First year Level 3 Graphic Design students at Kingston College have just completed their work experience with Perry-Greene Design. Last November the group met Susannah from Perry-Greene who talked about the graphic design industry, running her own business and shared her career journey. She created and delivered the work experience brief of re-designing a large-format publicity poster for “Blitz: the club that shaped the 80s”, currently exhibiting at the Design Museum until 29 March 2026. The exhibition showcases the legendary Blitz club night that transformed the 1980s London style and generated a creative scene that had an enormous impact on popular culture.
For inspiration and research, the group visited the Design Museum and were taken on an expert tour of the Blitz exhibition. Susannah ran workshops at College with the students, working on their ideas and designs with their teaching team of Alison, Nicky and Vicky. Presentations were made and work was refined in line with her guidelines until it was ready to present for judging. The finished posters were printed and exhibited in our Penny School Gallery.
We were delighted to be visited by Directors of the Design Museum who came to judge the posters and picked the winners! Our winning poster was created by “Shriya Vijay”. Her work was inspired by the decorative head piece that she saw at the exhibition, which was designed by the British milliner Stephen Jonas. To create her design, she found a picture of Boy George wearing it and used it as the focal point of her poster, as there were a few pictures of him included in the exhibition. She used Adobe Illustrator to create the grid pattern in the background and Photoshop to create the actual poster. Lilly Baik was chosen as the runner-up, with her poster design inspired by the wide range of images and objects that she saw at the exhibition. She created the collaged image and 80’s style patterns using Adobe software. The Design Museum have awarded them each a goodie bag containing varied merchandise from the Museum. Well done, Shriya and Lilly!
From concept to creation the students have fully embraced the brief and bought the legendary 80s theme to life. Susannah said “students have demonstrated creativity, resilience and real design maturity. A huge well done to the students for their commitment, talent and ambition”.
A huge thank you to Susanah for working with our students, for giving them key advice on creative ideas and technical solutions and for all the encouragement! Also, special thanks to the Design Museum for providing the content, showing us round the expo and for coming to see the work and selecting our winners. We look forward to working with you on further projects. It was a brilliant way to end this rewarding collaboration!
