Izzi Menzies Jo Stickells Kate Russell Katherine Tittmar

Idiosyncrasy is at the core of my practice. I try to create a balance within my work between playful elements and more refined outcomes, exploring unconventional ideas in depth. My work takes a variety of different forms, be that coding, lettering, type and editorial design, or sometimes a combination of all. Research plays an important role; I often take inspiration from pop culture, questioning societal norms and using uncomfortable elements to create a new dialogue. In Chewing Gum, drew on the themes of the uncanny valley and misophonia to create an immersive web experience.

Collaboration has become a key aspect of my work. I enjoyed working with Molly Hooper on our publication, Go piss, which explores celebrity gossip culture and the connection to the public/private nature of the space of the bathroom. My final project is a typeface that brings the conventionality of Victorian greenhouses together with curious and unusual plants.

As a graphic designer and illustrator I work primarily using analogue processes to explore both still and moving visuals. I love textures, imperfections and colour. This year I have been responding intuitively to sound using various forms of animation. I’ve also explored lettering throughout my practice. I’m excited by type design but I’m not a big fan of rules in the type world - this has led to interesting challenges but I really enjoy exploring a more illustrative approach to typography.

Woke Girlies: The development of visual culture for activism by women, from placards to Instagram posts. This curatorial rationale explores the evolution of design activism and its journey from physical ephemera to an online space. With a considerable increase in protest in recent years, design activism has taken on a new role with the aid of social media. It’s become much more common, almost trendy, to focus artwork on social issues. An online platform transforms a movement, work has become digital, more complex and almost fashionable. What used to be placards and symbols of revolt have evolved into a whole genre of visual art. curated a collection of work to showcase this.

As a multidisciplinary creative, I primarily use installation and moving image to explore the space and surroundings that shape our experience. With an experimental approach, aim to convey both pre-existing and new narratives that challenge our perception of reality. am interested in exploring a range of subjects through a surrealistic lens: from rumours of vampires in Glasgow to the lonely pigeons outside my bedroom window. My process is playful and I enjoy exploring diverse ideation techniques to arrive at an unexpected outcome. For example, using words from a chatterbox game as prompts for creative thinking.

In my dissertation, I delved deeper into my interest in space and place, using a curatorial rationale to investigate the relationships between memory, time and industrial ruins. envisioned a site-specific exhibition at St. Peter’s Seminary, an abandoned priest training college in Cardross, exploring the complex narratives embedded within the site and its potential as a creative space.

As someone who grew up in the Scottish islands and as a native Gaelic speaker, I feel a great responsibility to my language through my illustration and design practice. I seek to be an ambassador for Gaelic through my work, to bring my heritage and language to a 21st century audience. I combine centuries old wisdom and art with a contemporary style and use a wide range of media to connect with as many people as possible. I’ve explored this through different handmade books such as a short collection of Gaelic proverbs about love and a print at home children’s activity book to fill out on the Loch Seaforth ferry, sometimes using deceptively simple designs to draw the viewer in to contemplate.

Through different assigned briefs and personal projects, I enjoy experimenting with different materials and methods. Some of my favourites over the years have included collage, animation and any printing method. I think it’s important to design and create things I enjoy and connect with on the off chance that there’s someone out there who feels the same. I’m driven by making things for other people, from thoughtful homemade birthday gifts to books for Gaelic speakers and learners. There’s no feeling like seeing some enjoy or use something you have made with your own hands.

am an Illustrator whose practice is predominately spent drawing the things that I love. make work that is colourful, uplifting and fun through a practice of both digital and analogue techniques. This year I’ve focused on narrative. My book ‘Christmas at Rogano’, explores an imagined past, present and future. Every year my sister and have Lobster and Chips on Christmas Eve at Glasgow’s most loved restaurant- Rogano. Since the restaurant closed in 2020, I want to play homage to the restaurants history and explore the idea of who me and my sister would be if we had lived in each decade the Rogano was open. From 1930-2030, my twelve-chapter book interweaves themes of class, society, and friendship. The book explores Glasgow’s rich history and a love for tradition. I’ve also been working with pottery this year to add dimension to my work.

My Design History and Theory Extended Essay explored what impact the all-women art group the Guerrilla Girls had on the art world and to what extent do they represent diversity in 2023.

