Challenges for Priestley College graphic design students

GRAPHIC design students Warrington’s at Priestley College have been accepting challenges set by a variety of fascinating “clients”.

They have been set live briefs by organisations as diverse as a publishing company, an international photographic magazine and a leadership movement founded in the Netherlands.
Tutor Paul McConnell said: “These kinds of opportunities are invaluable for students to learn how the industry works.
“As well as allowing them to put their designs skills to the test it also teaches them about working with clients, the importance of deadlines and communication.”

Among the challenges was one by Stockton Heath-based Gatehouse Books – a specialist publisher of reading books and teaching resources for developing literacy in young people and adults.
A-Level and BTEC Graphic Design students were commissioned to illustrate a new series of books covering a range of topics from the Second World War to catching a fish.
Former Penketh High pupil Laura Eckersley was among those paid for their time and talent.
“The client would send us a short story with some inspiration photos and we would have to illustrate three images that would be used in the book,” she said.
“I completed four books with the overall themes spanning from love, to pregnancy, to depression.”
Priestley’s Digital Art Foundation group, BTEC Graphic Design and Photography students developed striking promotional imagery for BOOST, a leadership movement founded by Rosanne van Zalingen in the Netherlands.
The group’s ethos is to make the world a better place for everyone and it aims to encourage young people to live happy, healthy and prosperous lives.
Its brief was to create promotional campaign imagery in the form of still or animated pictures or a storyboard explaining the vision.
A different task was set by the editor of Imagemaker, Mike McNamee, who asked students to design pages for his magazine.
Their work – much of it influenced by the experiences of the past year – was published in the March edition and seen in more than 70 countries.
“It is interesting that working under lockdown conditions has forced these young people to confront all of the downsides they have been subjected to,” said Mike.
“They will never forget this phase of their lives and their designs will automatically pass into the national library collections of the UK so preserving them for posterity.”