Friday the 8th of February saw a reunion of ex students spanning 30/40 years from the furniture design department at Edinburgh College of Art http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/edinburgh-college-art

I got there at 9am to be greeted by Leslie Mitchell (who was head of Design and applied arts and who heroically organised the event) we had a brief catch up as people started arriving. The thing that struck me the most, as everyone arrived he remembered all names. After having our ID checked in the office we were invited to the boardroom for tea and coffee. The board room was very nice which had a lovely view of Edinburgh Castle.

After an hour we started the second part of the day, current students presented their projects giving us the opportunity to encourage or advise on a way forward. The ideas were diverse from Augmented reality dental products, health care products, personal working spaces, street furniture, responsibility in design and time pieces. it was an interesting few hours and you could tell how the current students are being pushed to develop products for the future.

This bought us up to lunch and after which were presentations from ex students on what they have been up to since.

Presentations by alumni

Andrew Glidden Glidden Design and Brand Communication. http://www.weareglidden.com/

Ewan McCarthy Bright 3D Environments. http://www.bright3d.com/full/team.php

Roddy White TP Vision, Philips

Jamie McCall – PLB Projects http://www.plbltd.com/index.php

Luke Carrington and Philip Stewart – ink Associates http://www.inkassociates.co.uk/

Trent Jennings and Tom Marsh – Blue Marmalade http://www.bluemarmalade.co.uk/

All the talks lasted about 20 minutes and gave a good history of what each person or in some cases partnerships had done since graduating. It was very inspiring to see what people had developed and the different routes people had taken.

Afterwards there was plenty of networking going on up in the boardroom with some red wine! From here we moved onto Henricks for some food and drinks. http://www.henricksbar.com/

It was great to meet up with old friends and forge some new friendships. Im looking forward to the next one. It must have been a good weekend as I’m currently nursing a lost voice and had to cancel a client meeting :

All the best

Martin