Congratulations to Andy Weston, Chris Wood and Danielle Boyte for cleaning up at the Mothra Student Film Festival awards ceremony on Saturday evening. The team won five awards [all the categories they were nominated in] for their film: ‘BHFSM’ [Bernie Holmes Fund for Struggling Musicians]. Awards won were: Best original score [with Sam Blissett], Best presenter [Nick Laird as Bernie Holmes], best credits, best mockumentary, and best publicity.

Congratulations also to Matt Taine for picking up best animation for his film: ‘You’re Only Young Once’ and nomineees Chris Wood and Fiona Johnston for the same category [all entering their 325 Lightning Artists projects, supervised with Alex Gilks].

Oli Lucks and Tristan Manus, [previous design studies students] also picked up a number of wins including best video and editing.

The next Design Studies Keynote lecture, Sustainable Design Education in New Zealand, will be given by Nicola Bould, PhD Candidate. Nicola has presented at a number of international conferences and has meet some top international design educators.

Monday 14th September, Archway 2 at 1.00pm

What is Pecha Kucha? (pronounced “peh-chak-cha”)

A Pecha Kucha night involves the projection of a series of large images via a data projector. Invited presenters show 20 images each, with only 20 seconds to speak to each image (a total of 6.40 mins). The magic is the rapid fire presentation and the diversity of presenters and topics on the night. It is about bringing creative people together and getting inspired by their ideas.

Pecha Kucha Nights were initiated by Klein Dytham Architecture in Tokyo and are now held in over 250 cities around the world.

See the NZ website here: http://www.pechakucha.co.nz/

The world Pecha Kucha site is at: http://www.pecha-kucha.org/

Wednesday 16 September, Union Common Room, 640 Cumberland St, University of Otago

$8 entry or $5 with student ID or Onecard. Cash Bar/Refreshments. Doors open 7.30pm.

Design Studies is co-sponsoring the event and Scott Savage is a participant.

The course develops design projects investigating a particular area of design interest. This year these areas of interest are likely to cover a spectrum of design opportunities. The creation of high quality well documented design outcomes is expected. Ten students are required for each project stream to run. This is a fantastic opportunity to work with international designers (Tim Gluyas and Toshi Endo) and produce some great portfolio work.

Design Studies is participating in the very first inaugural Adobe Pixel Mash tournament. Pixel Mash is a live digital design tournament that pits participants against each other, to see who can create the most original design in 15 minutes.In each round, students will be given a word and an object as impetus. Using their own ideas and unique styles, they will have 15 minutes to create an artwork. Each designer will be equipped with a Mac computer, Adobe Creative Suite 4 and a Wacom Cintiq interactive pen display to use at the tournament.

The audience will be able to watch the designers at work on live screens. At the end of each round, the winner will be decided by live audience SMS voting. iTunes vouchers will be given as random prizes to SMS voters. Free CS4 30-day trial DVDs giveaways for audience at the event. The two winners of each round will then go head-to-head in the college final round.

So come and support your classmates next Monday, 24th August at Leithbank Design Studio. Starting 1pm!

Wichai Pattanapol is presenting his research and findings of his PhD project. Wichai is near completion of this project and will be submitting his Thesis in the near future.

Wichai’s  presentation is next Friday 14th August  1.00pm in the CApSc seminar room.