The ‘Lost Coursework’

OK, so you should be at a point where you know what the ‘Lost Coursework’ is, and how it’s related to Herbie. For those of us who are thick and have a memory worse than a sieve, I’ll give you a recap: ‘The Lost Coursework’ was one of the fundamental discoveries of my life which made me re-evaluate my life and career.

School Days

I’m in my late twenties now, I left school at 16, like everyone else. You see, I was a bit of an ‘all-rounder’ at school. I was always ‘kickin up dust’ with the homies (some which are still close all these years on), flexing with the females, whilst at the same time balancing it all off with always performing well in my studies. I was one of them ‘naturally clever’ little screamers who would get great marks with minimal effort. I just had ‘it’, whatever ‘it’ was. This was also true for Art. I had a knack for drawing, sketching, painting, caricatures blah blah blah. My Art teachers loved me. I was simply good at everything. I was always in the top ‘sets’ or ‘classes’ for all subjects and kicked everyone’s asses at everything. I was even selected to play for the school football team, even though I didn’t even put any effort in the trials.

What the fuck is ‘The Lost Coursework’?

‘You could have got all A grades if you tried harder’, my headteacher put it, as he passed me my exam results, which were a mixture of As, Bs and Cs. Yeah, I passed ’em all but my teachers expected me to do EVEN better. I got a grade A for my ‘GCSE Design and Technology – Graphics Design’ subject. I was chuffed to bits. The final submitted work consisted of 50% practical (physically building and creating stuff) and 50% coursework (30 sheets of A3 detailing the project report, completed over 9 months). This was back in 1998, and my teacher Mr. Chel (are you still alive? if so, get in touch!) returned my work to me after it had adorned the ‘Exhibition Hall’s’ walls at my school. It had been shown off as a masterpiece. (My first ‘gallery exhibition’ I might think).

GCSE Graphic Design – ‘The ‘Teach’

My graphics teacher back then, Usman Chel, or ‘Mr. Chel / Sir’ as we HAD to refer to him, was a jekyl and hyde kinda character with over-sized brown-tinted glasses frames that covered half his face which made him look like an astronaut in space. Mid-30s and I’m sure he was Indian, although we never really found out. He was a good teacher, but a shit graphic artist(!) Young family man taking on his teaching career. I gotta be thankful though, because I got a good grade with him but he didn’t half get the piss taken out of him about his knackered banged-out coughing spluttering little red peugeut car he used to bounce about in. This so-happened to have the last three letters in it’s reg-plate as ‘P A D’, which sounded like the word ‘fart’ in punjabi and so which was, obviously, used against the poor fella by the classes more notorious male members.

The Brief – ‘Occasions’ Catering Company

Everybody got allocated a different business industry and I got ‘Catering’. Hmm, not very exciting, but I had to ‘make’ it exciting. Choosing a name was easy, it seemed, I thought of ‘Occasions’ because caterers are used on such events. The brief was to design the corporate identity, branding, marketing material and show it in action. The research, design and development would all be documented in a 30-page A3-size report, which was to be submitted as the coursework.

For the practical part (50%), I had to build a replica of a company vehicle, the famous Ford Transit Van, which was to be built out of ‘styrofoam’, a cushiony kinda material which Chel just loved, for some unknown reason. Below is the coursework, all 30 sheets. Theyr’e a bit tatty and a bit rough around the edges, but this is the testament to my skill, aged 15 and a bit(!)

GCSE Grade A – A2 Size – Drawn by Hand