This is the new prospectus for Tugby Primary school, a great little village school in the Leicesteshire countryside. I was very impressed with the school; the atmosphere is very friendly and welcoming and I had a great time taking pictures of the kids and staff, who were all great to work with.
There is a quote in their Ofsted report, which I’d like to share with you and sums up the school excellently:
“This is a little school with a big heart.”
- Parent quoted in Ofsted Report 2009
Students, staff and parents should all be very proud.
I found this press advert from way back when the college was offering BTEC courses in DJ Technology. Alas, the course isn’t offered anymore. I don’t know how much its demise has to do with Apple’s iPod, which at about this time was just about to go stratospheric sales-wise. Do people need to learn to DJ anymore? Surely we can all do it with a well crafted iTunes playlist plugged into a PA. I still have my LPs; they’re hidden in boxes in the loft, soon to be joined by my CDs which still reside, in plain view on shelves, in the living room but I think their fate is sealed, as I no longer have a CD player and every song I have is now on the computer.
DJ Hero?
Things do have a habit of coming full circle and I think there may be hope for budding DJs out there; it’s name is DJ Hero. I saw an hilarious advert for this on TV the other day, starring Jay-Z and Eminem (technically both MCs not DJs, but I guess Terminator X won’t shift as many units). Now Guitar Hero I can understand; technology’s answer to shuffling about with a badminton racket pretending to be Angus Young, but DJ Hero? Who ever said? “When I grow up I want to be a DJ just like that fella on Top of the Pops – at the back, in an oversized coat, behind the keyboards, next to amps, with the headphones, fiddling with a gramaphone, trying to look cool.” I hope this doesn’t lead to a room full of fifty somethings attending nostalgia nights air DJ-ing to the scratches from, “Straight out of Compton”, only time will tell.
I do a lot of work for the education industry, and these institutions insist on having a different year to the rest of us. The academic year is a curious object; in the Northern hemisphere it begins in autumn and ends in the following summer. Southern hemisphere countries like Australia, New Zealand and South Africa have academic years from January to December.
Most schools and colleges in this country have a three term year; further complicated by half term breaks, bank holidays and teacher training days, (you can also add election days, snowy weather and arson, although these don’t tend to appear on the printed copies in advance). Whilst we are adding complications to the mix, starting dates for neighbouring counties e.g. Leicestershire, Northamptonshire and Nottinghamshire don’t always and often match. Oh! one more thing, Easter insists on shifting about; this is apparently because it is a moveable feast, could this have been the first takeaway?.
If you’ve got to this point and wondering why it makes no sense, the Wikipedia guide to calculating Easter makes it clear, it’s just too complicated:
The First Council of Nicaea (325) established the date of Easter as the first Sunday after the full moon (the Paschal Full Moon) following the vernal equinox. Ecclesiastically, the equinox is reckoned to be on 21 March. The date of Easter therefore varies between 22 March and 25 April. Eastern Christianity bases its calculations on the Julian Calendar whose 21 March corresponds, during the twenty-first century, to 3 April in the Gregorian Calendar, in which calendar their celebration of Easter therefore varies between 4 April and 8 May.
I would suggest that all this makes no sense to any reasonable human being. As designers know well, things often work best when simplified [see witty example video below].
The five term year and why it makes more sense
There is light at the end of the tunnel: a system that means understandable terms of the same length, which accounts for Easter, Bank holidays and training days. The five term year works like this: five terms of eight week, then a two week holiday and in the summer, four weeks holiday = 52 weeks.
Calendar design
Louis Henri Sullivan once said, “form ever follows function” or in other words, the design decisions are based on the purpose of the thing being designed. The calendar for the five term year has five double pages, starts Week 1, ends Week 8, includes holidays, has space so you can write on it and sticks on your wall so you can see it. I don’t think it’s going to win any awards but, like the academic year, it’s been working well for a few years now.
One added bonus of this system, I’ve just thought of, is cheaper holidays, because you can book out of season when the other kids are still at school!
I think this was one of the first documents we published using an entirely digital process; normally reports like this would be litho printed. Considerable cost savings were made on this short run document which then lead to more of the same in digital print. There are some compromises on the finish; this was printed on satin paper rather than the gloss laminated versions we had previously produced. Design considerations play a part, as large blocks of colour were left out and photographs were deliberately kept small.
The typography sits with the 3D space of the picture.
3D Typography in After Effects
These photographs were taken for a set of postcards the Corby Business Academy were producing when it was nearing completion in 2008. The brief was to celebrate the new facilities and spaces which had been created for learning and teaching. The building was designed by Foster + Associates and consists of six faculties attached to a central atrium. The faculties themselves are self-contained, creating significant advantages, which includes reducing the amount of movement students and staff undertake during the working day.
The typography was created to sit within the space of the picture, and rendered to look realistic.
