Winners of art competition immortalise ºìÐÓÊÓƵ's Vibrant Campus
Communication Design students took part in an art competition last autumn as part of ºìÐÓÊÓƵ’s Vibrant Campus initiative. After being tasked to create artworks celebrating the University's cultural vibrancy and its core values, three winners were selected. Learn more about the competition, the winners, and the idea behind their creations.
Marie Simpson, Lecturer at Gray's School of Art, organised an art competition for her Communication Design students to get them to think about how they would capture ºìÐÓÊÓƵ's Vibrant Campus on paper. The brief read:
"Here at ºìÐÓÊÓƵ we have a fantastic campus in a beautiful setting. We want you to spend time exploring it, looking harder at it and trying to find a way of showing it off with your creative talents. We wish to celebrate our university’s cultural vibrancy and reflect our values of curiosity, authenticity, approachability, collaboration, enterprise, ambition, respectfulness and equality."
All artworks created as part of the competition have been displayed in the Garthdee House Annexe, but only three students went home with a prize. Ewen McGillivray, Jenny Hyde, and Zoe Reid were the lucky winners and were awarded vouchers to use in the Gray's art shop to develop their creativity. Ewen and Jenny tell us more about their work and what inspired them.
Ewen McGillivray
Can you describe the artwork you created for the competition?
The artwork that I created was a combination of various different signs that I have seen all across campus. Many of them are just the standard signs that you would typically see in an urban area. Others have been altered to change their message, and the overall purple colour palette was used to represent the colours of the RGU logo itself.
How did you come up with this idea?
When we were given the brief for this competition, I wanted to get some immediate ideas first. I went out into campus and just started drawing and taking pictures of different locations and different sources of inspiration. When it came to the signs, I thought that they could be possibly used within my final piece to try and create some type of message by altering the text.
Why did you choose this specific style?
There are many artists that I actually take inspiration from that I'm following on Instagram, or that I've seen on other media platforms. Quite a few of them work distantly so I thought for this competition I would try to do that in order to learn this process and the methods myself. I more or less experimented with different things that I could do and when I found something that I thought looked really interesting, I continued on with that style. Afterwards, I developed it by making different subtle changes to see which I thought looked the best.
What do you think makes our campus vibrant?
I quite like how the campus feels so close to nature. It can be highly beneficial to go out on a walk to briefly take your mind off your work, and get back into it more motivated.
How are you feeling about winning the competition?
Honestly, I'm surprised! There are so many other amazing talents within my class, and I'm sure across the other stages of communication design, that I wasn't really expecting it. However, I am really pleased to have been chosen.
Jenny Hyde
Can you describe the artwork you created for the competition?
I created an illustrated poster showing my favourite things about the ºìÐÓÊÓƵ campus. I really like how open our campus is and wanted to convey this in my design. I walked around campus taking pictures of the little things that you might not notice on a busy day such as wildlife, plants, or the landscape and tried to include them in my illustrations.
Why did you choose this specific style?
I wanted to practice my digital illustration skills and I thought this would be the perfect project for this. Since the campus is such a colourful place with lots of nature and wildlife, I felt it was only right to create a vibrant and joyful looking design.
What do you think makes our campus vibrant?
Our campus is very open with lots of trees and the river at the bottom which I find a really nice change from where I live. My flat is in the city centre In a pretty built-up area, so it is a nice change coming to the campus each day. I also think it is really a sociable place with a good sense of community.
How are you feeling about winning the competition?
I am very grateful that my design was one of the ones chosen for the competition and I hope that others like it too!
