Middlesex creative students’ Degree Show captures the spirit of work and playfulness

Graduates turn personal passions into coursework and tackle real-world challenges in final year projects

The theme for this year’s North London Degree Show at Middlesex, bringing together work by final year students on more than 20 courses, reflects on two sides of the coin of the creative process – the meticulous and planned side, and experimental play.

With her design for the identity of the festival, featuring colour-contrast graphics and a quirky, bendy typeface, Graphic Design graduate Anna Brega aimed to capture the blend of creativity and professionalism exhibited by talented arts, design and media students.

The “very multimedia project” involved designing Facebook and email banners, maps and navigation systems, physical signs, motion graphics for screens in the Grove building and making Instagram reels. Anna supported a student curatorial team of five and liaised with staff and technicians in the workshop around cutting out aerodynamic plywood shapes. Preparations were a logistical challenge with lots of the work pushed to the last week. On the verge of the show opening, with final touches being added such as applying vinyl graphic to the walls, Anna is feeling “very excited,” she says. “It’s been a great experience. I really enjoyed working with different people on it”.

Anna’s particular passion is for motion graphics, while she says her favourite project at Middlesex was developing a brand identity for an item from the far future, which she did for a range of mycelium-based products, laser-cutting prototype packaging, photographing it in the studio and then making some advertising around the product. Some students, she says, had a dystopian view of the future, others more positive ones; “my take was a green future when we rely on green energy and natural materials”.

Digital Media and Communications graduate Emma Buckley is very proud of her ‘Femmenart’ project, about making works by female artists in the National Gallery’s collections accessible to younger generations. Users scan a QR code and go through to an Instagram page. In a video, Emma or one of her project partners explain what’s in the painting and its meanings and historical context in a way younger people can easily understand. “That felt very relatable and a problem we thought needed to be addressed,” Emma says. “There are these incredible museums like the National Gallery but younger people, unless they already have a massive interest, don’t always feel drawn to go, as they don’t understand it. So, we wanted to give a translation, almost. And that felt like it definitely could have been taken further.”

Echoing the work and play duality of the Degree Show theme, Emma as a huge music fan linked some of her coursework to favourite music artists, such as a research project on the cultural impact of Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour. For her final year project, she produced and co-hosted a podcast about Louis Tomlinson of One Direction fame. Podcasting was a new medium for her, an opportunity to find her way around recording equipment and editing software, but she was very confident about the subject as the creator of Instagram’s largest independent Louis Tomlinson updates account, with more than 80,000 followers. For background research, she could send survey questions to the star’s fans all over the world.

“It really felt like a passion project and it turned out way better than I expected,” she says. Outside studies, as captain of the Middlesex cheerleading team for two successive years, she did a lot of the team’s social media and designed a new uniform, bringing many new recruits to try out the sport.

Advertising, PR and Branding student Shaheer Azmi transferred from York University in Toronto onto the second year of the programme at Middlesex. He was a social media ambassador and content creator working with the university's marketing team, and says the hands-on experience has given his job prospects “quite a big push”. He has just started a marketing co-ordinator contract working for IMG for a month.

Shaheer’s degree course projects included a campaign for Barnet Council to create awareness around violence against women and girls in the borough. Shaheer and his teammates pitched their proposals to the council, and he reflects that he took a lot from tackling the brief. “Working with a real life client has its own benefits. It gives you real-life exposure that you need in university, so when you enter the job market, you know what you’re doing – working with a team, tackling all the challenges”.

He lists the industry experience of his lecturers, guest speakers from industry and much smaller class sizes compared to those he had in Canada as ways in which Middlesex stands out. In his own time, he runs a food blog. He is glad that a module on AI communications was compulsory for everyone on his course: “Like it or not, it’s becoming a very powerful thing… I feel like every student especially in the marketing space should be exposed to AI, if they want to upskill and maintain their creative space and creativity in the industry.” His inspiration is Breaking Bad director Vince Gilligan who, he says, is “not just a fantastic storyteller, but he understands the power of authenticity. Authenticity in storytelling is one of the greatest assets in the age of AI”.

Illustration graduate Ecaterina Tincu says “there are just so many exciting things to mention” about her university experience. The life-drawing room became like a second home to her, and she was deeply inspired by painting and drawing lecturer Aldous Eveleigh, who she says can pinpoint the differences in historic painting styles between different Italian cities.

For her final major project, she created concept art for a brand of dolls called ‘Seasons’, drawing on her knowledge of fashion dolls as a collector herself. She designed four characters, representing the seasons in Moldova, her home country. Looking ahead, she is trying to find a Moldovan publisher for a graphic novel she drew in her second year. Her dream job would be “ illustrating for a toy company, for their packaging, advertisement, social media, then pitching my own doll brand idea for manufacturing and sale”.

Interim Head of the School of Design Emma Dick said, “The North London Degree Show is a truly collaborative effort and showcases the best work of our graduates in arts, design and film in creative practice-based education, as a result of three years of hands-on experience with real projects, industry placements, and networking with global brands.

“We are exceptionally proud of Middlesex graduate talent and invite everyone to come to our beautiful campus in Hendon to enjoy the work first hand.”

The opening night is Wednesday 10th June. The Degree Show is open to the public from 10am-4pm on weekdays, and continues until 28th July.

Read more information about the North London Degree Show