually had a coal hole in the pavement to allow the coal merchant to fill up the bunker (often under the pavement) without entering or transporting coal soot in the customers house. The hole, which measured anything from 12 to 24 inches, was covered with a cast-iron plate that often advertised the name of the maker. They were also given a raised pattern so that on rainy days pedestrians would not slip on a smooth surface.

  • Mark Simmonds

    COAL COVERS. In the 19th century British buildings in cities usually had a coal hole in the pavement to allow the coal merchant to fill up the bunker (often under the pavement) without entering or transporting coal soot in the customers house. The hole, which measured anything from 12 to 24 inches, was covered with a cast-iron plate that often advertised the name of the maker. They were also given a raised pattern so that on rainy days pedestrians would not slip on a smooth surface.

  • Nicola Ryan

    VISUAL LOOPS. Acknowledgement of the value of history paves the path to the future. A loop of constant referral: Looking behind to the past, whilst simultaneously looking forwards to the future.

  • Nicola Ryan

    KALEIDOSCOPES. Reinventing ideas of the past. Replacing the traditional glitter and beads with electronic circuit boards; creating a snippet of the future.

  • Nicola Ryan

    KALEIDOSCOPES. Reinventing ideas of the past. Replacing the traditional glitter and beads with electronic circuit boards; creating a snippet of the future.

  • Thomas Brasington

    LOOKING BACKWARDS TO GO FORWARDS. Even if we don’t realise we are always looking to the past to create something new. The photos created are the result of photographing through the front of a lens to capture the reflected image of that camera’s viewfinder. Due to the construction of a lens you get a reflection of myself on each of the lens’ elements creating the image that the other camera ‘sees’. The camera itself is significant here too. It remains the most widely used device for recording our world and possible the oldest but it is constantly advancing in terms of technology and innovation.

  • Sheetal Patel

    TAPE 2. Working with Tape, pixilation of the piece and eliminating areas to show how the tapes use and importance has decreased. Since the CD, the majority don’t use tapes anymore and they are becoming forgotten.

  • Gyorgy Korossy

    Although using grids to create complex compositions of type and imagery, or intricate illustrations is by no means a new idea, designers have been developing innovative methods of deploying them in all fields of design for decades . As one of the most prominent graphic artists of the last 75 years, M. C. Escher exploited the grid to no end creating some of the most amazing and often baffling pieces depicting numerous sides of an impossible reality. Influenced by Escher’s sketches and his quote on design: “As far as I know, there is no proof whatever of the existence of an objective reality apart from our senses, and I do not see why we should accept the outside world as such solely by virtue of our senses.” I have applied the principles of the relatively new graphic style, Pixel Art, using building blocks to create a piece illustrating an impossible reality.

  • Gyorgy Korossy

    Although using grids to create complex compositions of type and imagery, or intricate illustrations is by no means a new idea, designers have been developing innovative methods of deploying them in all fields of design for decades . As one of the most prominent graphic artists of the last 75 years, M. C. Escher exploited the grid to no end creating some of the most amazing and often baffling pieces depicting numerous sides of an impossible reality. Influenced by Escher’s sketches and his quote on design: “As far as I know, there is no proof whatever of the existence of an objective reality apart from our senses, and I do not see why we should accept the outside world as such solely by virtue of our senses.” I have applied the principles of the relatively new graphic style, Pixel Art, using building blocks to create a piece illustrating an impossible reality.

  • Gyorgy Korossy

    Although using grids to create complex compositions of type and imagery, or intricate illustrations is by no means a new idea, designers have been developing innovative methods of deploying them in all fields of design for decades . As one of the most prominent graphic artists of the last 75 years, M. C. Escher exploited the grid to no end creating some of the most amazing and often baffling pieces depicting numerous sides of an impossible reality. Influenced by Escher’s sketches and his quote on design: “As far as I know, there is no proof whatever of the existence of an objective reality apart from our senses, and I do not see why we should accept the outside world as such solely by virtue of our senses.” I have applied the principles of the relatively new graphic style, Pixel Art, using building blocks to create a piece illustrating an impossible reality.

  • Gyorgy Korossy

    Although using grids to create complex compositions of type and imagery, or intricate illustrations is by no means a new idea, designers have been developing innovative methods of deploying them in all fields of design for decades . As one of the most prominent graphic artists of the last 75 years, M. C. Escher exploited the grid to no end creating some of the most amazing and often baffling pieces depicting numerous sides of an impossible reality. Influenced by Escher’s sketches and his quote on design: “As far as I know, there is no proof whatever of the existence of an objective reality apart from our senses, and I do not see why we should accept the outside world as such solely by virtue of our senses.” I have applied the principles of the relatively new graphic style, Pixel Art, using building blocks to create a piece illustrating an impossible reality.

  • Oliver Bothwell

    TRIANGLES. Innovation and Vintage; the old and new, or rear view mirror as it is referred to by Marshall McLuhen. Innovation for me cannot be without the past, as it has to be growing from history. Innovation is a balance of creativity and destruction, destroying the parts that do not work to create the balanced solution. This piece represents all of this, balance, growth and destruction. Why the triangle? The triangle is a solid base on which to grow.

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