Kam Rehal
DVC: celebrating an extended community of practitioners
Since its very beginning, the DVC Course has extended an invitation for students of vastly different backgrounds and experiences, to come and explore an expanded approach to doing design. DVC has been constituted by the many students and staff who have shared the space of the studio over the past 20 years, and owes much of its success to the tireless and commendable work of Tony Pritchard, the first DVC Course Leader. There are a great number of designers and creative practitioners who have benefitted from Tony’s teaching and support. Whilst it is an immense shame that the course is coming to a close, the occasion provides an opportunity to celebrate and reflect upon the impact and influence that DVC has had, since it began in 2004. I was lucky enough to have had the opportunity to be a student on DVC in 2007, and then later join the course teaching team as a Visiting Lecturer, from 2015–16.
As a student I enjoyed the uniquely exciting pace of the course, the iterative nature of modules and projects offered, and the close connection to practitioners and lecturers — including Geoff White, Tory Dunn, Paul McNeil, Teal Triggs (currently my PhD supervisor at the Royal College of Art). I entered the course having studied Illustration at undergraduate level and DVC provided my first formal education in design. The skills and knowledge I was able to develop across projects such as ‘reduction redundancy’, ‘political thinking’ and ‘visual grammar’ continued to inform a number of later projects and further investigations, fostering an attention to new ways of thinking and working that encouraged deep critical, conceptual and processual experimentation.
As a visiting lecturer on DVC, I had the chance to work with students who joined from a range of creative fields such as graphic design, illustration, photography and art, as well as from disciplines across the humanities, sciences, health and business. This has been a considerable strength of the course, allowing students to integrate methods and perspectives from outside of design, to enhance the possibilities for visual communication. Some of the most memorable projects I experienced included: the design and production of typographic posters that encouraged audiences to physically interact with them; a publication that presented the working studio environments of 10 creative design practitioners; a graphic and cultural typology of board games from around the world; graphic visualisation of sonic experiences.
Whilst there are too many examples to capture here, through their work, students of the DVC course have actively developed and tested multidisciplinary methods and practices across a range of communication contexts. Recalling just a small number of these is indicative of the broader body of work that has expanded the study and practice of thinking and making within our field. It’s an honor to have shared in this collective effort alongside students, peers and colleagues across the DVC course.
— Kam Rehal, May 2024