Emily Carr 4th Year Design Series – Marcela Huerta

Continuing in our showcase of 4^th Year ECUAD student work is this project by Marcela Huerta. Pixi is a gaming magazine targeted towards women that aims to include them in the sometimes exclusive technology community. This piece uses bright and colourful visual language reminiscent of 8bit video games to engage the reader. Marcela’s goal with Pixi was to make gaming and technology interesting and credible to female readers, as well as young professionals in general.

The iPad magazine prototype video is available here: http://vimeo.com/37046239

~angie

Emily Carr 4th Year Design Series - Briana Garelli

This week’s featured ECUAD student work is by Briana Garelli. "My Unborn Daughter" is a hybrid novel written by Jesus Ambriz. A hybrid novel explores literary content by making it visually engaging, expressive and challenging to the reader. The goal of this project was to create a piece that innovated and challenged the conventions of print design in literature, reflecting the potential of print design in the collaboration between writers and designers.

~tyukawa

Emily Carr 4th Year Design Series - Max Olson

Once again, FAC would like to share a select series of student work from Don and Tak’s 4th Year Core Studio class this past Fall at the Emily Carr University of Art and Design.

4th year student Max Olson has created a contemporary brand identity design and signage system for MOCA Calgary, (the Museum of Contemporary Art Calgary). The main challenges were to elevate the public profile of MOCA and facilitate the museum's model of setting up a variety of smaller gallery venues throughout the city. The solution was to provide the museum with a flexible kit of elements that could be used to create a vast set of deliverables unique to the featured art and specific venue. In the end, Max found the time to create marketing material, office collateral, a flexible signage system for exterior applications as well as a functional Wordpress website.

~tyukawa

The Wiser System

During the Spring term in the Langara College CS Communication and Ideation Design Program, I had the privilege of teaching a new course called - Independent Project. A class similar to that of Emily Carr's Senior Core Studio in which students were given the opportunity to choose their own topic/problem. They were to research its respective narrative and re-invent it for the better. As always, the students rose to the challenge and produced some promising results. I wanted to take the opportunity to share a certain project produced by Eugene Huh for its relevancy in our everyday lives.

From day one, Eugene wanted to help citizens make more rational, sustainable, decisions when buying products. His project was called "The Wiser System" and his goal was to influence consumers right at their particular point-of-purchase. Inspired by the Nutritional Facts labels on food products, he created a system that highlights a product's impact in three key areas: Environment, Social Welfare (community) and Personal Health.

To help convey his concept, he created a simply charming video reel using stop-motion animation and paper cutouts. Quite the fitting execution.



He also created 2 more reels in order to contextualize the real world application of the system on an iPhone (note: they're still in early stages - but his human sound effects are great).





A special thanks goes to Selma Zafar, Lisa Hemingway, Dean Ponto and Cindy Sheldan for their expert advice and encouragement to Eugene over the course of the term.

If you'd like to learn more from Eugene, feel free to contact him at eugene_huh@yahoo.com

~tyukawa

ECU Gradshow

Tak and I enjoyed the opportunity to see the work of this year’s Emily Carr University grad show. This group is close to our hearts, having had the opportunity to instruct them on their fall semester projects, and it was nice to see them show off their hard work and creativity. The work is solid this year, and it’s always surprising how polished the final solutions are presented. 

This time of year, there’s always debates and politics around design programs as everyone tries to measure who’s doing what best. An evening like this reminds us that at the heart of all the work is people, all on different parts of a journey, that will lead to many different destinations.

Congrats ECU grads of 2009.

Ginger Ngo, a talented typographer who we had the privilege of having in our office for the better part of 6 months.

Joomi Choi and Mi Hyun Sung presenting their game that deals with the topic of death.

Chloe Lan and her project on the Plantilions (a must see to understand what they are).

Don Williams.

We, the Universe

From September to December of this year, Don and I were honored to be involved with the Emily Carr University on Granville Island in Vancouver. We co-taught a class called Senior Core Studio, in which 4th year students get to work with a topic of their choice. The students had 12 weeks to take their projects from Concept to Completion. Our job was to listen, empathize, motivate and encourage.

There were so many great projects, so many great ideas, however there was one project that stood out because of its wonderful mixture of concept, imagery, narration and execution. The project was aptly titled “We, the Universe” by Ms. Maggie Chok. Believe it or not, the universe was just one or four areas that she was hoping to explore within her all encompassing topic.

Maggie set out to explore the physical and metaphorical implications of DEPTH that transcended traditional norms such as art and literature. In order to achieve this kind of reverence for life, Space was to be her mechanism. She created a series of four books that utilized unique philosophical and metaphorical devices to approach outer space: Matter, Forces, Scale and Perception. Her goal for each book was to illicit a sense of awe and wonder in whomever read through them. Mission accomplished.

Nuff said, have a look. All Images courtesy of Maggie Chok

~ tyukawa (We’re looking forward to our next opportunity at ECU in 2009)