Fight Paper with Paper

Thursday. 10am, I'm only reason im on time for uni is because we're in a new room and without my trusty compass I am famous for getting lost.

I'm not partial to our thursday class.

But today we had a new tutor.

A real breathe of fresh air.

He stated the class would be split into four islands. Each must build attack and defense out of paper. At 3.30 we go to war. No scissors or glue just folded paper, forceful attack and strong defenses. We could make alliances, we must provide one pilot, one spy and a leader. He would show us nothing.

Go.

One half of the team by book the other by internet. An hour or so later we sat making origami planes, tanks, missiles, dragons, soldiers, buildings, castles, walls, boats, torpedoes. You name it.

Our team was blessed with cream coloured paper.

The Yellows, who decided to ally with and build a bridge between the two islands. Geographically it made great sense. At war, they were to attack green and us blue overall winning us both victory over our waters.

Yellow looked strong. They drank juice. I was confident.

Green looked organised and military but there attack seemed feeble.

 At 3.30, war was declared. A days worth of reading, folding, deliberating lobbed by arms of angst from table to table. Yellow and Cream stuck to our rules. The Blues were unorganised but relentless and the greens ran out of anything to throw quite quickly. The last 10 seconds saw the most paper to face and some dirty tactics.

Look at the mess. Isn't it beautiful.

By far the most energised, challenging and engaging days of my acedemic life, asides from in Year 10 when my history tutor jumped out of the cupboard after 5 patient minutes of us waiting. Sporting a 'blood' and 'puss'  covered apron, a bottle of 'whisky' and a butchers knife to demonstrate 17th century surgeries.

That was a cool day too.

The relevance to Graphic Design (if you were wondering) was to apply boundaries of time, an over ruling voice, restricted resources (funding), space (layouts and posters) and competition, creating something fantastically inspiring, impressive and outstanding. Just as it would be with a company or freelancing.

Our new tutor Leigh displays an intrinsic understanding of teaching a man to fish.

Bravo.