I am an illustrator creating work focused on observing the public and taking a humorous approach to cataloguing my observations. I work with found image and type to create surreal takes on the people that surround me. My research is based in producing art which is light-hearted and accessible, and am interested in the variety of ways this can be accomplished. Alongside my observational and humour-based work I have spent a lot of time researching and working with symbolic language and how can use this to be very visually playful and still communicate my ideas.

Shot in the spring of 2023, this body of work explores the notion of home from a personal odyssey carved out of various rural sites which lay in the margins of my hometown, Falkirk. I map out these landscapes through constructed image, romanticising their topography while retracing kindred memories and re-imagining their lore.

I am a Polish illustrator and visual artist. My artistic practice revolves around themes of identity, memory, politics, human rights, and neurodivergence.

My degree project: “I feel like am from nowhere,” questions the significance of a connection to a place, culture, and heritage as it relates to one’s identity. My family’s nomadic lifestyle has left me with a blurred sense of identity and post-memory defined by gaps and blank spaces, which inspired me to explore my roots through conversations with my mother in an attempt to fill the blanc spaces with a repository of second-hand memories.

In my essay, I aimed to explore blanc spaces of a different kind, to which my personal experiences of cultural invisibility inspired me. Through analysis of past and present discourses on Eastern Europe, I find that its construct, as seen by Western Europe, resembles Orientalist patterns and is built on a hierarchical slope between civilisation and barbarism, as Eastern Europe is built in opposition to Western Europe, as its alter ego, against which Western Europe could define itself. find this topic especially important amidst the Russian invasion of Ukraine as a significant part of political discourse is still built upon those thinking patterns.

am an illustrator currently exploring slang used within the queer community and queer spaces I often find myself in. I found when I removed myself from that bubble, these terms that were once clear as day began to appear as absurd and nonsense. have worked a lot with crochet, creating wearable garments as well as mini tapestries. aim to achieve a humour within my work whilst also bringing awareness to the slang used within the queer community.

My extended essay focused on the evolution of queer representation in mainstream cinema and why it evolved the way it did based on the social and political climates at the time. broke it down into chapters which included ‘Queer representation, Mass Culture and Entertainment’, ‘Censorship and Hollywood’s Golden Age’,’ Character Analysis’ and Queer Cinema - Post Stonewall’.

My coursework this year has mainly consisted of my own self-directed project titled ‘Along the Periphery’ where have been investigating and documenting Glasgow’s peripheral ‘overspill’ housing schemes. This project, although having some political motivation is not an overt statement, rather am simply documenting and communicating the realities that are not often featured in contemporary portrayals of Glasgow. In the post-industrial era, the city has sought to shed much of the working-class heritage that defined its past in a bid to appear as a more cultural and touristic destination. I seek to address this imbalance by documenting the places along the periphery, both geographic and in perceived importance.

The Design History and Theory component of my degree saw me tackle the subject of Govan’s immense rise and fall as an industrial powerhouse using the cultural theory of Mark Fisher and economic arguments of Noam Chomsky. By beginning with an economic historiography of Govan’s rise I was then able to open the conversation onto an analysis of the impacts of the post-industrial economy on living standards and the built environment itself.

I am a designer with a drive to make socially and environmentally conscious work. This translates into all of my graphic design, which primarily takes the form of printed matter, film and interactive design. I take inspiration from the world around me, often responding to local as well as global issues. Drawing on concept-led briefs, research plays a strong part of my practice, engaging with archives, design history and current affairs.

My largest project this year takes the form of an immersive exhibition which explores Scotland’s diminishing temperate rainforests. This environment is at risk to a range of factors, including the climate crisis, but is essential to Scotland’s eco-system with home to over 17,000 plant species. Using a variety of processes, such as film, 3D modelling and photography, I have sculpted a VR interactive exhibition, allowing the user to explore this fascinating habitat.

This year I have also written a dissertation titled: Community, Sustainability and Design: Towards a Greener Glasgow, which inspects the role of Community Based Organisations within the city. I have then turned this into an editorial publication, inspecting binding methods, layout and fine details, basing decisions upon my primary research into Glasgow’s communities.

