The Business Design Center in Islington recently hosted New Designers, a collection of the best art and design degree shows in U.K and Ireland. This is a great chance to see the future design talent of Britain in one large, badly air conditioned space. The talent varies from year to year, with this year being particularly good. Although, no matter how talented the students the reality is that the vast majority will never become old designers. The best girl from my year was plucked from New Designers to show at DKNY on Bond Street which propelled her to gallery showings throughout Europe. Five years on she is doing quite well, but out of the design world.

What makes this show so wonderful is that it is raw. By the time trends hit the high street they are often watered down versions of the original idea. Of course, they are also practical, commercial, and hopefully profitable. All of these designers have talent, the ones who make it will also have the ability to refine their ideas so that they are commercial without losing the spark that makes them stand out.   But for this show it is the crude, powerful, unrefined work that triumphs over the conventional. To that end, Elisabeth Petch who took the trend for urban art and made it even more urban stood out. Her large canvasses of grimy, industrial signage were wonderful.

The theme of funky, illustrative line drawings was extended by Karen Thompson onto dinnerware where she mixed photographic and painted motifs. The 80’s are still an influential decade for this group and showed themselves in angular computer graphics and silhouettes of Run DMC and other influences at the time of breakdancing and the birth of rap. Like most of the work in this show that style was taken too far to be commercial, tableware with too much coverage, textiles that are too in your face, and all in all, just too wonderful to make it in the mainstream.