Last week the Designers Northern Alliance (DNA) exhibition took place at The Triangle in Manchester. The two day event was ‘designed to bring together representatives from industry and academia from the North to develop closer links and share ideas on best practice.’
It was a great success for both graduates and employers and looks set to become an annual event!

It was also a success for UCLAN with Mike Potts winning ‘Best Graphic Design in Show’ for his Rolling Stone self initiated project…

The project is a series of information graphics archiving the Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Songs and Albums into song length and year of release. The basic premise of the piece is to look visually appealing, yet when approached, become engaging and provide a catalyst for conversation. Something the knowledgeable readership of Rolling Stone magazine and music lovers in general would find captivating.”

(Rolling stone project: click on the images to view PDF’s.)

Cheryl Poyser was also commended in the ‘Best in Digital’ category for her ‘Is facebook pointless’ project.

Congratulations all round!

Many congratulations to UCLAN 1st year digital design student Andreas Lindén for his success in the recent Big Chip Awards. With his work on the Nosey Parker iPhone app.

Produced after winning a placement at Manchester based digital design agency Stardotstar the app cleaned up in both the professional and student catagories.

‘Nosey Parker’ is the only car park location application for the iPhone covering the UK. It gives the user the nearest and safest locations, cheapest prices and further details of over 13,400 car parks – that is 1,8 million car parking spaces – across the country. With an estimated 16,000 car parks in the UK, ‘Nosey Parker’ gives the user access to the largest and most up-to-date database on the iPhone. Reached no.23 in the Apple Apps Store on 2/3/2010. Project produced on work placement at Stardotstar, Manchester.

A brief Flash demo is available here too.

Louise Talbot in 3rd year graphic design has been awarded GOLD in the j20 brief for her work. She goes through to compete for overall bronze, silver and gold over all the briefs set by starpack.

APG Highlight posters:

The Climate Group book:

Good luck for the second day of judging tomorrow. Also I see that our good friends at The Chase also have an in book. Well done and can someone send through a visual so we can pop it up here. Cheers.

Richard Wright has won this years Turner Prize. The creator of a subtle and unashamedly beautiful fresco in gold leaf has been named the winner of this year’s most prestigious UK art prize. Glasgow-based Richard Wright, 49, used the age-old, painstaking techniques of the old masters to make his glistening wall painting for the Turner prize exhibition at Tate Britain in London. And yet when the show closes on 3 January 2010, it will simply be painted over in white emulsion and lost forever. (Silk or Matt?)

Symon Machin. Packaging for Fortnum & Mason based on the theme of Antarctic explorers.

Mark Arrowsmith & Drew Pountney. Packaging for a new Homebase range aimed at first time growers.

Kate Hilton. Packaging for a new Homebase range aimed at first time growers.

Sam Evans. direct mail for the homeless charity Crisis. The brief asked to highlight the work Crisis do and avoid cliches to do with homelessness.

Tom Cohen. Brief as above.

And finally Ben Tustin, Mat Taylor and Ruth Weston for the KPMG brief. The brief was to produce a large scale artwork for KPMG, a financial company. The idea involved LED panels echoing weather  patterns outside of the building.

Kinetic BMW from David J Engel on Vimeo.