Now we're supervising the external vinyl and see how it's looking, how it's coming together.
Yeah. I think that's the plan. It doesn't feel that big for now?
Nah, it's okay. It's a bit small. It's what we expected, we already tried in mock-ups.
It looks exactly what, yeah, what we had in mind I think.
Hey! Hi! Welcome, ohh! Welcome to the paradise of graphic design!
Yeah, so that's our studio. We moved here like two months ago.
It's just four of us so far.
John was assisting the design of another LCC Shows
when I was graduating and he liked my work so we
started speaking there. Maybe a couple of months after meeting that we said like
we need to pitch for this. It was like a very stupid idea but
I knew that we as alumni could apply,
so we got a chance, we insisted that we got a chance
to apply for the pitch. So when we started working on the proposal we asked ourselves
what's the role of exhibition design in a visually saturated show, and what's the
role of exhibition design in a venue with a complex navigation system.
We thought that the biggest challenge for the show was to have a very strong wayfinding system.
In order not to compete with the student's work
we though of having the wayfinding mainly on the floor.
We also need, I don't know how, we need to find a way of actually putting this super
straight on the floor to be honest. This is like 'welcome to the studio'...
London College of Communication is actually a very complicated building so for us
it's easy to move around, but we guess that for people who visit you can get lost.
LCC isn't a gallery? No we don't have any like specific gallery places.
I think the most kind of 'gallery like' is probably the Well just because it's separated
from everything else, but the whole rest of, all of our gallery spaces are
basically giant corridors and so the limitations of that are kind of health and
safety considerations, sort of sculptural work - where it goes? But also the amount
of people that pass through every day that's potential for work to be damaged.
So it's kind of navigating all of those things but without restricting kind of
the creativity of the students.
Okay so down here in WG14 is where a lot of the
behind-the-scenes kind of action takes place, so I'm going to introduce you to
some of the people who make things happen for Degree Shows.
So my role in particular is around promoting the shows to the public,
making sure there's no errors in the print guide, checking all the copy, pulling
things together, letting the designers know about any amends they need.
So we're talking about kind of coloured contrasts to make sure that the designs are readable,
but also as well that we can put them on every single platform and that actually it has impact.
Degree Shows are the biggest shows that we do, they're the
most hands-on, it's around kind of heightened emotions from the students
especially as they're handing in their work, and they've got the pressure of
putting on exhibition, they've got friends and family coming as well as
industry so it can be quite a pressure cooker.
In the opening night because he gets so busy, this wayfinding on the floor will
be activated by human interaction, by performers. We started looking at several
references like the staff at Whitney Museum that they are like wearing special like t-shirts
so you can spot them and go to ask a question. I think the idea of bringing
the performance is trying to understand what are the limits of graphic design?
If we limit ourselves to a traditional design of a container in the end there
are many things that are designed that are out of her control and as
designers this is something that we don't really want to happen.
For the past year I've been working at the Tate designing exhibitions and it's been a lot of
fun and I learned a lot, and it's really exciting, but it doesn't go very
experimental, it's just always the same thing and everything it's within the guidelines.
So if we want to go experimental I think this is the right place to do it.
Obviously it's in a museum we won't be able to do what we're doing at LCC so.
I mean the most important part is the student work.
Umm. In we go.
Kelly's going to walk us round the show and show us what state everything's in.
This is Photojournalism and Documentary Photography, who are installing from today.
So they've got all of their mock-ups up.
There's a lot more kind of wall-based work, and film and kind of screenings.
Including everyone in our office it's about
eighteen people, plus we have five technicians working with us,
plus two course-specific technicians, the AV team which is another five people, yeah.
There's about 40 people from start to finish in the whole production of the shows,
not including the designers so that's 42.
My team didn't tell me about this, but never mind.
Is that it? Yeah, no this is the signage but it's printed in the library so this is...
So the wayfinding system has these things on the peg boards and then here goes the
course signage and then the tapes on the floor which help people navigate and
suggest where they need to go and also that's where the performer is going to
perform on top of those lines. We're going to have another plinth up here as
well where the performer is going to be both on the floor and on the plinth
performing, and the task of this performer is to like move the
people on to Act Three which is around the corner so that's kind of his main tasks just...
So that then you can say 'oh... you may want to go over there' okay?
It's the whole same thing like 'here's an artwork' okay? So it really is much more
like spear. From there then try to see if you can bring the other one across, yeah.
Which then allows you to then let them know that you're gonna go maybe this way...
