Returning to Our Roots

Nearly a decade has passed since we used a series of egg-based vignettes to illustrate the student prospectus for the National College of Art and Design in Dublin (NCAD).  The egg-prospectus, as it became known among staff and students at NCAD, had an unexpectedly long life; before the eggs were quietly retired in 2007 they'd seen six annual updates and left an impression, for better and worse, on an entire generation of NCAD graduates.

As is often the case, the true inspiration for the egg prospectus was the lack of a budget – we had to find low cost, visual solutions to expressing ideas about the nature of an education in art and design. Before we knew it we were borrowing egg cups from the collection of a product designer friend and converting the studio's drawing model into a stop motion participant in an imaginary egg and spoon race.  

When, after a three-year hiatus, we got another bite of the cherry with the NCAD prospectus, things hadn't changed much as far as the budget was concerned. In fact, if anything it had only gotten smaller. So, we returned to our roots. No, not to the eggs but to the process of creating an imaginative world of ideas out of whatever we could get our hands on. We shaped divider page numbers out of black beans and sugar; crafted typographic dividers from chicken wire and string, sliced-up bakery bags, HP sauce, and leftover Eircom siteworks tape; and designed a series of little visual stories out of anything we could find to hand, from marbles to golf tees.

The results are much less literal than the eggs, but no less representative of the world of art and design – with creativity and ideas everything is imaginable.