Simon goes Tribal

Simon Richings graduated from Wolverhampton in 1996 with a First Class Honours Degree in Graphic Communication. As part of his course he spent one of his semesters studying at California State University, Long Beach, undertaking an exchange programme. 

After a short period of freelance work in London, Simon was hired by a small, graphic design agency in his home town of Bristol. A solid seven years there saw him rise into a senior design role, working on mainly business-to-business projects for a range of regional clients. During this time he honed his layout and Photoshop skills, while spending much of his spare time writing tabletop role-playing games and obsessing over new technology. Another period of freelancing followed, including a brief involvement in the founding of Science Education Arts (SEA) - a practice specialising in design for those sectors he had most passion for. 

In 2006 he began working with digital advertising agency Tribal DDB on an entirely different sort of project. A friend at the agency figured he was right for an unusual hybrid task: designing and writing an online murder mystery game for Hasbro to promote their Cluedo brand. More work from Tribal followed and Simon accepted a permanent role there in 2007 as a senior art director. From this point on, he's had the luxury of working with some great designers, freeing him up to concentrate on his area of strength - the ideas themselves.

High profile work for Volkswagen, Guinness and other big brands followed, including the highly awarded Monopoly City Streets (for Hasbro, again). This combined the familiar board game with Google maps - players could buy any street in the world, including their own, and they did - 1.7 million of them. Simon has now risen to the dual role of Head of Creative for Tribal and Digital Creative Director for DDB (the famous traditional advertising agency), working with some very talented creatives, designers, developers and technologists.

Simon believes his time studying at Wolverhampton played a key role in his current success, despite his lateral step into another discipline:

"The Graphic Communication course at Wolverhampton gave me a fantastic grounding in techniques for idea generation, and taught me to always root my work in something deeper than pure aesthetics. This made the jump into advertising much, much easier than it would have been if all I'd learnt was technique."




http://tribalddb.com/    http://ddb.com/

Graduate Success - Sureewoong Sun Thon

Sureewoong Sun Thon, 2011 Graphics grad from 2011, is now employed as a Web Designer at The White Room Creative Agency in Birmingham.

White Room Creative is a digital marketing agency solving challenges with strategy, design and technology. Combining different areas of strategic, creative and technical expertise to deliver fully integrated digital marketing solutions.

Congratulations Sureewoong Sun Thon

Creative Artworker - Pure Design Studios Macclesfield

Creative Artworker

We are a small, friendly graphic design studio in Macclesfield looking for someone to join our team producing artwork from concept to finish. Ideally with 2–4 years experience with proficiency in Quark, InDesign, Photoshop and Illustrator. A passion for design and an eye for typography and layout are essential.
Please send CV and pdf examples of recent work to :allie@puredesignstudios.co.uk

Beat Bullying Design Intern - South London

Volunteer Design Intern

Beatbullying, one of the UK’s most highly respected and award winning children’s charities, is looking for a Volunteer Design Intern to assist the Digital dept with online and offline digital and design projects. Beatbullying currently enjoys a very strong online presence and our development of this is key to our continuing and future success.

As a Design Intern, you will work on the design and layout of promotional materials, learning materials, image manipulation/optimisation. You will be assisting in the design of websites, Flash sites and Social Networking Sites and helping with the editing and maintenance of Beatbullying websites and contributing to our Media Library.

You should be able to broadly demonstrate the following:
• Good all round design skills

• Ability to design for offline and online digital media

• Experience using some or all of Adobe Creative Suite programmes.

• An understanding of our primary target audience – young people aged 11-25

• An understanding of other key stakeholder groups (parents, teachers, partners)

In return Beatbullying will:

• Aim to help develop your skills and experience and make sure you get the most out of the experience
• Give you the opportunity to lead on certain tasks and projects, as well as assist other staff in delivering work as a team
• Pay your lunch and travel expenses
• Give you experience, skills and knowledge of working in the charity sector and also of working for an exciting and growing organisation which has won many awards for its use of Digital

Please go to http://www.beatbullying.org/dox/working-at-BB/internships.html for more information about working at Beatbullying and our rolling internships programme.

Beatbullying is Registered Charity Number 1097631

HARD - A Bookazine by Ruben Scupin

Many visual communication students have an interest in designing books and magazines. German designer Ruben Scupin has been in touch to share his inspiring design for HARD, a bookazine that explores the topics of fashion and beauty in a highly innovative manner. Rubens design is beautifully produced and truly interactive, incorporating elements such as pop-ups, lenticular images, stitching and glow in the dark detail.

rubenscupin.com

Daniel Dean Meets David Haye at Evisu prize giving launch

Regular readers of this blog may remember posts about student success in the Evisu competition.

http://visualcommunicationwolverhampton.blogspot.com/2011/12/daniel-dean-evisu-competition-success.html

http://visualcommunicationwolverhampton.blogspot.com/2011/12/forget-politics-vote-for-ben.html

http://www.visualcommunicationwolverhampton.blogspot.com/2011/12/daniel-dean-evisu-competition.html

As part of his prize, final year graphics student Daniel Dean has attended a recent Evisu launch. Daniel is pictured here being congratulated by David Haye, the former WBA heavyweight champion.
"It was a wonderful privilege to meet David Haye" said Daniel "David is very interested in my designs for Evisu and spent a lot of time discussing my work. Entering this competition has been a fantastic opportunity, I've enjoyed every minute - having the chance to meet so many people and take a look at fashion promotions behind the scenes, has been great."

A New Look At Nature - competition

The Campaign for Drawing (organisers of The Big Draw) has launched an exciting new arts prize in collaboration with The Guild of St George. The John Ruskin Prize invites everyone 18+ to submit artworks that take ‘A New Look At Nature’.

The prestigious competition awards an impressive prize with the outright winner receiving £1000 plus opportunities to show their work at the Millennium Gallery in Sheffield and at Brantwood, the historic Lake District home of John Ruskin himself. Nine runners-up will also be invited to exhibit in the Brantwood show this autumn.

More information and entry forms can be found here: www.johnruskinprize.org