In my work, I depict my experience as an Autistic individual through Illustrations and Animation. Using these mediums and interviewing people in my life, I attempt to describe the autistic perspective to portray sensory sensitivities, social communication and repetitive behaviours. aim to explore not only the internal experience of ‘Neurodivergency’ but the feeling of being observed in a medical capacity throughout the diagnostic process. In my practice this year, this has led me to look at medical illustrations, cell visualisations and time-lapse microscopy as inspiration to visualise these experiences.

Though my work addresses a diagnosis that is possessed by 1-2% of the UK population, balance the use of abstract shapes and movements with vibrant colours to convey the emotions tied to the autistic lived experience in a way that is accessible to everyone.

My practice is driven by my love of fun and slightly odd ideas and creating playful work. I enjoy being eclectic with my research which often begins from aspects of popular culture. My work this year has mainly explored narratives that find exciting. Through my interest in shrines and fan culture, have designed a typographic cloak made for Eurovision sensation Guildo Horn, who unfortunately only came in seventh place. enjoy experimenting with textiles and embracing the kitschier side of graphics.

My Tooth loss project communicated a series of fictitious soundscapes of teeth falling out, initially through animation and then through coding interactive web design and VR. The idea was to exaggerate by drawing on collective fears and discomfort, creating a visceral and disgusting experience. Collaborative projects are important to me, and have loved working with Izzi Menzies on our publication communicating the public and private nature of toilets and the connection this has with gossiping and celebrity culture. In my Design History and Theory, I questioned why the casual sub-culture had been continually overlooked and proposed an exhibition that celebrated the casual voices in Phil Thornton’s personal history Casuals: Football, Fighting and Fashion: the Story of a Terrace Cult.

I am a designer who is motivated by communicating humorous and playful ideas through the moving image.

Over the past year, have dedicated myself to creating short, advert-style films that explore the intersections of our society and culture. My ambition is to examine complex themes, which include taboos such as modern relationships with money and the Scottish cultural identity, in a way that is accessible, entertaining, and challenging.

Alongside filmmaking, I have a passion for publication design. Being the Graphic Designer for The Glasgow University Magazine (GUM) has given me valuable skills in understanding layout design and typography rules and principles.

In my DHT essay, I explored popular culture’s role in commodifying women in the 21st century, researching ‘Girl Boss’ culture and how the feminist movement is portrayed through modern advertising.

My design so far has been a vessel for my own personal experiences; whether that inspiration is gained from the people love most, the community I grew up in or the aggravation of everyday prejudices. My work is a reaction to my own environment, and an effort to encourage deeper human relationships to things that are personal to myself and to others.

Projects this year which highlight this include a typographic memorial for my late Papa Shug and a short film inspired by a quote by Margaret Atwood centred around the male gaze out-with film. Furthermore, I worked on an extended essay titled ‘The Dictatorship of Background: Why the Scottish Working-class are Alienated from Higher Education’. This idea materialised through my own experience coming through the higher education system as an individual who grew up in a working-class area which was further inspired by the education received in the widening participation scheme - which I later became a tutor for.

As I continue to develop as a creative, I find it important to seek an understanding of others and differing life experiences. In future I expect to use my love for people, community, culture and equality to further flourish my portfolio through my key interests of film-making and lettering design but not limited to.

Over the past year I have been working on two films utilising hand drawn and mixed media animation. My first film Pigeon Holding explores the relationship between people and birds through a combination of photographic collage and hand drawn animation. My research was grounded in the community of pigeon keepers in Glasgow’s Doocots, exploring the tenderness and connection that exists within this maledominated hobby.

Oral history has made up the basis of the research for my second film, which takes a more narrative approach in telling the story of my Grandfather who took part in Formula 3 racing in the 1970s. My dad tells the story of a race day and his memories of his own father. Combining hand drawn animation with photographs and ephemera I aim to capture a clear sense of time and place while also exploring the relationship between the two.

I explored the use of objects as a tool for storytelling in my Extended Essay, which compared Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s novel Purple Hibiscus to Mike Mills’ film 20th Century Women. Studying these sources, which were both semi-autobiographical, helped me to understand how the inclusion of real life details and memory can be used to create a richer sense of time and place.