UK Intellectual Property Office

Live Team Project

Year: 3rd Year 
Project: Say No To Illegal Counterfeit Goods

Students from UCEN Manchester have delivered an impassioned plea to the public to say no to illegal counterfeit goods, offered for sale elsewhere in the city and online.  

The final year BA (Hons) Creative Media and Visual Communication students have highlighted how the illegal trade in fakes puts legitimate traders’ livelihoods – and the students’ future prospects – at risk, as they highlighted to shoppers the ‘real cost’ of fakes and appealed to them to help support Manchester’s world class design industry. 

The students created copy for content and a call to action, organised their own photoshoot using garments that were seized during recent raids, and put together a series of design proposals to work across both print and digital platforms.

Using eye-catching displays and materials such as repurposed fake goods and video content, the students created a public-facing, guerrilla campaign and stand to display at Manchester’s Arndale shopping centre. They were accompanied by representatives of Greater Manchester Police, Manchester City Council and the UK Intellectual Property Office, who have joined forces with the students on a mission to help educate consumers about the real harms fake goods cause and empower them to make informed choices. 

Alexandra Jackson, Lead Tutor, said:

“This project is community-focused, giving our learners the opportunity to work alongside real people and to tackle real-world problems and local issues by developing thought-provoking campaigns that create awareness and change perceptions in order to enhance every day social living.”

Thanks to the unique partnership with the UK Intellectual Property Office, our students have been given the chance to work on a high-profile awareness campaign that could have a huge impact on the counterfeit goods market in Manchester. 

Their project highlights the impact this trade has on society and all those that that suffer as a result, while celebrating Manchester’s vast array of fashion, high street and independent stores. 

The students shared their creative ideas and explained how their research has highlighted many misconceptions about the counterfeit goods trade in Manchester – notably, that it’s a victimless crime.

By shining a spotlight on the real cost of fakes, the aspiring designers appealed to the public to ‘wear real’ and say a resounding ‘no’ to this harmful trade. 

Michael Walsh, Dean UCEN Manchester, commented:

“Opportunities to work hand-in-hand with organisations on professional briefs are a key part of what makes UCEN Manchester different and provide our students with the chance to develop their portfolios alongside their studies so that they are ready to hit the ground running when they start their careers. 

We are proud that our students have developed a compelling and professional campaign in partnership with the IPO which will help raise awareness of this important issue and start to change people’s attitudes to counterfeit goods, making a positive impact to the Greater Manchester community.” 

Catherine Davies, Senior Campaigns Manager at the UK Intellectual Property Office said: “The Intellectual Property Office has been delighted to partner with UCEN Manchester and their talented students to help raise consumer awareness about the harms of counterfeit goods. The campaign has given the students a golden opportunity to work on a live brief, as part of the collaborative work between The Manchester College, UCEN Manchester and other partners to help tackle this issue in the Manchester area and support the city’s innovative and creative industries. 

“As these aspiring designers enter the job market, this opportunity will give them an invaluable lifelong understanding of how to protect and make the most of the IP – the collective term for patents, trade marks, copyright and designs – in their creations, and how to use the IP of others legitimately.”

The illegal trade in counterfeits, alongside piracy, costs the UK economy billions of pounds and has been estimated to be responsible for over 80,000 job losses each year. Such goods are often dangerous and defective, produced with minimal regard for those purchasing them, or those workers exploited in their production. 

Cllr Luthfur Rahman, Deputy Leader of Manchester City Council, said: “Counterfeiting isn’t a victimless crime. Apart from fuelling wider criminal enterprises that wreak havoc in our communities, the products that are being offered to our residents by unscrupulous counterfeit shops are more often than not very poor quality and, in many cases, they do not meet the safety standards of the legitimate products.  

“However attractive an offer might be, we urge you to not put yourself and loved ones at risk – say no to fakes.”


Two+Two Bronze Award

Taija Bailey-Roach

Achievements: Bronze Award at Two+Two Event

12 students on the BA (Hons) Graphic Design and Branding course at UCEN Manchester’s School of Art, Media and Make-Up took part in a unique one-day event together with 200 creative and marketing students from universities across the North of England.

12 students on the BA (Hons) Graphic Design and Branding course at UCEN Manchester’s School of Art, Media and Make-Up took part in a unique one-day event together with 200 creative and marketing students from universities across the North of England.

The 2023 event, which took place at Stok in Stockport, Greater Manchester, marked the sixth annual edition of Two+Two and throughout the day students were supported by professionals from leading design and marketing agencies to tackle an exciting brief set by representatives of Stockport Council.

The brief required each team to come up with creative concepts for an upcoming recycling campaign the council is working on.  To support them through the process the students were allocated mentors from agencies including APS Group, BDB, Havas Lynx, Holdens, Mccann and Zeal Creative.

Each team was named after a colour and one of UCEN Manchester’s first year students, Taija Bailey-Roach, was part of the Blue Team, which came third overall.

“Two+Two was a great opportunity to learn how to creatively collaborate with other people in a short period of time. As a first year student, this isn’t something that I’ve done before and I really learnt a lot – it was an enjoyable experience.”

Taija Bailey-Roach

UCEN Manchester Tutor, Alex Komlosy, is a big advocate of Two+Two and has seen first-hand over a number of years how the event can help the school’s students.  Alex said: “Two+Two is one of the highlights of the academic year and an event that we’ve enjoyed success at before.

