Anyone even remotely connected with design education at the moment will know that MA courses (or ‘masters’) are appearing out of the blue at an alarming rate. As an educational growth area, the Universities are cashing in and it won’t be long before you can do an MA in ‘grid systems and the kerning of Akzidenz’ (followed by an Mphil in baseline grids).
But out of all this activity and frantic course creation comes some good. I've been banging on for years that undergrad courses aren't successfully teaching branding and then out of the blue, the LCC (London College of Communication) has started a year-long MA branding course, whose first year of students are holding their degree show this week.
To be fair, out of twenty or so students, maybe not all of them will walk into jobs at Wolff Olins. But it’s interesting all the same to spend an evening discussing ‘generative identity’, the apparent influence of this particular post about flexible branding trends, and seeing a handful of interesting students.
Edouard Pecher’s work was probably the stand out, especially his ever-changing logo and the stationery for the Kaai Theater.
To use his words, ‘the entire system is based on oppositions in terms of open or enclosed areas, direction, size, texture and placement. Strict rules enabled the creation of a graphic identity that is not recognised by a mark, but for its graphic style’.
I also enjoyed Jordan Blood's work for The Leatherhead Theatre.
And Gretta Khoury’s work for an Arabic Calligraphy Musuem was tastefully done.
A good start, and an MA that could actually be genuinely valuable. Next year’s course more than doubles in size to fifty students, so it’ll be interesting to see where this goes next.
The show is one until tomorrow (the 5th) at the LCC, Elephant and Castle.
By Michael Johnson