So the idea that we have at the beginning is that these active wayfinding is not
only guiding you through the building but also augmenting a little bit the experience,
like giving you tips or asking you questions. It also has to do with the
idea that graphic design is sometimes a very surface centric discipline so we want to
like go beyond that, to go beyond the visual.
Look at this, look at this! What's in the boxes?
Floor tape. What's it for? For the signage, the wayfinding system.
We've had a really exciting delivery of the fliers! Ahhh. Wow. Stunning!
On the Degree Shows Launch Night we want to go, we want to stream live from Instagram, Facebook
and YouTube, so we're doing a tech run through. When are you live? Oh you can't do it because
you're in the, you need to download the app. Oh lord.
Are we live? Yeah, this is a meta moment for you. Ok should I go live? How do I go live? I've never been live.
The lettering is just really clear I don't think I've ever seen it just say LCC
Degree Shows 2019 on the side of buildings sop that you can see it.
The bubbles are just dreamy. Could stare at that all day. Love a bubble, ooh.
This is a must have definitely I think we, the concept of the proposal was to be as much as
understated in the gallery and as extra and over-the-top as
possible online, so this is part of the concept, so I think we we have to be live online.
Looking at LCC as a diversity of disciplines not only as a print heritage, not only that and also the idea
of having a more dynamic and sensorial experience of the visitor in the show. We don't want to
like make a tribute to the heritage or like look into the future.
We just want to be in the present.
We're two days away from Show 2, how do you feel? Yeah terrible.
Is it going to be done in time? It will be done in time it's
always like a high pressure situation where you think that it's not going to
happen and then it all comes together in the end. I think it's different to what
we've done before. I think it's, kind of, usually the focus
has been more on the Schools rather than the College, and this identity unites
the whole of the College and all of the courses under one sort of branding
system rather than each School having its own individual sort of strand.
Love the floor signage! It's something that we haven't done before, but also using the floor is so much more
easy to navigate different spaces because they're all connected in different ways.
Are you going to get an early night? Yeah we need to go now back to the studio and get all
the tunics, the iron. Prepare everything that we need to bring tomorrow, that we
forget everything, anything. What are you going to wear tomorrow?
What are we going to wear? I haven't even thought of that.
We have tunics for ourselves.
Degree Shows is a massive project it takes everyone working kind of full-on for
quite a few weeks. Kind of everyone in the whole department and across the
College really, in the galleries painting walls, writing copy, printing stuff out
sticking stuff together, it's just completely hands on deck really.
Yeah it's, it's the largest event where the wider public will come and it's a
lot of, not because of the students, but the friends and family want to come see
their work, as well as kind of industry through industry breakfasts and events.
It's the point where I think we're representing the College at its best
basically in regards to the teaching. How we're delivering courses, how students
are delivering their work, what they're producing. It's probably one of our most
important shows that we do.
Yes I think this year's probably been the more successful that we've done and
I think it's the most, the most kind of cohesive one that we've done, I think
it's working on all platforms. It's much more fluid, and much more kind of playful and sort of experimental.
We just want to try new things. I think there's been a formula. Basically it's how we wanted it this year.
It's kind of, it emphasised the kind of students work and
let's the work itself kind of really pop and shine, rather than it be blended in with something or
competing maybe. I think what makes these grad shows so great is that
usually students might not have the opportunity to showcase their things.
Especially in London is expensive have space so it's about to utilise the space
being at uni is really good. Personally I find it very interesting
because it's inspiring, also for professionals in the industry as well.
Yeah it was really good and I loved the messages and you could feel the support
you could tell that everyone was there for someone. Not only I say one course
buts all the courses together so everyone gets a taste of what LCC's
doing, what the students are doing, and it's just overall a really nice atmosphere.
Always come every year, it's always super busy, there's always loads a good
work on, always like having a look around.
We're here today to catch up with John and Carlos in their
studio, Degree Shows is over, so we're just going to see like how it all went. Let's go!
How was it? Uh, I think it was great, overall. Of course there's always like
things we would like to improve, but I'm quite happy with the results. Yeah, I think there was a good
response from, from the audience and yeah, we did have as much fun as we could with all the other things that
were adding like the performance and anything that was not part of the brief.
I think it's be super interesting because we've been able to explore things that
maybe in other place we worked before we haven't been able to explore.
We pitched with the right idea to the right, in the right place, it's been a little
intense and a lot of back and forth, but I think that the result is really good so we're super happy.
I agree.
You agree.