All of us here at UCA Epsom love Once Upon a Town magazine and we’ve been lucky enough to work together with Cai and Kyn, the talented designers and publishers, on a unique collaboration for this issue. We wanted to do something creative to reflect the magazine and local area – the creativity themed issue seemed like the perfect opportunity and so the ‘UCA Takeover’ Magazine Competition brief was launched.

Year 1 Graphic Design students were put into groups and took on the ambitious task of designing an 8-page mini magazine, with the winning group’s work being printed in this edition of OUT (below). Each group had to come up with an overall design concept for the mini magazine, choose a local creative business as their Local Hero and conduct their own interview. Then, they had to create the page layouts, as well as another editorial feature for which only the copy was supplied.  Everything else was left to the students to create.

The opportunity has been fantastic and our students have done some really exciting designs. For students to work on a live project like this, as part of their course, is an amazing experience. Receiving feedback from clients gives them the experience of understanding the industry first-hand. To be able to work on these types of projects involving the community of Epsom is so rewarding and we hope to continue our collaborations with OUT in future issues.

Words by Dr Sophie Beard, Senior Lecturer Graphic Design, University for the Creative Arts