Young Talent: New blood 2 - Private View - Design.

Looking at all this inspiring student work reminded me how lucky we are to have such a comprehensive art education system, staffed by dedicated lecturers who push and enthuse students to make the most of their abilities.

But their passion and commitment is spread ever more thinly across the monstrous regiments of rising student numbers. It's very tough for both sides.

And yet the core purpose of design education remains unchanged - to inspire and equip young people to be creative, to think differently, to massively broaden their horizons, to create unexpected but relevant solutions. In short - ideas. But ideas alone are worthless without the craft skills to deliver and communicate them, and that's a difficult balance to achieve for lecturers. Fifty years ago, the emphasis was almost wholly on craft skills at the expense of ideas; these days, I wonder if that balance hasn't shifted too far the other way - digital technology has eroded the differences between the skilled and the ham-fisted, making craft harder to teach and harder to spot.

New Blood is our opportunity to take a broader view of this difficult task, as well as our first glimpse of new emerging talent. And, yes, some colleges always bubble up to front of mind and always seem to produce the best students - but that, I think, has little to do with the bricks and mortar and layers of administration and management, and absolutely everything to do with inspiring lecturers.

So, for aspiring students and the agencies that will employ them, the message is always: look less at the college and more at the people. Behind every talented student, you'll find an inspirational lecturer.

From Reigate, I liked Dave Pawney's girls' and boys' toys stamps (3) - admittedly an old idea, where the set delivers the whole theme more comprehensively than the individual stamps, but it's really simple and expressive. 'Sticking' with stamps, Louise Sayer's (University of Lincoln) pub signs (7) made me laugh - maybe pub names really should reflect contemporary social issues. Claire Myatt's ...