LCC Open Day Walkthrough: Conceptual Design in a Glance

Interior of London College of Communication

LCC, which stands for London College of Communication is one of the art school under UAL, which stands for University of Arts London, which means through UAL's website you can search all art related courses you want and find the perfect university to study. It is really specific and universities are very specialised in their field. It's amazing, isn't it? Didn't know why Malaysia do not have this kind of organisation and every art university here just try to pack all-in-one feature into one campus.

Just a brief introduction for LCC, London College of Communication used to be called London College of Printing back in the days because it was specialised in graphic design. Through my visit I've learnt that they had kept most of the old printing and cutting machines in campus. It was founded on 1894 which makes it 123 years old soon!

Unlike most Malaysian universities, Western art school took a conceptual approach towards design. They do sociology research a lot and try to attack current rising issues (such as climate and women's right) using design methods. In a nutshell, graphic design is more than just designing things on paper.

LCC Open Day

Actually, I'm not going to talk about this, I should be there for another reason: the postgraduate exhibition. I followed the wrong tour and end up sitting in a lecture hall with a bunch of parents with their child asking for the design courses. But it's still a fun trip touring around the school.

Posters made entirely by hand, no laptop and machines involved.

Because I've said that the tour is good, you might expect me to explain the whole process. No, na-ah.

But I can tell you my thoughts after the tour.

By comparison, LCC (and perhaps most of the art school such as Kingston University) offers a deep insight in graphic design itself, which lead students to create ideas rather than focusing on creating beautiful banners and illustrations (but their banners and illustrations are still very good). In Malaysia, graphic design are very advertising-based and universities often promote graphic design courses by promising high job demand, thus, software and drawing skills are targeted to get the job done.

Both are good, but it's all about finding the balance between two. In my humble opinion, experiment is the only way to do great design and by doing conceptual art, you experiment more than ever.

Conceptual art might require you to find herbs in the jungle and pound it to make colour out of nature, or learn how to use software to create 3D model and print it to photograph and proof check the colour in CMYK mode to print it out and spray mount it on board by applying rules of third and bind the papers together covered by freshly embossed cover with shining plating surface decorate with manually kerned types..............the list goes on (and yes, universities like LCC and Kingston University do provide extensive facilities to do all the jobs mentioned. I'm not making this up. You really get what you paid.)

In Malaysia, you take the assignment, sketch your idea and intensive photoshop session begins. Pretty straightforward. Some might even cut out the research part.

The problem of both is, most startups and fresh companies do not want conceptual designs because they could not afford it and their time is limited. On the other side of design world, some giant and big companies started to approach graphic advertising in a conceptual way because they are unique and they could afford it. Many of the music videos by famous stars use weird and seems like unrelated props to convey their ideas too.

As a graphic designer, we have to understand both worlds of design.

Dipping my foot into conceptual pool

I have no idea what is conceptual design, what I know is it's all about ideas. Here are few of the images to demonstrate the conceptual side of design. Click to enlarge.