Sue Clarke took students on a new visit to Tate Publishing yesterday.Tate Publishing is one of the world’s leading publishers on the visual arts. They aim to bring the best new writing on art and the highest quality reductions to the widest possible range of readers. The students found the visit very informative. Many thanks to all at Tate Publishing.
Earlier during the day Rachel took a group of students to the Folio Society. This is another much admired publisher for which recent. Falmouth Students have been commissioned, namely Jim Boswell with illustrations for ‘The Drowned World’ and ‘The Traitor’s Purse’. Students were met by Sheri and Raquel who gave a great talk about the company and it’s commissioning process. Students really appreciated being able to peruse through the amazing Folio society library. Many thanks…
Later that morning Sue took students to Transworld. This always is an informative visit and today was no exception. Tranworld is the UK’s leading fiction publisher. Originally founded in 1950 as a mass market publisher. The visit allowed students an opportunity to ask questions about how books are commissioned and projects handled. This is incredibly useful for illustration students. Many thanks to all involved.
Later in the day Sue Clarke took students firstly to Oh Comely Magazine and then both Nigel and Sue took separate groups to see Louise Power at Walker books.
Both were excellent visits. It was good to be reminded of how many Falmouth Alumni have been commissioned in recent years for the innovative magazine ‘Oh Comely’. Oh Comely is a lifestyle magazine. Each issue is based around a theme, something that our students are used to doing. This month’s theme is ‘Secrets’. Included here are some spreads from recent Falmouth graduate Owen Gent
Walker Books is the world’s leading independent publisher of children’s books. Louise Power is an art editor that has been working there for over twenty years and has had a long association with Falmouth Illustration. Louise gave a really insightful presentation about the process of developing ideas for a picture book for children, focussing on the development of pace and flow and character design.
Many thanks to Oh Comely and Walker Books.
Falmouth illustration alumni Bjorne Rune Lie’s book, ‘The Wolf Whistle’ (Nobrow 2010)has been chosen by Martin Salisbury to feature in his book ‘100 Great Children’s Picture Books’. This is a great achievement with Bjorn’s work sitting alongside books by illustrators such as Laura Carlin, Beatrice Alemagna and Jon Klassen.
Nine Falmouth illustration students were given an insight into how editorial illustration is commissioned by Maggie Murphy and Pauline Doyle at the Guardian Newspaper this afternoon. It was a fascinating visit and great to know that our Falmouth Illustration alumni from last year, Thomas Pullin, is still producing great work for the Guardian.
Five Falmouth Illustration students this afternoon visited Sparks Studio as part of this weeks Level One study trip to London.
Sparks is an innovative branding and design agency that was started in 2003. We are fortunate to have an ex Falmouth illustration student as our contact at Sparks, namely Lizzie Kevan. Thanks to Lizzie and Sparks Studio for hosting our student for what turned out to be a really insightful visit.
The visits for the week got under way this morning when Sue Clarke took a group of 1st year Falmouth Illustration students to visit Alex Kirby a senior designer at Faber & Faber
Alex is a former Graphic Design graduate from Falmouth, graduating in 2001 and has been working for the iconic Faber & Faber publishing company for the last 10 years. Many thanks to Alex and colleagues for giving up their time to see students.
Incidently we shall be taking students to see another former Falmouth Graduate, Richard Bravery, who now works as a senior designer at Penguin Books tomorrow.
Finally after a long train journey from Cornwall we have arrived in London for this year’s study trip.
This year’s trip is lining up to be a good one. visits that have been organised for students include: Faber & Faber, Sparks Studio, Human After All, The Guardian, The Telegraph Magazine, Penguin Books, Egmont, Oh Comely Magazine, Walker Books, The Folio Society, The Artworks, Transworld, Nobrow, Tate Publishing and Dorling Kindersley.
Students can also look forward to our annual Illustration Forum, held at The London College of Communication on Thursday. Speakers this year are: Olivier Kugler, Jonny Hannah and Aude Van Ryn
As many of you will know there has been quite a lot of ongoing work on the Illustration studios during the summer. Both MA and BA Illustration courses now occupy the 3 floors of the Fox 2 building at Woodlane. The final stages of this work are almost complete with enormous sliding doors being installed to create partitions between the 1st year and 2nd and 3rd year studios being finished this week. New windows are also close to being installed along the side of the building facing the courtyard. These windows will hopefully bring much needed light into the 1st and 2nd floor studios. Other improvements include the creation of new offices and seminar rooms, breakout spaces and the creation of a new sleek seminar space within the top floor studio. Here are some images of the new walls and windows about to be installed. Photos of the finished studios will be posted soon….
Last week saw the first Big Draw event organised by the illustration department at Falmouth University. The week had been meticulously organised by senior lecturer Linda Scott and involved workshops from MA student Poppy Robinson and Illustration lecturer Nick Mott and a daily reading from Moby dick by fine art lecturer Gillian Wylde.
The theme, ‘maritime’ was inspired by Linda’s visit to the library archives of the fantastic Maritime Museum in Falmouth who kindly allowed us to source material to kick start visual responses to the theme. The sessions were augmented with maritime sounds and projected images and films related to the core theme and was also filmed by Film students.
Students from a number of courses took part during the week as did pupils from Helston Community College and Treviglas Community College. All in all it was a great experience for us to host and hopefully for those that took part. Many thanks to everyone who made it happen including Nick Mott, Poppy Robinson, Gillian Wylde, The Maritime Museum, The Big Draw, the Falmouth School of Art and in particular Linda Scott.
Here are a selection of images from the week….
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