'Borders of Russia' by Maria Gruzdeva

MA Photography alumna Maria Gruzdeva is celebrating a double success after her work, The Borders of Russia, received recognition in both competitions.

Gruzdeva and ten graduates from across LCC’s photography programme – covering BA (Hons) Photography, MA Photography and MA Photojournalism & Documentary Photography – join Flash Forward’s exclusive list of 120 emerging photographers in the US, UK and Canada and will see their work showcased in a book published by Magenta, available from October 2012.

Selected work will feature in the Fast Forward touring exhibition in November 2012, starting at the Regent Park Arts & Cultural Centre in Toronto before moving to the Photofusion gallery in London.  Based in Canada, the annual competition is recognised as a critically important vanguard for introducing young photography talent to a global audience.

'Borders of Russia' by Maria Gruzdeva

The IdeasTap creative network have awarded Gruzdeva, a recent MA Photography graduate, £5000 and a paid internship at Magnum Photos for her set of images exploring the Russian border and the community of the Border Guard service tasked with its defence. Her photography, produced while studying at LCC, impressed a panel of judges including Magnum photographer Mark Power.

Congratulations to all of our winners across all comeititions who are as follows:

Magenta Flash Forward – Emerging Photographers 2012

Selected winners:
Maxwell Anderson (BA Photography), Lydia Goldblatt, Maria Gruzdeva, Luca Spano, (MA Photography), Adam Patterson, Michal Solarski, Kurt Tong and Jon Tonks (MA Photojournalism & Documentary Photography).

'In the Dead of the Night' by Kurt Tong

Honourable mentions:
William Eckersley (BA Photography), Shiho Kito (MA Photography) and Jordi Ruiz-Cirera  (MA Photojournalism & Documentary Photography).

IdeasTap Photographic Award age 16 – 22 category
Maria Gruzdeva (MA Photography)

Three third year London College of Communication (LCC) students from the  BA Graphic Media Design course are celebrating the hand-in of their final year’s work with a trip to Grafist, an international graphic design education event held in Istanbul, Turkey.

Attracting students, educators and designers from all around the world, the five day event, which began on Monday 7 May, gives those attending the chance to meet, discuss and exchange ideas about the future of graphic design within a global context of education and practice.

The three students, Julian Goll, Caroline Claisse and Tsevetelina Tomova where chosen to attend the event by LCC tutors Sarah Temple and Gulizar Cepoglu and will be making the most of their time in Turkey at Grafist’s workshops, seminars and activities alongside additional events taking place on the shores of the Istanbul’s Bosphorus river.

Grafist 16 will also see the launch of a new collaborative online poster design project titled ‘Good Morning Future’, drawing attention to the economic recession experienced throughout the world and especially in Greece, Turkey’s neighbour country.

For more information about the online poster design project as well as all the exhibitions, seminars and events taking place visit: http://www.grafist.org/

Students for the London College of Communication (LCC) have scooped an impressive seven individual accolades at the 2012 Student D&AD Awards aka Baby Pencils.

The annual awards, which require participating students to tackle real world briefs to help bridge the gap between college and life as a creative graduate, are one of the most significant and widely recognised benchmarks of emerging creative talent in the UK and worldwide.

Following their announcement on Tuesday 24 April, students from LCC secured five ‘Best of Year’ awards, giving recipients an invitation to key events in the future plus the right to use the D&AD Student Award Best of Year kitemark, and two category winning ‘Yellow Pencil’ nominations. They are:

Hwasoo Shim, Yellow Pencil nomination – Branding, BA Graphic and Media Design

Linda Halaszova, Yellow Pencil nomination – Environmental Design, FdA Graphic and Spatial Communication

Alexia Moriaux, Best of Year – Environmental Design, FdA Interior Design

Jessica Dale, Best of Year – Environmental Design, FdA Interior Design

Danny Kwong, Best of Year – Graphic Design, BA Graphic and Media Design

Anita Leung, Best of Year – Moving Image, BA Graphic and Media Design

Karoline Andersen, Best of Year – Social Design, FdA Design for Graphic Communication

The D&AD awards have a strong focus on employability within the creative sector and reinforce the benefits of applying by claiming that 76% of graduating Awards winners secure a job offer or placement within three months of leaving University. Furthermore, all those nominated who are in their final year or have already graduated are invited to interview for a place at The D&AD Graduate Academy.

The Student Yellow Pencil winners will be revealed at an exclusive event in London, as part of New Blood, on Tuesday 26 June.

For more information about this year’s D&AD Student Awards, visit – http://www.dandad.org/awards/student/2012/

London College of Communication (LCC) PhD research student Joanna Choukeir’s ongoing project Imagination Studio is looking to encourage a new way of thinking to bring change to Lebanon’s embattled and divided society.

The Lebanese socio-economic landscape makes creative collaboration between certain individuals and groups nigh on impossible. It’s Joanna’s vision, through Imagination Studio, to create a space where the nation’s creative and enquiring minds can meet to achieve a less divided Lebanon.

Imagination Studio is a space supporting Lebanese youth from different regions, across different disciplines, and through different networks, to put their heads together and create better informed and actionable social interventions. The goal is for more young people to engage with others outside their social group at school, university, work, home and in the community.

The Imagination Studio community is a group of 30 young ‘Imaginers’ aged 18 to 30, who have creative, social, political, activist, entrepreneurial or journalism backgrounds and interests. The 30 pioneering minds have distributed themselves into five teams, with each team focusing on one particular barrier to social integration in Lebanon. The issues tackled range from marriage and politics to media, language and prejudice.

In the imaginers’ own words:

“Imagination Studio is a fun, creative way to interact, learn and imagine. It is a space to experiment and communicate without borders or limits.” Jana  Abou Reslan

“We are all devoted to bring about positive change, if not on a large scale, then on a smaller scale, beginning with ourselves.” Aisha Habli

“I am so happy to learn that so many are interested in this extremely important issue.  I look forward to continuing to participate in this initiative to produce something really vital for our country.” Zeina Saab

“I am delighted that I have met so many good and positive people.” Charbel Naim

You can follow the progress of Imagination Studio at: http://imaginationstudio.org/

The new £30m London landmark, situated in the centre of London’s Docklands and neighbour to the O2, will be home to the world’s largest exhibition on urban sustainability during the Games,  bringing together city decision-makers and the visiting public. The Crystal aims to provide a hub of knowledge sharing and learning focusing on the ways we can reduce our environmental impact using sustainable technology.

For her part, Netta has been commissioned to produce a large scale artwork for the interior of the new building:

“I’ve  just finished artworking a pretty large wall surface that is going to cover an area called “safe and sound”. The illustration covers all sorts of things that threaten our lives in urban areas, such as tsunamis, crime, drugs and so on.”

“The design is due to go to the printers in the next couple of days and over the course of the project I’ve met lots of really interesting people as well as visiting the Crystal building site itself, which is looking pretty overwhelming! I worked alongside a design studio called ACME, a great studio who recommended me for an internship there, and overall the experience has been a big learning curve for me.”

Netta was last featured on th HOC blog back in November as part of a group of LCC Illustrator collaborating on a oroject called ‘ 26 Stories of Christmas‘.