It is here in our Critical Studies where we tell.
But we can’t tell you everything – we still have to leave some things unsaid.
Some of what we have learned has to remain tacit, available only in the work itself.
So we don’t explain, we simply frame what we do, looking up once in a while to take in the bigger picture.
You know that shot in ‘Jaws’ – the ‘contra zoom’ where the focus switches between foreground and background?
This is what we are doing with our Critical Studies – zooming in and out of that wider context.
It would be easier not to do this – easier not to have to walk to the studio past student encampments protesting the war in Gaza or the Ukraine, not to feel overwhelmed by the climate emergency, to not have to wonder about how to get creative jobs in an increasingly gentrified and precarious creative industry in a Northern city hollowed out by decades of disinvestment and to not have to be indebted forever for this experience.
It would be better to turn away from this, to ignore it or look at it in horror through our fingers, or to use art and design as a balm or an escape from this.
But as designers we have to locate ourselves against this bigger picture – designing is itself a utopian act. It says that this world is made by us and so it can also be unmade by us. We can make it clearer, more beautiful, more absorbing, more unique, more diverse, more accepting.
By confronting this bigger picture in our Critical Studies, we are growing up and through and out and round and into.
Maisie Allen
In this Critical Study essay film, Maisie is interested in patterns created by nature, particularly those created through biological processes and its importance to her in thinking about teaching in secondary school.
Seb Power
Seb's Critical Study essay film explores the relationship between modernism, Brutalism and the Japanese Metabolist movement within his graphic design practice.
Nik Pivinskis
Jake Wilson
In his Critical Study essay film, Jake Wilson investigates the relationship between technology and nature, looking at the work of James Bridle.
Fred Williamson
Fred's Critical Study essay film is an investigation into the nature of abstraction and graphic communication.
Josh Steele
Ellie Cianchi
Ellie look at the nature of perfectionism in both design and her own life.
Abbie Brumpton
Abbie's film looks at the semiotic, social and economic nature of everyday items.
George McGuiness
George McGuiness investigates the ways in which photographers and filmmakers, particularly those associated with Japan, have captured everyday life through poetic means.
Josh Steele talks through his obsession with outer space and how this has been documented through photographic technologies.
Nik's Critical Study Film investigates the phenomenon of Frutiger Aero a digital aesthetic that posits a nostalgia for visual culture in the early 2000s.
Daniel Almeida
Dan Almeida's final Critical Study essay film is a rhetorical call for us to reject the phone in favour of genuine human interaction.
Jade Berry
Jade's Critical Study looks at how graphic design has worked to help market women's football in the last five years.
Harrison Pawelec
Harrison's Critical Study essay film is an investigation into ephemerality and the Japanese Buddhist notion of mono no aware, the recognition of the transitory nature of design.
Beth Nesham
Beth's Research Film from Semester One investigates the relationship between graphic communication and healthcare.
Joseph Nolan
Joe's Research film explores how graphic communication can be used to raise awareness and protest socio-economic inequalities and injustice.
Hollie Walker
Hollie's Research film traces a history of the Sun as powerful symbol, icon and ideogram across a number of cultures throughout history.
Jake Wilson
Jake's Research film from Semester One is an attempt to understand notions of Hyperreality and the simulacra within contemporary digital graphic design.
Seb Power
Seb's initial Research film from Semester One is an exploration of the relationship between Brutalist architecture and graphic communication.
Fred Williamson
Fred's initial Research film looks at the nature of mythology within contemporary graphic design and branding, looking at the influence of early runic and pictogrammmic forms of visual language on branding and visual identity.