The Central Saint Martins degree show

The Chaos to Construct product design show exhibits the work of students tasked with creating one self-initiated project, and one that adheres to a client brief. One such brief was to design a Bluetooth speaker as one of a line to launch speaker brand Urbanmiix. Catherine Cross’ gorgeous Cool Listening speaker is a perfect blend of practicality and aesthetics. Created in cute, bright colours, tiny balls dance around inside an acrylic dome as the music plays.

Product design student Richard Williamson’s Semper Memor (Latin for ‘always remembering’) is an odd, rather eerie concept executed in a simple, quietly beautiful way. The device allows users to burn a letter they’ve written to a deceased loved one, meaning they’re hopefully more able to move on from their loss. The burning embers rise up through the chimney, symbolising the connection between the living and the dead and giving grieving people a chance to ‘comminute’ with those they’re missing.

We were rather intrigued by Sulliman Bodhy’s Foodishist sex toy. Taking the idea of ‘food pornography’ somewhat literally, the product is a strappy shoe with a knife and fork attached at the heel and sole respectively, allowing the wearer to feed their partner with their feet. According to Bodhy, it questions ‘our relationship with food and/or our bodies’ and the ‘domination/submission duality we can sometimes feel with food.’

A more philanthropic self-initiated project, the Homeless Vending Machine, was created by Sam Rowe . The machine distributes three homeless ‘kits’ (either ‘warmth. ‘comfort’ or ‘freshness’) that would make life sleeping rough more bearable. When a commuter buys a coffee, they are given a stamp card that gives them a token that they can then donate to a homeless person, as well as the usual loyalty reward of a free hot drink.

As well as a number of innovative and well-realised prototypes from product design students, there were also a plethora of nicely presented typographic projects on show.  Graphic design student Alessia Mazzarella, shows the process of creating the Pirrip typeface (the name is taken from Mazzarella’s favourite book as a child, Dickens’ Great Expectations) shown here in its 178^th iteration.

Another nice typographic project was Woo Jeong Chon’s experiments with Korean typefaces, focussing on ‘Gumin’. According to the MA Communication Design student, ‘there is a general overuse of Latin typefaces in South Korean, especially in the design field’, and this project aims to encourage young Korean designers ‘to keep a balanced attitude about typography.’

The DW cute-o-meter was sent into overdrive by the work of Stella Lin, in her Jean Tu project. The MA Communication Design student has created this adorable character and shown its use across a huge number of different touch points, including point-of-sale materials, chocolate packaging, key-rings and other ephemera and comic books. We love.

One of our favourite pieces in the whole show was illustration student Florence W’s foxes piece. The colours, the drawing style, and the text work sublimely together –anyone who fails to ‘aww’ on seeing it almost certainly has a heart of stone.

Sticking to the woodland animals theme, we were also very taken with this little fawn by Lea Dalissier , who says the visual language is influenced by ‘dreams, imagination and memory.’

Central Saint Martins is located at The Granary Building, 1 Granary Square, King’s Cross London NC1. See www.csm.arts.ac.uk/degree-shows-2012 for more information