In a partnership with the Office of Applied Research, level 4 graphic design students had the opportunity to work with real clients for the first time, where they got the chance to develop and come up with ideas to fulfill their clients’ project needs.
The school of media and design held a project showcase and an award ceremony on Jan. 9.
“It’s an amazing opportunity to work with real clients. It’s important for the students to learn strategy and process in a forum that’s different than a theoretical assignment,” said Robyn Heaton, the Dean of the faculty of arts, media and design. “They’ll be better prepared for the workforce.”
Jed Looker is the professor of interactive design – a level four course in the graphic design program – and he’s very proud of what his students have accomplished.
“What we did this semester is we worked with applied research to bring real world clients into the classroom,” said Looker. “So we had 12 teams, each team got a real-world client and students worked with them to determine what are the clients need, and scope out the project on their own.”
This year the course was different than it has been in the past since Looker didn’t give them a specific brief. Rather than giving the students set instructions, they had to figure that out on their own with their respective clients.
“So what we were doing today with the awards today was simply honouring like the Best in Show category, which had a $200 cash prize that were made available by Applied Research here at Algonquin,” said Looker.
The Best in Show prize went to the team who was involved with CANImmunize – a bilingual vaccine device used to track immunization.
Annie Chan, one of the team’s members said that the experience of working with a real client was taxing but paid off in the end.
“The experience was stressful but worth it at the same time. Because we had such a good team to work with,” said Chan. “We communicated effectively, and it was a good learning process.”
As for what led to their success, the team attributes it to effective communication.
“I think it was our collaboration,” said Teo Holland. “And we had a good client, which I think was really the reason we did so well on this project.”