The art of design

It's called industrial decay, a trendy look that at first glance is incongruous with a glossy design exhibit.

Once a row of tidy offices, the fourth floor of Edmonton's Birks Building is completely gutted, the L-shaped room a massive demolition scar. A man vacuums bits of plaster, chips of concrete and little gobs of garbage off the permanently stained concrete floor. Tiles are ripped out of the pockmarked ceiling and electrical wires dangle from holes once masked by cool fixtures. Pipes are visible and the only heat comes from rusted, pre-war water radiators sitting under grimy paint-chipped windowsills.

At first it's a bit of shocker to realize this crumbling environment will house the MacEwan School of Communication Design Studies grad show, now up and running until Saturday, May 1. However, 86 graduates swarm into the room with their slick portfolios and infectious energy. They each carry anywhere from five to 10 pieces of their best work and within hours the deterioration is transformed into a vibrant exhibit exploding with imagination, colour and intensity.

Each of the graduates has trained for three years in one of five majors: graphic design, exhibit presentation, digital media, motion imaging (video) and photography. The show, titled Meet the Minds Behind the Design Study Machine, is a pageant of illustrations, photographs, three-dimensional models, mock-ups, documentaries, videos, web designs and animation.

Right at the entrance is the student-conceived, eye-popping Design Machine, a shaky but workable three-wheeled contraption cobbled together from recycled bicycle tires, farm machinery, gears and wood.

"Over three years our students learn varied things and there are so many different parts to education. Like the machine, they don't get the overall picture of what they've accomplished until they see their work in an art show and they realize how the program has prepared them. It's a metaphor," says department co-chair Kathy Neiman.

Every project expresses the design process that melds artistic vision, technology, media and text to deliver a message. "We use the same materials as someone in a fine art program but the intent is different. It serves a purpose. It's commercial. It informs. It promotes something. It could be advertising, education or building awareness."

Communications

Welcome to the world of visual communication. Billboards. Magazine advertisements. Web promos. Movie trailers. It's all around us and it's so commonplace no one thinks twice about it except the creative minds behind it all. And the savvy design students are the advertising conduit between clients needing to get the word out and their target market. In essence the work of these design students will influence and define business, government, the non-profit sector and consumer patterns for years to come.

With most graduates in their early 20s, the subject matter reflects their age group's contemporary interests — music, break-dancing, cars, food and clothing. One of their more popular advertising gambits is the use of celebrities to sell a product, idea or even using faces belonging to Jim Carrey, Jay-Z, Lady Gaga, David Duchovny, Eryka Badu and even an eight-tentacled Octo-Mom.

There are five St. Albert designers in this graduating class and they're itching to get their ideas out. Former Paul Kane student Natasha Snow majored in graphic arts and illustration. "In this program, you have a lot of artistic freedom and you show off your artistic talent while making conscious decisions for business."

One of her standout pieces is a promotion for River City Wine Festival, a hand-sketched pencil-crayon drawing of Marie Antoinette that was later distorted in Photoshop to give it a surreal Picasso-esque look. "I hand drew the picture because you can't get the same authentic feel and details on a computer," Snow explains.

In her Old Dogs New Tricks campaign to promote a vinyl record company, Snow reveals a sly sense of humour by having the blind Ray Charles spin a turntable while the deaf Mozart wears headphones.

One of the most disturbing illustrations is former Bellerose student Teagan Zwierink's Sticks and Stones stop child abuse illustrative campaign designed for different mediums such as bus panels and newspaper advertisements. At once spellbinding and frightening, the bruised children are a stark reminder that verbal abuse also crushes and destroys.

Melissa Harrish also of Bellerose takes a more ethereal approach in her illustrations. Most of her designs are delicately hand-drawn. In the Not Everyone is Dreaming About Christmas project, a card that evolved from a word play assignment, she paints a slinky green alligator wearing a red Christmas hat morosely slinking through a snow bank.

Instead of graphic design, Bellerose student Stacey Addison opted for digital media. She has coded, designed and tested a fully functioning website with 22 pages of portfolio work that can viewed at various computer stations. "It's hard to build something from nothing that looks 3D. But I've developed a lot of confidence and knowledge about design."

And finally Andrew Nickerson, also from Bellerose, is another digital media student who displays a web portfolio along with advertisements for WESC headphones and Vibration, a company that specializes in building computers to withstand shock impact and harsh conditions.

The photography students interestingly enough display an eclectic range of imagery that reveals studies in local fashion, architecture, documentary and editorial work.

And the motion image design students have launched a series of edgy documentaries running under five minutes that range in subject matter from comic books and music to martial arts and makeup to name a few of the topics.

Neiman closes by saying, "You'll see a lot of interesting ideas. You'll get to experience the crazy environment of selling. And you get to meet grads so keen to get out there and make their mark."