Nicola Salkeld
Senior Lecturer / Course Co-ordinator (Stage 1)
Nicola moved to Falmouth in 2006 from London. She did Foundation studies at Central School of Art and Design, her degree at St Martins School of Art, and on graduating worked as a freelance designer and illustrator before going on to do an MA at The Royal College of Art (School of Communication). It was here that she formed a partnership with Jon Morgan and Mike Watson, and on graduating they became Bump Design, winning the Bankers Pyramid Trust new business award.
Her MA dissertation (first class) focused on The Cult of the Virgin Mary and this began a 'minor' obsession which has been a recurring theme in her research interests and personal practice. It was also at the RCA that she began to work with paper sculpture and architectural forms and spaces. As with most things, personal interests led to commercial work and collaborative practice. She produced Space Hotel with Penny Baxter (Salter Baxter Design) - shortlisted for the Design Week Awards and exhibited internationally as part of the Inside Out: 20 Designers Books exhibition - as well as works at the Crafts Council’s exhibition On Paper.
Other significant projects included a collaboration between ING Bank and the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, where Nicola was responsible for the design content as well as being an exhibitor. The subsequent series of works continued beyond the duration of the exhibition into transcription designs: translating meaning to reveal narratives in paintings and artifacts, using type and image, exploring how design and visual language can enrich experience and deepen understanding, how it can join up dots and help articulate relationships between ‘objects’, timelines and ‘thinking’ - graphic forensics.
Nicola is now working with Ashley Rudolph on MOTH which explores the role design has to play in death and how it can help and inform bereavement - examining, for example, the Victorian legacy, which is laden with metaphors and meaning, as well as trying to understand more contemporary attitudes to death and mourning. The project looks at the aesthetics of death, the educational implications of this and the design potential for the context it might serve. MOTH is interested in the formal conventions of death as well as how we might challenge these. Nikki recently delivered a paper at a conference in September 2013 - Malady and Mortality: Illness, Disease and Death in Literary and Visual Culture.
Her MA dissertation (first class) focused on The Cult of the Virgin Mary and this began a 'minor' obsession which has been a recurring theme in her research interests and personal practice. It was also at the RCA that she began to work with paper sculpture and architectural forms and spaces. As with most things, personal interests led to commercial work and collaborative practice. She produced Space Hotel with Penny Baxter (Salter Baxter Design) - shortlisted for the Design Week Awards and exhibited internationally as part of the Inside Out: 20 Designers Books exhibition - as well as works at the Crafts Council’s exhibition On Paper.
Other significant projects included a collaboration between ING Bank and the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, where Nicola was responsible for the design content as well as being an exhibitor. The subsequent series of works continued beyond the duration of the exhibition into transcription designs: translating meaning to reveal narratives in paintings and artifacts, using type and image, exploring how design and visual language can enrich experience and deepen understanding, how it can join up dots and help articulate relationships between ‘objects’, timelines and ‘thinking’ - graphic forensics.
Nicola is now working with Ashley Rudolph on MOTH which explores the role design has to play in death and how it can help and inform bereavement - examining, for example, the Victorian legacy, which is laden with metaphors and meaning, as well as trying to understand more contemporary attitudes to death and mourning. The project looks at the aesthetics of death, the educational implications of this and the design potential for the context it might serve. MOTH is interested in the formal conventions of death as well as how we might challenge these. Nikki recently delivered a paper at a conference in September 2013 - Malady and Mortality: Illness, Disease and Death in Literary and Visual Culture.
