Viva Lewes Issue #160 January 2020

FEATURE
Digital Media Design
With or without words
One way to go back to the drawing board is to
retrain, or to hone one’s skills through study. So
I head to East Sussex College’s Lewes campus to
speak to 27 year old Harry James Corke. Harry
initially completed a Digital Media Design FDA
course in 2009, and is now enrolled in ESC’s
Digital Media Design top-up option, to turn
his foundation degree into a full BA Honours
degree. He decided to come back to “re-educate
myself after doing a series of jobs that I wasn’t
particularly interested in, where there wasn’t
much upward mobility”.
The courses are practically focused, with future
careers in mind. Harry is currently working on
a pitch for the D&AD New Blood Awards, for
example: a prestigious design award open to
students worldwide. He tells me that the professional
briefs that students are given for their
projects “vary massively”. One might be aimed
at getting people over the age of 65 to understand
what Intel products are, while another sees
students investigating how to make Lego appeal
to 13 to 18 year olds.
The skills students learn on the course vary massively
too. “Some students make cartoons, some
are interested in video editing. I enjoy doing posters,
fonts and logo designs. I love simple designs,
like really drilling something down.
“I always think with digital media, most of it
is just about communicating in different ways.
Animation, poster design, fonts. It’s all just forms
of communication: selling something, passing on
knowledge of something, with words or without
words… it’s fascinating.”
I’ve read some of the course prospectus, and
Harry handily explains what some unfamiliar
terms mean. ‘Time-based media’, for example,
covers forms of media such as the digital, moving
posters one sees on the escalators in the London
Underground. Harry sees time-based media as a
growing field: “I think Instagram and miniature
ads, that you can scroll past quickly and still pick
up on are going to keep getting bigger.”
One element of working in design that is “hammered”
into students is the importance of keeping
sketchbooks, referred to as ‘authoring’. “If your
idea looks good but you don’t have a sketchbook
to support it, that doesn’t really matter. Anyone
can have a flash in the pan idea. You need to understand
why it is good. When pitching to clients
you take all of the stuff with you so they can flick
through it while you deliver your pitch.”
Students get the chance to exhibit their completed
work in a graduate show in Fabrica,
Brighton, in early June. Harry is clearly happy to
be studying and designing again: “I really enjoy
being around other creative people. And the
freedom that the course has. The tutors will be
there whenever you need them: they give you
feedback on your ideas, but they won’t force you
into anything.” Joe Fuller
escg.ac.uk
Illustration by student Abigail Smith
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