Capital Gains For Design Trio
27 July 2007
Kayleigh Thompson's commended design.
Our students are great ambassadors for the Derby experience and all the staff in Visual Communication will take pleasure in their success.
”Leo Broadley, Senior Lecturer in Graphic Design
Could you make bingo attractive to teenagers, ‘sell’ Scotland as a film director’s paradise or promote a treasure chest of iconic pictures?
Three University of Derby students delivered just that as part of an international graphic design competition – and are set for their work to appear at the Royal College of Art in London this summer.
Alex Cole, Sarah Elliott and Kayleigh Thompson were all commended as part of the Young Creative Network (YCN) search for emerging creative talent as part of its annual YCN Design and Communication Awards.
The trio beat thousands of entries from across the globe and their work will feature alongside about 70 other students in an annual book published by the YCN. With a circulation of 10,000, the book is distributed across education and industry.
Alex Cole, 22, from Mill Hill Road, Norwich, produced a series of mailers aimed at design companies to promote a new web archive of photographs, including The Beatles and Martin Luther King, for Getty Images.
He said: “I took inspiration from the stories and biographies of personalities and landmarks behind the images for my design – without actually displaying the images themselves.”
Sarah Elliott, 22, from Kedleston Road, Derby, created an interactive campaign to make bingo more attractive to a younger audience, featuring web banners, email and text alerts.
She said: “Many young people enjoy nightclubs, so a central theme was taking the last four letters of the word ‘clubbing’ and associating its links with the word ‘bingo’.”
Kayleigh Thompson, 21, from Hunter Avenue, Burntwood, Staffordshire, created a poster campaign for Scotfilm. Her cinema-style photographs of stunning Scottish landscapes carried cinema ratings such as ‘Universal’, ‘PG’ and ‘12’ – with a difference.
She said: “It was aimed at encouraging producers to film more in Scotland. Therefore in my campaign, Scotland denoted a Universal location, PG denoted ‘production guidance’ and 12 explained the country was available 12 months of the year.”
The three students will graduate with BA (Hons) degrees in Graphic Design at the University’s annual Awards Ceremonies in January, and Kayleigh has already secured work with a Derby marketing agency, BFCC Marketing Ltd.
Their tutor at the University, Graphic Design Senior Lecturer Tracy Allanson-Smith, said: “For the last three years we have had commendations for the students’ work on the YCN competition. The students enjoy working creatively and when the brief includes a ‘live’ opportunity they all seem to thrive on the challenge.”
Colleague and fellow Senior Lecturer Leo Broadley, said: “We are delighted to celebrate another year of student success in the YCN National Awards. Our students are highly motivated and have proven yet again that their hard work and dedication can be acknowledged at the highest level.
“Our students are great ambassadors for the Derby experience and all the staff in Visual Communication will take pleasure in their success.”
London-based YCN is a member-based organisation existing to connect emerging talent in design and communication with industry recruiters and commissioners. The commended students’ work will now feature at the Royal College of Art, from August 30 to September 3, and a judging panel will pick its top overall designs.
A YCN spokesman said: “Hosted by the Royal College of Art, we will present a showcase of some of the best emerging talent in design, illustration, animation and interactive communication.
“The event will present innovative new work to influential creative recruiters and commissioners. The work will be seen publicly and by figures from across the creative industries internationally. As well as being exhibited at the Royal College of Art, all selected work will appear in the pages of our annual book.”
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For more information about this news release, contact Simon Butt, Press and PR Officer, on 01332 591891 or 07748 920023, or email: s.butt@derby.ac.uk. This press release was written by Deputy Head of Press and PR Simon Redfern on 01332 591942.
