Category: Interviews and features

All about The Design Marketplace with Emily Gardner

emily gardner

It’s not a secret for anybody trying to make a living out of creative work: having a good idea is just half of the road- the even more difficult part is turning your idea into money. Second year BA Design student Emily Gardner (who goes by Nemii) had some work she wanted to sell, she knew other students and friends had marketable products of their own, but she didn’t know of any possible route or opportunity of marketing them through the university. So she took the matters into her own hands and The Design Marketplace was born, an organisation that Nemii started from scratch as a personal project and that she still runs mostly by herself. Continue reading “All about The Design Marketplace with Emily Gardner”

Design as storytelling: Blair Francey

Blair Francey is a 2012 MA Design: Critical Practice graduate at Goldsmiths; when it came to chatting to him about his work here and beyond, we had to resort to Skype, as he has already returned to his native Canada. We had quite a bit to talk about: Blair runs his own design startup, BFDesign, offering branding, print media, consultations and social media planning services. The firm has been going for 4 years and Blair told me he was very pleased with how it was going. He also had good things to say about his time at Goldsmiths, which he called an “eye-opener”, expanding his idea about what a designer is and does, and giving him the chance to be around designers from so many different backgrounds and specialties, and…well, here’s some of the actual chatting:

Q: Tell me more about your graduation project, “Public Transit Remixed”.

A: The more politicians talk about expanding the transit network here in Toronto and the province, the more I realized how little they talked about the actual experience of being on transit. It was always centered around moving people further and faster. So I wanted to approach public transit from the experiential standpoint … what does it mean to ride transit and how can it become more than just jumping on a train to get somewhere? How can it become engaging for everyone, more inclusive, easier to use … Continue reading “Design as storytelling: Blair Francey”

Eunji Kang: designer and thinker

South Korean designer Eunji Kang is one of the many 2012 MA graduates I didn’t get to talk to when I visited the presentation ceremonies in December, but I got to make up for it by chatting to her now, on a very cold January day, about her work and her experience at Goldsmiths.

eunji kang

Eunji is not the kind of designer that wants to create just “pretty images”, or to make a product more marketable or saleable; instead, she is looking for projects were conceptual thinking is allowed in design practice. Coming from a background in Fine Art, she had always been interested in contemporary and conceptual art, but the start of her career found her in publishing, where she worked as a designer of book covers. Continue reading “Eunji Kang: designer and thinker”

MA Design students at the presentation ceremonies

The presentation ceremonies are that final moment of student life when you can finally forget all worries, deadlines, coffee and sleepless nights. The hard work is over and has paid off: time to enjoy being congratulated by your family and friends and having your picture taken while wearing a rectangular cap for posterity. This year’s Design postgrads had their day of pictures, joy and rectangular hats yesterday morning, so we’d thought I’d be a good idea to take the pulse of the event and mingle with the crowd at the post-ceremony reception in the tents on College Green, just to hear in what state of mind are the Masters of Arts (or Research) in Design saying their goodbyes to Goldsmiths. Did they enjoy their studies? Would they recommend their course to newcomers? Do they have exciting future projects waiting for them?

It wasn’t easy to identify Design students amongst so many happy graduates celebrating their achievements, but luckily we eventually found Svenja Bickert and Linda Kwon, who studied for an MA in Design Futures. As its very name says, the course encouraged the students to think about the future of design, and also to apply a critical way of thinking. Designers aren’t necessarily used to writing essays and reflecting on their work in writing, said Linda and Svenja, but during their MA they were challenged to do so and they welcomed the challenge. Continue reading “MA Design students at the presentation ceremonies”