TSSG’s Horizon 2020 Proposals include Logos designed by WIT Students
TSSG and WIT engaged in a joint collaboration to run a competition which gave final year students from the BA (Honours) in Design (Visual communications) the opportunity to design a logo for European project proposals. The competition involved students participating in TSSG’s proposal production process targeting the EU Horizon 2020 funding scheme.
Driven by Dr. Ethel Claffey, Marketing Lecturer, School of Business, WIT, the objective of this year’s project was to place students in a realistic business setting in order to measure their business skills relevant to the design industry. This gave students a taste of real-world company engagement and the opportunity to interact with multiple research units in TSSG in a professional context, with outcomes that could see their final designs placed on European projects. The competition involved interpreting a complex research brief, developing a design, and pitching a logo for a specific market and technology. The final project outputs were reviewed by members of TSSG’s Creative Development Unit, Data Mining & Social Computing, and Mobile Services Research Units.
Kevin Doolin, COO, Director EU Programmes, at TSSG felt that the impact of strong logos along with the high quality of research propositions could aid proposals in standing out amongst heavy competition from throughout Europe. He went on to say, “Over the past three years of this competition, logos developed by the student cohort from this course ended up being selected and used in some of our fund-winning proposals. This not only provides support to the ongoing work in TSSG, but also provides students with much needed experience of interpreting and understanding a research brief and stamping their personalities on it in a commercial setting”.
Dr Ethel Claffey said “The competition has given the students the opportunity to deal with real customers, enabling them to gain professional experience. This is a highly engaging process in which students engage with multiple senior staff members from TSSG. The students can take this experience with them outside of academia”.
This year’s overall winning team included Leon Murphy, Nathan Burke, Milada Bellova and Keith Flynn. Leon Murphy said “We were delighted to get the opportunity to learn and gain experience working with a real company over a set period of time. The experience we gained from this live project enabled us to learn and develop practical, commercially applicable skills”.
Photo: L-R: Keith Flynn; Eric Robson, Research Unit Manager, Data Mining and Social Computing, TSSG; Nathan Burke; Milada Bellova; Leon Murphy; Niamh O'Mahony, Creative Development Unit, TSSG;
Dr. Ethel Claffey, Lecturer in Marketing, WIT.
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