17.06.08
Two views of Saint Martins

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Two johnson banks designers, Kath Tudball and Julia Woollams, were special judges at this year’s Central Saint Martins show - these are their notes from the day’s judging.

We visited the Central Saint Martins BA graphic design degree show this weekend to judge best in show - the first year of an annual prize set up in memory of former student Joss Turley, who would have graduated this summer. The prize was awarded last night at the private view.

The show is currently on at the Bargehouse (the exhibition space at the Oxo Tower), which is a great venue, and it made a very nice change from the previous few years of traipsing up hundreds of stairs to reach the show hidden away at the college’s Farringdon site.

After walking round the three floors of very diverse work (the CSM course covers graphic design, illustration and advertising), we both agreed that Clara Brizard stood out as best in show. We thought she had great ideas and a very well presented show.

Our favourites from her show were her German type laser-cut posters and her random-generating graphics program. The posters entitled ‘Beyond my Window’ (and designed to display on a window) illustrate the history of German type through basic German phrases. Here’s a few of them,

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and a detail of one.

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Her graphics program, called ‘If this is graphic design’ questions the style over content issue. You can type in any word and generate your own instant, random ‘designs’. Here’s a couple of our ‘potato’ posters we ‘created’ on Sunday.

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We also wanted to commend a few other students.

Diego Ulrich, who won the runner’s up prize, made a beautifully complex typographic installation on the history of the printed word.

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The joint show of Live Bergitte Molvaer and Johanna Bonnevier looked very professional as well as having some intriguing pieces: Live showed a project updating Razzle Dazzle camouflage (originally a camouflage paint scheme used mainly on ships in the First World War) and Johanna investigated RGB colour as a 3d type project. They then combined their ideas from both projects to make another 3D typographic piece and a pair of chairs, which play with perspective like the Razzle Dazzle camouflage.

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We also thought the illustration student Craig Boagey’s highly detailed pencil portraits of people with ASBOs were disturbingly lovely.

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Other highlights include: Madoka Takuma’s eco-friendly alphabet packaging;

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Jeeyun Michaella Chung’s notebooks, with ruled lines slanting in the correct direction for left-handed, right-handed,

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and both-handed people;

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Olga Frolova’s clothes-label map t-shirt illustrating the world distribution of garment production;

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Niky Röhreke’s global warming illustrations;

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and the advertising duo, Sophie Isherwood and Sophie Reeves’ project for missing kids showing toys demonstrating in Trafalgar Square.

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The show is open until Thursday 19 June, 11am-6pm, at The Bargehouse, Bargehouse Street, London, SE1 9PH. Apologies for any name misspellings or dodgy credits, email info [at] johnsonbanks.co.uk and we will amend asap.