Last Friday, Airside had the pleasure of a visit from a group of budding young designers, currently undertaking a short summer course in graphic design at Central St Martins.  The month-long course at CSM looks to give its student an insight into the world of design by exploring a variety of London’s design studios, shops and exhibitions.

The 13 students (pictured below) and their course head Lisa Gellender spent an hour at Airside’s studio, meeting the design team and watching the latest version of our showreel. According to Lisa they left “feeling very impressed and inspired”, though they saw the messy side of design, as we spent much of the afternoon dealing with server problems.

Airside opens its doors to student groups every month.

A few weeks back Airside was visited by a group of Visual Communication students from Aberdeen College. Nearly 30 students and their lecturers Nicola Watson and Zoe Hargraves, filled our meeting room to bursting point for a presentation of the Airside showreel by Henki and Jamie, followed by a lengthy Q&A session. The group then split in two, with one half taking a tour of the studio (and accidentally walking in on a client meeting).

Whilst waiting their turn, the second group rummaged through the remnants of our Airside Shop sale, as pictured below. Later a handful stayed behind and had their portfolios critiqued by Jamie – the brave souls. A big thank you to the guys from Aberdeen College, for coming to see us and for the use of your photo. We hope you enjoyed it. If you would like your (smaller) design class to pay a visit to Airside, check out this News item for details.

We are officially very excited about tomorrow’s opening of Airside: The Pop-Up Shop. Our shop manager Natalie has worked her bump off to transform our meeting room into a brilliant bazaar packed with t-shirts, prints and other assorted goodies. Here’s a sneak peek at the fruits of her labour, as our little Pop-Up Shop bathes in the glorious evening sunshine.

Airside: The Pop-Up Shop opens tomorrow at 11am. There will be music, prize draws, cake, our infamous Air-Cider and much more going on throughout the day, until 8pm. We hope to see you there, but if you can’t make it tomorrow, we’re also open on Saturday. Don’t forget everything must go, so expect bargains and giveaways galore. Full details here.

Hurrah! Airside would like to welcome Erica Dorn as our latest intern. A graduate from the ever-great LCC, Erica’s work has not gone unnoticed – well, with a stare like that, it’s hard not too.

A particular favourite of ours is her small scale sculptural piece, Anatomy of Intimacy (below). Check this out and more at her excellent website www.erica-dorn.com.

We had our seasonal celebration last night and here’s a few snaps we can share with you. It was all heading in the right direction – lovely buffet spread (thanks Elaine), gorgeous table, splendid people. Then out came the Buckfast and the Air-cider (made from Alex’s apple trees)… Let’s just say there are some headaches today. But no regrets. Non, rien de rien.

Here’s to 2009. x

 

We had a nice surprise visit today from our friends from Sapporo, Japan Junjiro and Eiji. They are over in London promoting their short film entries into a Japanese short film festival (when I have details, I’ll post again).

Good luck and safe flight home. Thanks for coming in!

Domo arigato!

 

Like Keifer Sutherland abandoning the small screen and getting back into movies, 24 is no more. For Airside that means 24 Cross Street, the small basement studio we’ve occupied since our inception a whole decade ago. We have now abandoned it for bright and shiny new premises at 339 Upper Street.

Our hero Keifer would have mixed feelings about it. Like any good vampire he would have liked the dark of our former basement, though he’d be happy to lose the Cross.

Wah wah.