“Our students get the chance to experience what it’s like to tackle a high-profile live brief and they don’t have much time to come up with ideas, which creates a sense of pressure.

The one-day event concluded with a networking session, which provided students with the chance to build relationships and exchange details with the professionals in attendance. 








Jacob Salt

"The course has been full on from the first week. Varied briefs, weekly tasks, and client facing briefs. In addition, we had one-to-one tutor support throughout the project work from many tutors."

Branding Project: Alumni Brief from Rick Raby

We were given a branding brief by a graphic design and advertising alumni student, Rick Raby. Rick is a freelance designer and his credentials include working with Ahoy, Kin+Carta, Modern World. The brief is a strategy and application brief, whereby we were asked t develop a brand, it's positioning in the market place and offer brand guidelines to show how the brand can be applied across many collateral. The project included several client meetings, pitches, feedback and creative responses.

Kate Creeber

Advertising Brief: UCEN marketing campaign

The UCEN marketing team gave us a new brief and challenge to help attract potential students to the varied range of courses. My creative solution involved a photographic shoot to encapsulate the opportunities available at UCEN to develop a potential student’s creativity. I wrote my own straplines and call to action, linking the work together. I enjoyed the project as it was a live brief with real time deadlines and client interaction.



Alex Crocker

"I have really enjoyed the client briefs that have allowed me to play and explore new techniques and the Adobe programs."

Advertising Brief: UCEN marketing campaign

The UCEN marketing team gave us a new brief and challenge to help attract potential students to the varied range of courses. My creative solution is a mix of collage imagery that encapsulates learning within UCEN. Stock imagery and digital manipulation using Adobe programs.

Hatthaka Villamar-Trujillo

"I have been involved in many exciting projects this year, from class based tasks, live client briefs and opportunities to learn new skills through Adobe programs." Hatthaka Villamar-Trujillo

Advertising Briefs: Vinyl Project

The vinyl record cover gave me an opportunity to get into the photography studio to explore various compositions using peers as models. Images were used as part of the final design which is an interpretation of my life as a creative outlet. This was a fun project using mixed media with strong results.

Advertising Brief: UCEN marketing campaign

The UCEN marketing team gave us a new brief and challenge to help attract potential students to the varied range of courses. My creative solution was to offer an inspiring campaign that gave potential students a vision of seeing their classroom learnings into real life industry scenarios. A mix of digital editing and hand drawn work.

Jez Reid

"I have learnt so much this academic year. The variety of projects has been inspirational, as has the tutor support." Jez Reid

Advertising Brief:

The UCEN marketing team gave us a new brief and challenge to help attract potential students to the varied range of courses. My approach was to explore typographic treatments using keywords that would resonate with the potential target audience. The process of my work was undertaken using screen printing techniques with further digital manipulation and colour play. I wanted to create something that would stand out from the crowd and get noticed easily, with an emphasis that the potential students would 'create something new for themselves - a new career!

Freya Durkin

"The course has enable me to explore many areas and principles of Graphic Design and Advertising" Freya Durkin

Advertising Briefs: UCEN Marketing and Vinyl Cover

The UCEN marketing team gave us a new brief and challenge to help attract potential students to the varied range of courses. My creative solution was through the use of montage / collage work, physical and digitally edited. The main focus of the strapline and call to action was to emphasise 'the journey' we undertake as students. The project was well received by the client. I have also design a vinyl record cover using mixed media of photography, paint and digital manipulation.

Shane Mullin

Full portfolio available at Instagram.com/mullindesign

"Whilst I found the last year very challenging in many respects, focusing on my uni project work has been extremely rewarding and inspiring." Shane Mullin

Self Directed Project: Loneliness Is...

The Loneliness Connects Us project explored youth loneliness through arts-based and creative methods with 42nd Street, a Manchester-based charity that supports young people under stress. We were invited by 42nd Street to offer a creative response to the report. My animation is a call to action for all youngsters who are suffering in silence, to seek help through organisations such as 42nd Street. I wrote, recorded and animated my own poem. As somebody who has suffered from this exact problem, this project meant a lot to me and was very poignant. Especially since we have all recently been in lockdown, everybody has experienced loneliness in one way or another. I went for a very simple animation style that has the figures being drawn out before your eyes to compliment the verses of the poem.

Animation:

Stills:

Patrick Battison-Nicol

Full portfolio available at Instagram.com/p.battisongrahics

"This year has been a challenging one, but looking back in hindsight, those challenges combined with having the opportunity to work on a variety of creative briefs (one of which was a live brief) have better prepared me for the future and gave me some much-needed creative industry insight." Patrick Battison-Nicol

Self Directed Project: Champions of Humanity

I created a series of posters that celebrate the many aspects and examples of 'human spirit' 

that appeared throughout the lockdown. The main purpose was to showcase and celebrate those individuals that generated an incredibly positive and heartening influence during a 
difficult time in our history. Through my research, I chose to focus strictly on UK based personalities, such as Captain Sir Tom Moore, footballer Marcus Rashford and fitness coach Joe Wick who I felt were the perfect candidates for this.

Their selfless contributions during the covid pandemic demonstrated that regardless of whatever we face, as humans (with the inclusion of hope) we are capable of persevering and uplifting one another to get through any situation.

Poster Designs:

Additonal Product Mockups:

Poster Mockups: