BA Design – Page 20 – Goldsmiths Design Blog

Hyphen: the 2017 BA Design show

It’s been an uncertain year. Predictions, forecasts, expectations are unstable and shifting. Isolationalism has currency and perilous describes our time. Profound decisions have been made by slender majority. Outcomes for us all hang in the balance. Nobody knows.

The space of the hyphen positions us dialectically between things; things in apparent opposition, division, contrast or antithesis. This tension demands attention. Habitual patterns of thinking and everyday ways of doing are jolted out of sync. For the 2017 graduating BA Design students at Goldsmiths this space is where their practice is defined.

It is a space of connection and synthesis, one in which opposites work through that tension to discover, create and question design. This involves our students in a dynamic process, which is arrested and captured in our annual degree show. And we invite you to share this space; to reflect, initiate, mediate, prompt, recast, converge, interrupt your own ways of thinking about our world, and taking action to make it better.

Key info:

Private view Thursday 15th June 6-10pm

Open Fri/Sat/Sun 10am – 7pm

Mon 10am – 4pm

Website

Dash MacDonald: “ I’m continually surprised at how great Goldsmiths Design students are”

Dash MacDonald is one half of Dash’n’Dem, a design partnership whose work challenges conventions, emphasising creative collaboration and critical engagement with politics and society. Dash has been an associate lecturer at Goldsmiths Design for the past two years, and he recently joined the permanent teaching staff of our department as a third year studio tutor; he will also be involved in the Politics and Participation studio of our new, post-disciplinary MA programme. We’ve interviewed Dash to find out more about his approach to teaching at Goldsmiths:

How did you decide you wanted to join our department?

I started here as a second year studio tutor, and I think that was what really cemented me wanting to get a permanent post. The second year of the Design BA at Goldsmiths is really exciting in terms of connecting Design to the world and thinking about different scales of social, political, economic engagement. Working through that as a studio tutor, and seeing how smart the students were, and how exciting the work they were producing was, made me want to be part of that culture. That year, we worked on a live project with the Centre for Investigative Journalism, looking at public finance initiatives, and how design intervenes in the public understanding of public finance initiatives. I was managing that live brief with Liam Healy and the CIJ, and that showed me the potential of working in Goldsmiths, and the fact that there are so many other interesting research centres and areas here makes it really exciting in terms of what can happen in the future. Continue reading “Dash MacDonald: “ I’m continually surprised at how great Goldsmiths Design students are””

Students show their photo skills, recreate Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody cover

For their Technical Studies class, first year BA Design students had to recreate an image from an Album cover or film still using available lights and the techniques they had learnt. Here they are remaking Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody cover:

First year students redesign breakfast to be more sustainable

A glimpse at some recent student work, from senior workshop tutor Richard Brett:

“Ecology of Breakfast introduced the Ecology and Design module to Year 1 BA Design students, using the familiarity of food and drink to present themes of ecology and sustainability, and to investigate their relationship to design practice, making, consumption and waste.

Students were asked to bring their breakfast with them to eat, drink and share during the session, and we set up the teaching space in a refectory style. Using the tablecloths provided, students mapped and analysed the lifecycle of their breakfast to better understand where materials came from and where they went once discarded. They then looked at ways to apply principles of sustainable design to reduce the ecological impact of their breakfast and presented their ideas to the group.

Students questioned the speed and disposability of breakfast, suggesting ‘break-slow’ as a more considered alternative, while others suggested single-serving cereal pouches that dissolve in milk. The group also explored the potential of supermarket rooftops to provide locally produced ‘zero air miles’ fruit and salad veg to the shop below.

Hopefully the session will prompt students to begin to confidently question the implications of using materials and processes they may initially know very little about as they develop their studio projects in the design studios and workshops.”