Each year we set a design project with the 4th Year Design students at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design, University of Dundee. We’ve just started this year’s project and as aways look forward to seeing what the students of 2017 produce. They go forward knowing they are in very good hands. The Times Good University Guide has just ranked Dundee University as the top Scottish University and it is now in the UK Top 25. This follows The Guardian recently ranking The Duncan of Jordanstone (DJCAD) as the top Art College in the UK.
We here at elastic, have always felt DJCAD had something special and two of their alumni include our two creative directors Lauren and Guy. So we have been honoured to continue our connection by working with Course Director Gary Gowans and his students for the past several years.
From the outset, we’ve been setting motion pieces as we could see ourselves the importance of video was only going to continue to grow. We were keen to see how the design students could use motion to explore communicating messages. At times, quite complex concepts can be easily and succinctly distilled into a video and communicate very powerful ideas that might otherwise take pages of text. Now, of course, it is everywhere and we’ve seen the students produce some incredibly accomplished pieces.
Notable past students include famed fashion photographer Albert Watson, 2010 Turner Prize winner Susan Philipsz, Film Director David Mackenzie whose films include Hell or High Water and Young Adam and Grand Theft Auto Art Director Aaron Garbut. Along the way, we’ve met many great students ourselves – while we cannot mention them all, here are just some of them whom we feel are notable:
- Allie Elliot
- Craig Barbour
- Sam Packman
- Laura Burton
- Tao Shi
- Zoe Broughton
- Susie McGowan
- Ross Grubb
- Cathy Crocker
- Alex Nicholson
- Marina Munro
- Mark Cook
- Andrew Golden
- Juliet Wright
- Ricky Devine
- Stephen McKay
- Peter Hollstein
- John Siwek
- Holly Gallacher
- Sean McGonigal
It’s great to see how many of these students have flourished and are now having successful careers themselves.
Next week we’ll look at this year’s brief – Creating a Brand for Yourself.