Students Design Promotional Campaign for Festival

Graphic Design students at the University of Worcester have been supporting an advertising campaign for this weekend’s Worcester Paint Festival.

The third years took part in a 24-hour Pressure Project set by the Festival, giving them just 24 hours to come up with their designs to promote it.

One group of students’ work was selected and their designs have subsequently been used online and on social media to market the event.

Student Lauren McCormick, who was one of the winning group, said: "I found the experience very eye-opening and exciting. Not knowing what the brief was before we came in made it feel more real as a client, which definitely has helped with real life clients out of the university. You never know what questions you'll need to answer."

The Worcester Paint Festival, which aims to bring street and graffiti artists to the city, runs this Saturday and Sunday (September 18 and 19). With murals at various locations in and around Worcester, the event will showcase renowned names in the UK scene, supported by emerging artists, to create a vibrant outdoor art gallery.

Students were tasked to develop some working prototype campaign designs to help promote the festival across various media – for print, online and for smart devices. They worked in small production teams then 'pitched' their ideas to the client.

Senior Lecturer in Graphic Design, Andy Stevenson, said: “Working to 'live' design briefs and with genuine client wants is such an important experience for our students to go through before they graduate. The work they produce on these is done in an environment that's as close as we can make it to the real thing in terms of timescales and requirements. The end result is not only their design outputs, but the knowledge that they've worked on a real project and have some experience liaising with real clients. This is a hugely valuable experience to take on beyond graduation and into their working lives.”

The project is part of an initiative that the Department has been developing for some years on the Graphic Design course, under the banner of ‘design for social good’.

“The equation is simple: we pair up the abilities and enthusiasm of our students to work on real projects with a local or regional organisation or event that doesn't always have the experience or budgets to achieve a full set of design outputs,” said Mr Stevenson. “It's a win-win scenario with the organisations achieving a set of near complete campaign or design concepts and the students getting some invaluable experiences."

Kate Cox, Director of the Worcester Paint Festival, said: "Working on the pressure projects was a really great experience especially talking to the students and seeing all of their amazing ideas. We decided to work with the winning team and their designs, which we were really impressed with and which totally represented the feel of the festival we are delivering. You can catch Worcester Paint Festival this weekend with artists painting murals in locations all around the city and explore via an online map."

To find out more about the Festival visit the website www.worcesterpaintfestival.co.uk or check out their Twitter feed @worcesterpaintfestival.