June 28 - Success

Friday - presentation to the UK client. It begins with an early morning wake up - must be at our US host at 7:30 am. Must be ready to present at 8 am to accommodate for the 8 hour time difference between CA and London where it is Friday at 4 pm. The students did very well and the client was very pleased with how well they had synthesized the information and how well they presented it back to them. We have a much clearer direction as to the specifics of our project for the remaining four weeks of the course.

June 27 - pushing through

On Thursday with the pressure mounting to pull together all the pieces for our Friday presentation. To do this the students need to work on the visuals and the script and the presentation. This is done by planning, practicing, and refining. Sometimes snacks help.

The day ran on and while improvements were coming in fits and starts, it also was tiring and lead to laughing....

The evening ended with one final presentation run through and we were ready for tomorrow.

June 26 - heavy lifting

Today, halfway through week one, what seemed easy became hard again. Each group is working to contextualize and re-contextualize what the client gave us and see if we can present the information in an emotional compelling way showcasing the project in a human way not an engineering and property developer way. The students presented three times each time aspects of the presentations improved and other areas and issues were exposed.

June 25

Today we met at Chapman for the second day of our adventure. Class began with a creative team building exercise - the marshmallow challenge - each team was given one marshmallow, 20 pieces of spaghetti, 1 yard of string, and 1 yard of tape. Then they had 20 minutes to build the tallest free standing tower. The average height is 20". Team A made it to 25"! Team B to 19". Team C to 10".

More information was shared with the students regarding the client and project, the students then settled in to fix things from Monday mornings presentations and add things from Monday afternoon and from Tuesday morning. At 2:30 the students presented again showing the additions and refinement.

Tuesday drew to a close with further refinements to the individual presentations and a more cohesive design style applied to each one.

June 24 - It officially begins

Today GD 308 Sustainable Design London officially began. I say "officially" because the students have been working already on two pre-class assignments. Pre-Assignment One had the students looking at their own home towns - trying to pin down what makes a town livable and what doesn't. Pre-Assignment Two was about reading through all the voluminous material our client sent us in advance. The students were broken up into three teams and have been working their way through the material and finally distilling the information into a presentation.
We met at 9 am at the LPA office in Irvine where Adjunct Professor Leland works. The student groups each presented their findings from Pre-Assignment Two and gave feedback about both content and presentation. We then broke for lunch, upon our return the students began working to refine these presentations in anticipation for the Friday presentation to the client in London. The students also had a chance to check out the conference room we will be presenting in, and share their Pre-Assignment One findings with their colleagues, distilling out 6 common traits that should be looked for in a good community.

This year we are working on the redevelopment and expanded development of Bedford, a town located between Oxford and Cambridge. The extent and specifics of what we are going to produce for our client has yet to be determined. The work we do this week will help us help the client to decide which communication problem we need to solve in the remaining four weeks.

Happy Friday! Next week, June 24, the 2019 version of GD 308 Sustainable Design begins. We are super excited to be partnering with Buro Happold again as we celebrate our 10th Anniversary offering this course and working with them. It all began in 2007 in a conversations between Ron Leland and me (Eric Chimenti). We wanted to give Chapman Design students the opportunity to experience Graphic Design in an other culture and work in a real work environment for a real client. No distractions with other classes, Monday through Friday 9 am to 5 pm, no homework, working in teams, learning to come up with multiple ideas, push through creative blocks, and produce professional level communication solutions along with professional level presentations.
Below is this year's winning t-shirt design by BFA in Graphic Design major, Audrey Woodward.