Wednesday, 13 November 2019

GDES2014 STUDENT INITIAL ROUGH CONCEPTS

Some nice rough concept work coming along for the National Archives educational eBook brief. Here's some quick examples of student outputs at this early stage.

[Click on any image to enlarge]

Lauren's roughs - some lovely concepts (and) even some already mocked up on screen.

A close up of some of Lauren's early concept work.

Eleanor's lovely character development concepts.

James' early Egyptian character concepts.

Claire's experimentation with typefaces.

Louisa's early experiments with hand-rendered titles and characters.

Wednesday, 30 October 2019

GDES2014 STUDY VISIT TO THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES

A huge thanks to the education staff at the National Archives who hosted us for our annual visit and maps workshop.

Year 2 students on the Children's Book Design module were talked through both the ways that the Education team deal with both the maps source materials and artifacts with school groups and the various ways in which they lead the children towards learning about them.


The facade of the Archives.

Education staff talk to students about the resources in the session.

A close up of a rare 'London bomb damage' map from WW2

A fantastic Victorian copy of the Great Fire of London map.

When is a map not a map? When it's an advertising poster.

More of the intricasies of an astounding atlas from the 1600's is explained.

Lecturer Andy and students examine one of the original maps of the tombs of Egypt.


Henry VIII's dowry to Anne Boleyn - amazingly this is signed by Henry himself (very rare).

A close up detailed shot of Henry's court 'rolls' - lavishly illustrated with gold leaf too.

Tuesday, 22 October 2019

GDES2014 CHILDREN'S BOOK DESIGN AT THE BEELINE STORYTELLING FEST 2019

A huge thanks to GDES2014 students who offered to help out at the Beeline Storytelling Festival. We worked alongside artist Sarah Edwards of Spare Room Arts to help KS2 local schoolchildren to create 'Jack and the Beanstalk' artwork elements to go on Sarah's giant beanstalk.

A busy but great day and one in which not only did the students get to have some fun but also to learn more about KS2 level children (of whom they're designing for with their assessed brief this time).


Here's a selection of pictures taken of students and their work alongside Sarah and the schoolchildren on the day [click on image to expand it].

Our afternoon team (from right): Artist Sarah Edwards, students: Jack, Amy, Jordanna, Lauren, Lauren and children's book design lecturer Andy Stevenson.

Student Jack helps a local schoolchild create collage materials.

The giant's classic phrase from the story brought to life in collage.

Green! You've gotta love bright green hands..

Student Amy helps a schoolchild create his characters.

Student Lauren helps schoolchildren compose their ideas.

Local schoolchildren busy drawing and colouring elements to go on Sarah's beanstalk.

Sarah's amazing final giant beanstalk creation.

A section of lecturer Andy's illustrated 'storymap' for Jack and the Beanstalk.

'And finally' - the team's silly end of day photo.. ;)

Monday, 7 October 2019

Gdes2014 Sample Work - TNA Maps Project

Students from the yr 2 Children's Book Design module were asked by The National Archives' (TNA) Education team in this latest 'live' brief collaboration to develop concept artwork for a new eActivity book.

The theme for the project was 'maps' - looking at TNA's amazing antique and rare maps collection. The project comes under the existing 'Time Travel Club' - a set of on site learning workshops for children and families.

[ Click on any image to see an enlarged view ].

Kelley Akers




Claudia de Santos





Megan Holloway


Olivia Kellet


Katrina Lee



Brendan Parsons



Alex Serbanica


Zosia Swarbrick


Fasiha Syeda