To find out more details about the transfer to The Open University see A New Chapter for OCA.
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As an OCA tutor I spend a lot of time waiting for parcels to arrive in the post. The small heavy package that arrived last week was not a student assignment but a brand new metal casting of Rockwell 30pt. Like a growing band of typography and letterpress enthusiasts I have recently purchased my own […]
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Different jobs create different cycles of activities. For staff, like myself who work at a full time art college the last couple of weeks always feels like working on a till at Christmas and struggling to get the harvest in on time all rolled into one; lots of people needing your attention and too much […]
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I first came across the group of artists and designers called Futurefarmers at a conference at the University of Montreal in 2001. They were there to talk about the development of one of their projects called They Rule. A blend of internet software wizardry and journalistic enquiry that allowed users to explore who sat on […]
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Jacky Fleming’s illustrations and cartoons have regularly featured in The Guardian, Big Issue, New Statesman & Society and Independent on Sunday amongst many other publications, books of her cartoons published by Penguin and her work exhibited far and wide. She kindly agreed to an email interview for the We are OCA blog. Did you always […]
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Puppetry and illustration might not have the most obvious connections but for Jereme Crow (who is currently undertaking OCA’s Illustration module) and for many other artists the links seem natural ones. They both explore visual narratives, storytelling and characterisation and often with a good deal of humour thrown in. Before Fluck and Law brought the […]
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The designer Ken Garland published his first things first Manifesto in London in 1964 and with it he challenged a generation of visual communicators to rethink their role as designers and to do something more useful with their creative talents than simply create commercial advertising for cat food, stomach powder and aftershave lotion. In 2000 […]
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When we think of graphic design, the seductive packaging and branding of high street communications or the entertaining and eye catching gloss of the media might spring to mind. Graphic design helps to organise information, stamp identities onto objects and parcel up messages that are easy for us to access. While the majority of graphic […]
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In these times of economic woe the public library is under threat. Currently there are 450 public libraries and mobile services facing closure in the UK. This has stirred writers, poets and readers into organising ‘read in’ protests to try and halt the cuts. Central government rationalise that declining numbers of users, cheap online books […]
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You might be a football supporter, love Elvis’s music, read comics, enjoy charity shop purchases or simply be an ardent fan of a local band. Whatever your interests, someone, somewhere will have made a fanzine about it. You may have not come across many fanzines as they tend not to make it onto the bookshelves […]
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The Typographic Hub has just been launched as a new initiative by UKType and Birmingham Institute of Art & Design to promote the history, theory and practice of typographic design. If you’re a typographic geek like myself, or just somebody with a passing interest then the website is well worth a browse. The Typographic Hub […]
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