Looking around this year's New Blood exhibition last night, it's gratifying to see that the best work is largely good ol' ink on paper. While there were some outstanding individual pieces of motion and interactive work, the overall standard wasn't as good as previous years -- but this was more than made up for by a wide variety of cracking old-school designs.
It's been a difficult time for graphic design over the last year. It began with tabloid outrage over the badly-conceived Olympics 2012 logo - which is already dated now, though to everyone's surprise it will be trendily retro come the time of the Games. In the past month, we've seen no Black or Yellow Pencils given in the graphic design categories at this year's D&AD Awards.
The overall prize for best stand was split between Glasgow School of Art and the University of Gloucestershire. The former was awarded on the strength of the work on show – three of its students were given Best in Show awards, a feat matched only by the University of Plymouth, and the overall standard was outstanding. The latter's work wasn't in the same league, but did feature an innovative, great-looking stand design based around different Pantone colours for each student and easily accessible slanting trays for each portfolio.
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