Powerful design

A design by second year Graphic Design BA(Hons) student Charlotte Bassett has been chosen to appear on the cover on PrintWeek magazine’s supplement Power of Print.

The competition is run annually by PrintWeek for students on the Graphic Design BA(Hons) course at the University of Brighton Faculty of Arts.

This year, students were asked to show how digital and print technologies can work together to produce something that is more powerful than they are individually.

PrintWeek judges described the standard of this year’s entries as “extremely high” and “refreshingly diverse. Submissions included a “delightfully ramshackle piece of sculpture or an intricate and woven piece of computer-aided design.”

Shortlisted student Hannah Blows said ”Although people see our generation as the online generation, we actually still see print as a more personal and if print is working hard enough and doing its job, then it can be incredibly effective.”

“The media say we all love iPads and smartphones and the like and want to be talked to only through this medium. It’s not actually always true. Print still has a place, we want to be talked to in different ways through different mediums. We want variety.” Adds shortlisted student Con Chrisoulis.

At first glance, Charlotte’s winning design resembles a cardiograph formed from what seem to be Matrix-style runs of code. Look closer, though, and individual letter forms emerge, each unique in their creation – some faded at the edges, some bold, some hardly there.  Running through the heard of these letters is a quote: “These contrasting technologies are bound together through a well-balanced relationship between organic and electronic.”

The judges chose Charlotte’s entry because “it is a beautifully subtle and engaging design. As we looked closer, however, we realised just how well it fit the brief.”

Charlotte said: “I realised the print versus digital debate that had been ongoing for some time – as far back as the 1990s – and yet it was something we are still struggling with today – we still haven’t realized how to mix the channels effectively,” she explains. “Hence, with my design I wanted to try and break down the boundaries between digital and print – I wanted to merge the two in order to get away from a binary debate and to let the two mediums freely mix. We are still fussing over boundaries for the two now and I wanted to get away from that and look to a future where those boundaries do not exist.”

The PrintWeek competition is one of many opportunities open to students studying at the University of Brighton Faculty of Arts.