In the latest report by the CBI (The Confederation of British Industry), calls for the inevitable increase in tuition fees and that "Maintenance grants should be focused on those most in need".

The Confederation of British Industry is a lobbying organisation for UK businesses on national and international issues, and their report is the culmination of a year’s work by the CBI Higher Education Task Force to look into issues involving UK businesses and the Higher Education system.

"…the rapid rise in student numbers, coupled with a severe strain on public finances, makes current public funding levels unsustainable" – CBI report

The report outlines that the government should drop its current aim of 50 percent of 18-30 years olds to attend HE to a lower level basically calling for less young people to attend university.

The National Union of Students responded by calling the report a publication of "gross hypocrisy" from the "fat cats at the CBI". The NUS president Wes Streeting had this to say:

“At a time of economic crisis, when many hard working families are struggling to support their offspring through university, I am astonished that the CBI should be making such offensive recommendations…”

Click here to read NUS’s response

For the full report by the Confederation of British Industry in pdf format click the following link:

CBI_HE_taskforce_report.pdf

You may have seen some of her work on show in LCC a few weeks ago, her name is Samantha Huang and she sent in some photos of her work to the snapshot blog.

Samantha recently completed the Foundation Studies in Art and Design at LCC and will be starting on our BA Graphic and Media Design course next term.

Samantha comments on her work:

“What I liked about the Foundation course was that it gave me a lot of freedom and encouragement to create what I liked and what I believe in. For example I worked with various materials particularly paper. I am focusing on environmental and recycling issues.”

Here are some more photos that I took when I got to see more of her work.

We are now in 2009 and 2012 is only around the corner.  Hopefully you haven’t forgotten that the Olympics are taking place in London very soon.  As Londoners and being British we are more worried about the cost and whether it will be done on time rather than looking forward to the event.

Well, I’m here to remove those fears from your minds as i present to you some photos from the Olympic park of the ongoing construction.  I have seen with my own eyes the speedy progress of the construction of the main stadium which you can see if you drive down a certain motorway (ill research into what that stretch of road is).  It looks brilliant and has taken shape quiet well, so don’t worry, Seb Coe and his team will deliver on time.

So here are a few photos from the Olympic Park in construction:

Aquatics Centre: 24 June

Olympic Stadium: 24th April

Footbridge (left) and Olympic Stadium (Right): 24th March

The Whole area: 24th April

Next week i will post some artist impressions of how it will all look once it is done!

25th June 2009

Thanks to Akhil for opening those doors for me!

Music: Woo by Vitalic

YouTube – JRF – Young Lions 48hr Ad Contest entry 2009.

James Robert Fox, a graphic design student from loughborough as created an entry for the “48 hr Young Lions Ad Contest” that was running on youtube. What really strikes me is how he manages to personifies the our planet and what we as humans are doing to it. At the end it reads “Join the global movement for action on climate change” telling the viewer what the video or ad is all about.

Back to the personification that James as acheived, he seems to have hit a few topics on the head starting with the most simplist of actions: us turning our lights on, so the first topic that is cleverly addressed is electricity, shown by the synchronous blinking and lights out. Then it goes on to the effect vehicles have on the environment as we hear the ignition an subsequent hum of an engine. This transitions to a chainsaw, as you know deforestation is devestating parts of the world and affecting natures natural system of taking in carbon dioxide.  Cutting down of trees to make way for farms so we can eat burgers and to make desks and other furniture. There is some work being done to counter this however with pressure groups lobbying governments and initiatives to limit the amount of tress going down. Nevertheless more needs to be done.
 
Skipping to the end, we see, in what I beleive to be natures response.  Climate change and global warming has lead to adverse weather systems and increase flooding around the world. There are places getting colder, places getting warmer and animals struggling to survive these changes. 

According to James on his website http://www.jamesrobertfox.com/

 

The filming and editing for this was done in 1 hour

 

 
he explains briefly that “the The advert is about climate change and about the UN summit in December where you will be able to make a difference”

via YouTube – JRF – Young Lions 48hr Ad Contest entry 2009.

To those of you who haven’t seen it, I recommend poping into the Tate modern when passing by and having a quick look at the small room on level 5. Pierre huyghe stuff to be seen, quite different in many ways.

+ limited edition wallpaper made by M/M Paris.

Ille qui nos omnes servabit

Ok this might not be too directly related to  Graphic Design even though it could be looked at  animation, web design, etc…

Anyway I have discovered with the help of a  friend that the Konami code works on  Facebook.

Simply do ↑ ↑ ↓ ↓ ← → ← → b a (press enter and click  anywhere)

A nice touch from the Facebook developers… Try  it out yourself now!

: )

A nice animation done by James Jarvis for Nike… I like the way they play with scales, layers and perspectives…

I have been approached by Levi to participate in the fda blog and I thought I would start my first entry with an interesting project I have discovered whilst visiting the “Brit Insurance Designs of the Year 2009” exhibition at the Design Museum.

Fiducial stands for a standard of reference in surveying as per the dictionary. In this project founded by a guy called Toxmeister, the markers act a bit like bar codes do with their visual representations of information readable by machines. That is what I understood from the so called “Fid.Gen bar codes” program which uses the open source Processing software to create shapes and patterns able to carry and transport information across platforms.

Apart from looking good, those shapes are useful. What more exciting than computers we could use and navigate exclusively by using our hands. Well yes I know it already exist, with the invention of the touch screen and now the iphone giving a nice and smooth control over the page flow. But what if downloading an image, reading a external document or scanning something could be done just by putting it on the screen? A bit like in some Sci-Fi movies like minority report or even in CSI Miami!

Check out The “Reactable”  and see how they unleash the power of this new Fid.Gen coding system and might change the face of future computing.

Thanks to the Open Source community for being free!

Stan