By Rebecca English, Assistant Programme Manager.

On Tuesday 2 October we welcomed 200 students from secondary schools across the UK to take part in the launch of Graphic Gathering. This new project aims to give secondary students an insight into design at Higher Education and industry level by answering a real-life brief delivered by the V&A and D&AD. D&AD exists to inform, educate and inspire those who work in and around the creative industries, particularly in graphics and advertising. The annual D&AD Awards are recognised throughout the world for setting the absolute reference standard for creative excellence. We wanted to partner with them to give students a taste of what’s happening in the real world and get them to start thinking like professional designers.

The brief the students were given was taken from last year’s White Pencil Open brief. The D&AD White Pencil is awarded to a creative idea with the potential to effect real and positive change in the world. We wanted the students to approach a social design brief that could showcase the power of design. Students were challenged with the following proposition: We want you to make it impossible for anyone to ignore Peace One Day.

To help students think about answering this brief, we were really excited to be able to get out some of our amazing peace and protest posters from our Prints and Drawings archives. Students were able to draw from these on the day. Objects on show included a poster with artwork by Picasso, revolutionary posters from Chile and Mexico, photo montage artwork by Peter Kennard and notorious campaign posters by designers such as F. H. K. Henrion, whose work was banned on Transport for London for being too controversial. We also showed students iconic examples of Graphic Design and Typography, both from our archives and in our 20th Century galleries.

The workshop on 2 October was all about briefing the students.  We also had some help from two previous D&AD Student Award winners, Melissa Preston and Martin Craster, and we were joined by designers Emily Wood & Ruth Sykes from REG graphic design, Pali Palavathanan from Johnson Banks and Cecilie Barstad from Gilles & Cecilie Studio. These guys formed our panel for the day and they were key in giving the students top tips on how to approach a brief and advice on career pathways as well as telling us about their own routes into design.

The students now have until January to work on the brief and we’ll be working with teachers to assist them with this. We’re really excited to see what the students come up with to make Peace One Day impossible for anyone to ignore. We’ll be posting some of the students’ responses in February.