Graphic Design: A look at the most striking identities for this year's student shows

With more fantastically designed invitations flying through our door than we knew what to do with recently, we decided to compile a list of our favourite degree show identities for you all to feast your eyes on. From websites chockablock with GIFs and video clips to beautifully-made catalogues, an invitation which literally jumped out of its envelope and several vacuum-packed collections of oddities (a rubber nipple, anyone?) if the invitations are anything to go by, this year’s degree shows promise a feast of fresh new creative talent for you all to get your chops around.

Aptly named Play the amazing invitation from Leeds Graphic Design degree show came complete with cutouts of triangles and circles to pop in and out at your leisure, and an equally intriguing website to match. There’s nothing like a puzzle to whet our appetite as to the design treats on display in the show! The public opening will be from June 17 until June 21.
www.play.leeds.ac.uk

The Goldsmiths Graphic Design chaps created this lovely identity around the idea of a gold wire which ran the length of the fold-out invitation. It also came vacuum-packed, for extra fun, and, er, waterproofing. Cool!
www.thisiswar.org.uk

Kingston’s website design is amaaaaazing – squirting ketchup, extending binoculars, inflating marigold gloves all included – and the joy emanating from their fantastic design has spilled over onto the poste, too. On one side is pictured a normal, average, unexciting yellow glove, and on the other, a super-size inflated one and the semi-translucent paper allows each to show through to the other. It’s a washing-up optical illusion, and we like it. A LOT. The show is open until June 21.
www.kingston.ac.uk/degreeshow2013

Primary colours are always a winner with us, so this jolly little film by Central Saint Martins went down a treat. Simple and yet oh-so-effective, their tear-it-yourself invitation makes for hours of perforated fun. We can’t wait to see the show – it’s open from June 18 until June 23.
www.csm.arts.ac.uk

Ravensbourne’s charmingly named show 26 Characters has kept the identity slick and the content highly personal, with a detailed look at the students’ work on both the website and in the catalogue. We love how the images flick from silly portraits of the students to sneak peeks of their work as soon as you put the mouse over them. Thumbs-up from us.
www.26characte.rs

Would you look at this? A sweetly hilarious film of outtakes, a perfectly grid-like and yet really funny website and a cloudy catalogue to show the student’s work in full. What more could you want? The sheer completeness of the identity for Camberwell would make us love it, that is, if we weren’t already sold on the clouds and the students cheeky smiles. Lovely. The show runs until June 22.
www.mostlikely.co.uk

Northumbria had us won over the second we ripped open the perforated strip on their envelope and this wee multi-coloured cube popped right out and landed into our laps. “Sheer genius!” we cried. To add to our wonder at their engineering skills, the honeycomb website, reinforcing the focus on branding, publishing and image-making embodied in the “Power of Three” logo, has us hypnotized in some kind of design-trance state. Thanks, Norhumbria. The show runs from June 20 until June 27.
www.thepowerofthree.org.uk

Keeping it classic, simple and clean, the University of Reading identity focused on their ink-stamp logo and the clear delivery of their website, with a nicely pu- together catalogue of the students’ work to underpin all the straight lines and nice corners. Neat and tidy! The show runs until June 21.
www.degreeshow2013.com

London College of Communication’s snazzy website had us scrolling and clicking for at least 20 minutes to discover all the gems hidden beneath those little doors, like a digital advent calendar of graphic design treats. We bet you get sucked in too. Can’t wait to see what the show has in store – it runs until June 28.
www.lccdgc.co.uk

Barney Stepney was the man behind the University of Brighton’s show identity. “The identity was to represent all the courses within the Faculty of Arts, whereby prints (marks) were created using the tools of each department which would form the basis of the identity,” he told us. “These marks were used generously across all print and digital media, in combination with juxtaposing typography.”

Have you got what it takes to be an It’s Nice That Graduate 2013? Find more information here and send your application to us by June 23.

The It’s Nice That Graduates 2013 is supported by Represent.