One week ago, we held our degree show to celebrate the end of our undergraduate programme and to showcase the work we'd achieved this final year, at the Loading Bay Gallery, Old Truman's Brewery on Brick Lane. I really didn't know what to expect from it, particularly given how little thought I'd afforded it having been preparing for the exam just a week before, but I have to say it was one of the most enjoyable and gratifying things I've done in recent memory. Of course, that was largely made possible due to actually completing my work and having a project to display in the first place, but to be there, amongst all these interested, enthusiastic people and surrounded by other magnificent pieces designed by my peers, it felt quite great.
I presented my own print publication called Comma, a title dedicated to the hardworking commuter. The biggest challenge I faced was to give print a more tangible function, more so than just linear content provision. Print has been a fascinating topic for me and the most intriguing aspect has been to identify its purpose within today's so-called digital age, with the belief that print can and ought to sit side by side with digital, each serving to their respective strengths. And there is so much that print is strong at; the calm stillness of printed paper still has so much to offer. Comma aims to bring the commuter community closer together by providing the platform to share everyday stories, meet like-minded people and enhance the unique gap, or pause, between home and work. Its production is participatory, inviting the commuting readers to contribute their own subject matter — a magazine for you, by you. It helps to enable potential opportunities and conversations with, say, the anonymous person sat opposite you on the train or cycling beside you on the street, who I believe hold the most relatable and inspiring details of realistic aspiration that we can learn from.
Anyway, it was wonderful to be able to share this project with real people, non-tutors, who were eager to listen and respond to our work. I met some valuable voices and it's an experience I can take great heart from. With that, it seems I have now all-but-officially graduated from university, ready to contribute to the real world and offer all the goodness that I feel confident I can bring. Congratulations and good luck, self.
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