Student Work

My 4th year design class at Emily Carr University has produced some solid work for their first assignment in Advanced Print Publications.

The brief consisted in designing a promotional piece for a not for profit. It could either promote the organisation or one of its programmes and events. Only requirements: that the final product be printed on something and the solution be appropriate to the audience(s) and goals set forth in each student’s discovery process.

Vince Lo focussed on the International Care Ministries, a charity that serves people living in poverty in the Philippines and Hong Kong by training young envoys to contribute to bettering life in the slums. His final solution took the form of a vinyl lettering installation in Hong Kong churches.

Alvin Kwan tackled the cause of sex workers’ rights to the benefit of the PACE Society. His solution leveraged a simple juxtaposition device, where the audience could scratch off a portion of the image—the threatening part— to reveal facts about life as a sex worker.

Dara Wren looked at ways of reaching a new audience to continue David Suzuki’s work as he passes off his legacy.

In all instances, the success of the solution relied on its specificity. Arriving at this level seemed to be the biggest roadblock to overcome during the process phase.

Many students struggled with the idea of honing messaging so it would reach a specific audience to reach a predetermined goal. In the end, the value we bring as designers stems just as much from our ability to craft engaging solutions as our capability for identifying and distilling messages until they are specific enough to be convincing to a given audience.

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All projects used with permission.