06 April 2011
Students help design Degree Show artwork
Dundee art students have helped design the promotional material for their own Degree Show by sharing memories of their student years through social networking.
The artwork for this year’s Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design Degree Show, which will feature on invitations, posters, advertisements and other material was created by illustrator Johanna Basford using 'crowd sourced' images.
Johanna, a graduate and former lecturer at DJCAD, is known for creating interactive illustrations by asking people to suggest the content for her drawings. By joining a specially created Facebook group, students were able to contribute by sharing memories of their time at DJCAD. They were invited to upload photos, share links to items or events, or posts suggestions on the page’s wall.
More than 70 submissions were received and Johanna began the process of translating them to the page. As she sketched them, Johanna posted images on the Facebook page and the final illustrations will appear on all material promoting the event, which takes place next month.
Johanna has created illustrations for many leading companies and organisations, including the V&A, DKNY, Channel 4 and H&M. She also illustrated the cover for last year’s Edinburgh Fringe programme.
'I was delighted to be asked to work on this for the College and students,' she said. 'An interactive collaboration to create an image which is intrinsically linked to the graduates is a pretty cool way to approach the marketing of a show which will launch the careers of the next wave of talent to rock our industry.
'The College has a hefty international presence and some of the most talented students in the UK. It was at Duncan of Jordantone that I first picked up a fineliner and, as both a former student and lecturer of this great art school, it was a privilege to be invited back to work on such a high profile project.
'This was an evolution of my interactive drawing concept, ‘TwitterPicture' where I use Twitter to crowd source content and creative direction for co-created illustrations. The public tweet me suggestions of what they would like me to draw, and I duly oblige. I used this method to create the artwork for the Fringe last year and thousands of people from all over the globe took part in the creative process.
'I worked through Facebook for the DJCAD project because Twitter is open source and we wanted to limit participation exclusively to final year students at DJCAD. Facebook gave us the control to limit who was invited to contribute, yet keep the whole project visible to all.
'We asked the students to be the creative directors and dictate what they want to see in their Degree Show Artwork. These are hand-drawn interpretations of the suggestions, but the content was completely controlled by students.
'The only question we asked was ‘what will remind you of your time at DJCAD?’ and we got back a huge variety of answers ranging from pictures taken on exchange trips to memories of tutors and even talking dogs! It was really interesting to reflect on people’s experiences of studying in Dundee and compare them to my own.'
DJCAD employed the services of Johanna after receiving feedback from last year's graduates who indicated they would have liked the opportunity to be involved in designing the artwork for their degree show.
DJCAD Marketing Manager Mhari MacDonald explained, 'Given the fact we have some of the country’s top young artist and designers learning their craft in Dundee, we wanted them to get involved but the challenge was how to include as many as possible.
'Johanna is still very passionate about DJCAD so that and the nature of her work meant it made sense for her to help involve students from all programmes at the College.'
More information about Johanna and her work can be found at www.johannabasford.com.
The 2011 Dundee Degree Show takes place at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design from 21st-29th May.
For media enquiries contact:
Grant Hill
Press Officer
University of Dundee
Nethergate, Dundee, DD1 4HN
TEL: 01382 384768
E-MAIL: g.hill@dundee.ac.uk
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