Team completes redesign for Plymouth's Clubhouse

The Design Hub team was invited to pitch for a redesign project for the Student Clubhouse, a professional-standard student residence in Mutley Plain, Plymouth.

The company asked the team to create advertising flyers to make the Clubhouse, which has a mix of 4 and 5-bed apartments, studio flats and an 8-bed loft, more appealing to students. 

A vector-based design was successfully developed, which will be continued for the rest of the project.

Team designs Fashion’s Look Book for second year

After a successful collaboration project last year, PCA Fashion Programme Leader Alison Braybrook and the rest of the fashion department asked The Design Hub to create design solutions or this year’s Look Book, posters and invitations.

After working on several different ideas, it was agreed the concept would be to use a fabric pattern throughout, with the main colour theme being yellow.

With this as the brief, a number of solutions were considered. The Look Book was eventually developed using newsprint, with the Design Hub team having creative control on the document size and on imagery used throughout.  

The fashion team decided to use our concept for more visuals for award certificates, projection slides, wall vinyls and also two different flyers advertising the fashion course and the new fashion, media and marketing course.

These flyers were taken to Graduate Fashion week in London June 1-4, and will be used at other events over the next year. 

The feedback from the fashion department, students and lecturers was positive and a number of the Design Hub members have been asked to help with other tasks for students such as looking over portfolio layouts.

Tatsunori Ishikawa was asked to help with photographing the collections of two students as well as creating a stop motion video using these photos.

The Look Book team was Claude Compere, Tatsunori Ishikawa, Eliot Sleep, Zara Walker, and Sam Donohoe.

Sambhali Trust Rebranding Project

The Sambhali Trust is a non-profit charitable organisation based in Jodhpur, India, whose focus is the development and empowerment of women and girls in Rajasthan.

The Trust which provides underprivileged Rajasthani women and girls with an education in English, Hindi and Maths, as well as training in vocational and social skills, asked the Design Hub to refresh its identity.

The Trust asked for imagery such as leaves and women to be included, so the idea of Sambhali growing and nurturing women, and helping them grow new life in their children as well was developed.

The design was finalised as a woman, one arm holding a baby; the other sprouting leaves representing life, care and the future. The gentle curves of the arms form an S.

Here is the development of the work using traditional Indian symbols and colours.

The work started with initial sketches:

Which developed into outline ideas:

These developed into digital vectors:

The client approved the concept and the team started developing colour concepts inspired by Indian culture.

The quality of the logo was improved by modifying the design to simplify and streamline the design.

This was the final design which the client approved.

"Thank you very much for your kindness of putting together this wonderful logo for Sambhali Trust. We had the Deputy Director, In-charge of the Department of women and child development of our town Jodhpur officially inaugurate the logo." - Govind Rathore

The Design Hub team was: Dan Wylie, Allie Couch, Daniel Day, with the guidance of Eliot Sleep and Claude Compere at PCA and Corrine in India.

Graphic design students preparing for Summer Show

Graphic design students at Plymouth College of Are are preparing to display their work - a culmination of three years hard study.

The Plymouth College of Art Summer Show opens on Wednesday and the last-minute touches to the exhibition are being made.

Designer returns to his College to give a masterclass

Alumnus Tom Gordon returned to the College in spring to give a masterclass on graphic design in the music industry.

Tom Gordon at Plymouth College of Art

Tom, who attended the BA Hons Graphic Design course is a successful freelance designer and works mainly in the music industry, specialising in artwork for band tours and merchandise.

He has worked with well known bands including The Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney, Katy Perry, Bastille, Queens of the Stone Age, Cypress Hill, Deftones, Avenged Sevenfold, Cher, Rod Stewart, Rudimental, and the Red Hot Chilli Peppers.

Tom specialises in T-shirt design for band members and merchandise and his advice to students who wish to work in the music industry was to focus on extensive research.

He said he frequently looks at clients’ interests on social network websites to see what T-shirts the band members wear so that he can relate to them even more when he is pitching his designs.

He said: “A lot of research is the best way to know what the client likes.”

He also looks at similar bands to his client and uses websites which show other similar bands to make sure he knows what is potentially the best style. 

Other advice included always having a point to a design otherwise the design is probably not going to be very efficient. 

And type is very important as is learning the basics of type such as kerning and weights.

Technical advice included cleaning up layers when using Adobe Indesign, because if you sent a client a messy document it will look unprofessional. 

And work big instead of small, because if an image is needed to be enlarged it won’t cause a problem in the future. 

And finally, do not get hung up on detail either, work fast and polish later. Less is more, if you have to add detail to a design then it is probably a bad design.

In terms of client relationships he said it is difficult at first to take criticism, but don’t take it personally and react, as you could regret your reaction later on. 

After the talk Tom ran a workshop for students who were asked to design a T-shirt for a band called Bring Me The Horizon, Katy Perry or Haim.