Workshop at ISIA

Last week I travelled to Italy to do a workshop with postgraduate students at ISIA, a design school in Urbino, with help from Chiara Carrer and Giulia Sagramola. Urbino is a beautiful walled town with an ancient Ducal palace, cobbled streets and impressive views, nestled in the hills in the Marche region of Italy. The school itself is in a converted monastery and on arrival you are greeted by an amazing circular painted ceiling.

The workshop was based on my book 'A is for Rhinoceros', published by Edizioni Corraini, and was about getting students to look at the shapes of the letters rather than what the letters are 'for'. They did several exercises working with letters, using them as a basis for a drawing.

Then, on the second day they started their main project to work (in groups) on two alphabet books - one of capital letters and one of lower case letters. They were given restrictions on size and colour but were free to choose a theme for their book if they wished.

The 'Capitals' group had to work with blue, red and black on an A3 book and their chosen theme was 'Eros' (Everything Relies On Sex)! The lowercase group worked with yellow, green and black on a smaller, A5 book, and their chosen subject was ingredients. Both groups had the additional challenge of working in English, as the Italian alphabet only has 21 letters and the brief was to create 26!

Both groups worked well, and (just!) managed to finish their books in time. Here are a few of the images produced. Work by Giulia Sagramola, Michele Galluzzo, Alessio D'Ellena, Federica Vaglio, Claudia Polizzi, Giampiero Donno and Antonella Liscita.