Showtime is University of the Arts London’s online platform for graduating students to showcase their work. All final year students can create a free, online profile, with an exclusive personalised URL which remains theirs for life. With more than 250,000 visitors each year, this is a crucial self-promotion tool for all our graduating students.

Find out more about Showtime and create your profile

Hear the success stories of former Showtime exhibitors:

Nikita Karizma – X Factor stylist

2012 LCF graduate Nikita Karizma’s Showtime profile was spotted by the X Factor team, who approached her to create costumes for the TV Show. Her designs then appeared on The X Factor contestants and were worn by Little Mix.

See her Showtime profile

Chris Kearns – interior designer

“I was on the Interior design course 2008/2009. After graduating, I took the summer off and then in the September uploaded my final major project onto the website. Within two weeks of it being up, I had been contacted by a restaurateur looking to open a cafe/bar in Liverpool Street. He’d seen and liked my work on your site and wondered if I’d be interested in designing his new venture. Naturally, I said yes. Over the course of the next year I designed three restaurants for that client – a very successful start to my new business. Thanks for the showcase.”

See her Showtime profile

Steve Rosenthal – Converse commission
“I was commissioned by the Arts Council to make a piece of work to adorn the walls of their offices in Farringdon in spring 2009 , I was then commissioned by Converse to make a new piece for the launch of some new shoes at the old Truman Brewery in November 2009, and was contacted by some ex Saint Martins’ students to participate in a show they mounted in a jazz club on tin pan alley in 2010.I  just wanted to let you know that for me the site’s acted as a great portal to getting my work seen… Many thanks.”

See his Showtime profile

Rachel Irwin – Complexd magazine creative director

“My profile was spotted by fellow UAL graduate Kered Clement, founding editor of Complexd magazine, we met up November 2010 and ever since I have been their Creative Director, designing and laying out the bi-monthly magazine. Its been a great project to work on and a very strong piece for my portfolio.”

See her Showtime profile

Dana Haim - Wieden+Kennedy commmission

“I just graduated from Central Saint Martins about a year ago from the masters in design for textile futures program. I posted my work on showtime around this time last year and wanted to let you know that after that, in September I was commissioned to make a memorial quilt for Wieden+Kennedy in London. You can see the quilt at my website , www.danahaim.com, under Martin Cole Memorial Quilt. This was an amazing project to be a part of.”

 See their Showtime profile

Event: Wednesday 24^th April at 4pm at Central Saint Martins’ Platform Theatre Foyer Space

UAL students and staff are invited to come and quiz Paul Williams, founding director of Stanton Williams, the architects behind the Central Saint Martins College of Arts and Design (CSM) campus at King’s Cross, at the next UAL Meets.

The informal Q&A will be chaired by Pro Vice-Chancellor and Head of CSM Jeremy Till and take place on Wednesday 24^th April at 4pm at Central Saint Martins’ Platform Theatre Foyer Space. A bar will be open from 3.30pm and after the talk.

This is the fourth in an exciting series of UAL Meets, following Q&As with Grayson Perry, Michael Wolff and Tom Hulme. 

Paul formed the partnership Stanton Williams with Alan Stanton in 1985. In November 2011, Stanton Williams were judged to have made the most significant contribution to British architecture over the past year and were presented with the BD Architect of the Year Award 2011 along with the title of Education Architect of the Year.

Paul is actively involved with the concept and design development of many of the studio projects. He has been responsible for many projects including Issey Miyake Shops, the Eton Manor site for the London Olympics, Compton Verney Art Gallery, the Millennium Seedbank and the practice’s exhibition designs and museum installations. Current projects of the practice include King’s Cross Square, the Musee d’Art in Nantes, an art gallery extension for Lincoln College in Oxford, a student residential development at King’s Cross and two prime residential developments on the river Thames.

Those attending the event can put their questions to Paul on the day, and questions can also be submitted via Twitter using the hashtag #UALMeets, or via the online booking form below.

The event will be live tweeted by @UniArtsLondon and highlights will be published on UAL’s news page. To join us, please book your free tickets here.

It is with much sadness that we announce the sudden loss of our ex LCC colleague and friend Ian Noble who died 30 January 2013. Ian played a significant role in the changing face of graphic design education at LCC. Ian’s contribution to the lives of thousands of students and designers as an educator, designer, writer and mentor was instrumental in ensuring the people he worked with were at the forefront of their field.

I first met Ian when he arrived at LCP in 1997 to run the BA course. I would send him students from Chelsea’s foundation course that I knew he would be able to inspire and influence with his passion for graphic design. He would regularly give me updates on them and let me know how they were getting on. Despite the size of the course Ian knew all of his students and they knew him. They were in awe of this huge character that would live and breathe all things graphics but also knew how to get the best from his students by challenging their perceptions and approaches to design. Ian was also a great observer and consumer of popular culture which fed his inquisitive personality. One Twitter user reacted to Ian’s death by urging his friends to listen to the Clash “loudly and in inappropriate places” by way of tribute.

Ian left LCC to take up a senior academic role at Kingston University two years ago. It was a huge loss to LCC at the time but the loss we feel now of losing a great colleague and friend is beyond measure. His influence and passion lives on through ex students, colleagues and friends.

Natalie Brett, Pro Vice Chancellor and Head of College, London College of Communication

During a career spanning over 20 years in education, Ian’s links to design courses, design schools, colleges and universities nationally and internationally were both far-reaching and deep-rooted. Ian’s influence as a design educator inspiring design students, practitioners and academics was through his inspirational teaching and lecturing style and through his books, some co-authored with Russell Bestley at LCC, that explored contemporary communication design through the eyes of a practitioner and a passionate advocate for the ‘theory of practice and not the practice of theory’. Ian’s books are on the required reading lists of courses in communication design nationally and internationally – Ian played an enormous part in the education of many many graphic designers and played an extremely active role in the field of communication design research. Ian was a big big figure (Ian would enjoy the poor pun) in communication design education. He will be much missed by our community – by many friends, colleagues, students and alumni. One tweet, of many broadcast following his death, said it best – ‘Everyone should listen to the Clash today. Loudly and in inappropriate places. A tribute to Ian Noble. RIP.’ Quite.

Lawrence Zeegen, Dean of  School of Design, London College of Communication.

Ian Noble was an inspiring teacher who believed in ‘a theory of practice, not the practice of theory’. MA Graphic Design Course Director Russell Bestley pays tribute to an innovator in graphic design education.

Ian taking an MA class at LCC in 2002. Picture courtesy Russell Bestley.

It is with great sadness that we must announce the passing of one of the great innovators in modern graphic design education, writes Russell Bestley. Ian Noble, teacher, author, designer, outstanding mentor and critical friend to both professionals and students of graphic design alike for more than 25 years, passed away on Wednesday 30 January, 2013.

The impact of his death still resonates across the higher education and design communities. His influence touched so many lives on a personal, professional and academic level.

Following a period of time as a professional graphic designer, notably working in the magazine design industry, Ian returned to the educational field in the late 1980s. Working first at Portsmouth College of Art, he navigated the changes in higher education and the transition toward incorporation with Portsmouth Polytechnic (subsequently the University of Portsmouth) during the early 1990s. During this time he became renowned as an inspirational and charismatic teacher. His influence affected both his students and his peers during a period of intense international reflection on the nature and subject of graphic design as a practice.

Ian believed in the value of design education and the need for graphic design to examine itself from within – to re-evaluate the methods and systems that designers often take for granted and to establish what he termed ‘… a theory of practice, not the practice of theory’.

This critical approach to the nature of design, he thought, could help raise the status of designers as mediators (rather than simply facilitators) of visual communication – a process of ‘informed engagement’ with the content and structure of the message.

He took up a role as head of the undergraduate Graphic Design programme at the London College of  Communication in 1997, rewriting and structuring the course to extend these ideas to the education of an upcoming generation of designers at a time when the industry itself was in flux with the impact of new technologies and the ‘academicisation’ of the subject. Ian’s belief in the value of design thinking and strategy – in methodology – as crucial to the process of design, whatever the changes in tools or craft, helped students successfully understand their role and position.

From 2001 on, Ian took over the postgraduate graphic design programme at the LCC, further developing and shaping his understanding of the process of design, and inspiring students to rethink their own established practices. This concentration on the activity of design, rather than its end-product, helped to shape a new direction in the education and practice of designers nationally and internationally – Ian was in great demand to offer advice and give critical feedback to many other institutions, while at the same time his reputation among design professionals spread far and wide.

In 2010, he took on the role of Course Director MA Communication Design at Kingston University, reshaping and transforming the postgraduate design framework with a new group of staff and students.

Ian Noble at Induction day, MA Communication Design, ESAD, Portugal. Picture courtesy Andrew Howard.

I first met Ian when I re-entered higher education as a mature student in the late 1980s. His intellect, understanding and caring nature inspired me, like many others, to establish my own critical position and thinking. We worked closely together since that time, co-authoring a number of books focusing on a critical interrogation of the design process, delivering workshops at colleges and universities across Europe and North America, and running our own design group, Visual Research (which also became the title of our book on graphic design methodologies, recently reworked as a second edition and published internationally).

Ian will be fondly remembered as a charismatic, energetic, observant, warm and hugely entertaining and inspiring individual, whose influence will be felt for many years to come. His influence on the world of design education is obvious to anyone who worked with him (of which there are many), but equally his impact within his own wide network of friends and allies in his hometown of Portsmouth cannot be underestimated – he was loved by many, and he will be sorely missed.

Ian Noble, b. 15 October 1960, d. 30 January 2013; designer and educator.

Ian Noble at the award ceremony at the Titan International Illustration in Design competition, ESAD, Portugal, where Ian was a guest speaker. Courtesy Andrew Howard.

First published on the Eye blog, 8 February 2013, http://www.eyemagazine.com/blog/post/ian-noble-1960-2013

Add your comments to Ian’s tribute page ian-tribute.studioandrewhoward.com