Personal And Professional Practice: December 2014

Business name
Business activity - what do you do?
Mission statement - What do you aim to achieve?

Business objectives
What are your plans to achieve your sales?
Target within the first 12 months
Promotion, what events will you throw/go to, how will you engage people
What new products/service will you introduce in the following 2 years to grow your business?
Long term 5 year goal?

Structure
How you are going to structure it?
Who are the people in the business? Employees, print people
How many people are employed?
What are their individual roles?
What are their individual/joint roles?

Your business
Is it a limited company or partnership? Social enterprise, co-operative or a sole trader?
www.gov.uk
Why have you chosen this company status? What are the advantages?
Products or services. Physical objects you have to offer
Goods/services you are selling
What percentage of turnover each will provide (eg 20% clothing 60% prints 20% exhibitions)
Resources

·                     What resources do you require?

·                     Studio space- average cost £120 - £150 per month which usually includes electricity

·                     Retail area- Average cost of a small shop is roughly £15,000-£20,000 per year

·                     Internet domains- To create websites and such

·                     Equipment

·                     Office-separate area to do more inventory related things.

·                     Printers

·                     Printing resources such as print rooms for screen prints/etching/lino

·                     Drying racks

·                     Drying Cabinets

·                     Tools to do printing i.e. Etching and lino cutting

·                     Computers- Digital work, online resource etc.

·                     Tablets- Digital work

·                     Scanners

·                     Light boxes

·                     Basic Art supplies-
· Furniture-
Stock
How much stock do you need out at a time?
Do you need stock to start your business?
How much will your sales stock cost?

Within the first year we will be souly building our online presence through social media and the making of our website. We will sell all products on there digitally. We won't need to create a stock at first as we will print and post on request. Eventually the vision is to open our own shop in which we would need to start stocking up products. Depending on how much work we generate, we will stock 5 prints of each design to sell. We will then translate these designs on to products which we will then have to stock also. Again five of each type, card, tshirt, air freshner, mobile phone case etc.

Customers

What evidence do you have that anyone will buy your product?
Is it a popular product/service currently provided by lots of others?
Is your idea completely new?
Is there an increasing demand for your product?

Who are the customers?
Describe your typical customer

Our typical customer is aged 18-30. They study at university and are aware of what is happening socially politically and culturally. They are the internet searchers, the bloggers, the festival go'ers and society attenders. They are creatives, with interest in all aspects of art. They are a little rebellious, and want to make a change.
If you are Business to Business (providing products for another business) describe the market sector - retail, food, entertainment, cards etc.
Why would they buy from you rather than anyone else?

They would buy from us because we have a message, we hope to make a difference, change views and our message is humorous. It is also affordable, and a new trend.
How much on average will they spend
How often will they spend?

How will they know?

·                     How will you advertise?

·                     Use social media such as Instagram, twitter etc.

·                     Create a blog on popular platforms such a Tumblr

·                     Use competitions as a way of name spreading, for example share a photo and hash tagging

·                     Have a website to show off work, contact info, prices and such

·                     Do events such as pop up shops at hot spots

·                     Make business cards/ Flyers with information for use with above events

·                     Get someone to write a review/article

·                     Go to events such as Thought Bubble and sell work

Presentation preparation

I came up with the name of the business Bow Down as a reflection of how society bows down to certain cultures and what is in the media, accepting it as the norm. I took charge of the group and put together sheets of what we needed to include within the presentation and who was going to organise which part of it. I made an inital mock up of what the presentation would be like. I put the slide onto our group page on estudio for the rest of the group to see.

I then made a plan of who needed to do what in order for us to put in a fair share of effort towards the presentation. I labelled each page with a song for each slide in order to make the presentation humorous. Humour is something I have used successfully within my presentations in the past and as some of our work would be humorous I think this would give off the right vibe. We want to stay current and almost 'trendy' so I think using songs to reflect this and having a good positive atmosphere will reign in the audience and grab their attention.

I got in touch with everyone to meet up and speak about what needed to be done. Who needed to create what for the slides.
Not everyone turned up though which was not as useful and quite frustrating at times.

I created a final to do list to sum everything up

Presentation

For our presentation Lewis created the layout and the slide's music, cutting them down to just the start of the chorus'
Zara created illustrated images of us. I put the slides together, including my own hand generated font. I also created our logo. Becky and Rona wrote down exactly what we needed to say for each slide and Rona made prompt sheets for us all.

Feedback of the presentation

We had practised that day the presentation but it was difficult prior to this to get everyone together as people were pretty bad with attendance. However, on the day we felt we had it covered we went over things a lot and had our prompt sheets ready.
When it came to the presentation technology failed us we hadn't practised opening the youtube clips and this slowed everything down messed it up and we could not open the music clips. People were laughing but for all the wrong reasons and we were pretty slated for it. However, it was said that the idea was there and had we of pulled it off it would have been the best presentation to date. It is good to take risks and push the boundaries and I am glad we tried to pull it off even if it did not come across how we hoped, we done something different. Compared to everyone else presentations I think ours stood out and was a bit of a breath of fresh air still. I was extremely frustrated with us as a group because had we have been attending more we could have practised more together and got it spot on and I did feel that these were my ideas that weren't necessarily being translated well. I think that individually we done our fair share and put enough effort in but as a group we just didn't pull it off together in the end.

Bow Down

Bow Down for me is something that has resinated as a potential idea for the future, perhaps not with such explicit work but definitely the idea of being an online presence that sells work that is putting across a certain message, making a stance or being humorous. I feel that I could perhaps take this idea and run with it in the future myself.

Assessing the competition
Who is our main competitor? Who has done simillar work?

What are their strengths?
What are their weaknesses?
What opportunities have they taken?
What threats do they face?

I think the person that has done simillar light hearted comical work would be Mr Bingo. I've chose him because I think there's things we can learn from from him but also he has weaknesses that we can expand on.

His strengths :

Taking a subject and making it his own. He takes a brief and spins it on his head, makes it something he is going to enjoy
His work is light hearted and fun
He is not afraid to take a risk
His work sells! People want to be involved in what he is doing. He relates to people
His work looks quick and easy to produce, not over time-consuming which is something we need whilst were at university balancing other modules
It is affordable

What is his weakness :

Unethical - he makes work more for money than ethics
Not creating work to really make a change in society - none of his work really has a bold messge about making a change
Maybe selling out too much

What oppotunities has he taken?

He has got involved in some briefs that don't necessarily suit his style. Putting his drawings on products he has not experienced before - a risk. Learning about different methods. His work can be seen on quite a wide scale such as wall displays or really small like postcards.
He's involved with some really huge magazines and big dog clients! As well as work for the people
He has taken a real opportunity with his social media awareness - he has a great online presence.

What threats does he face?

His work becomes too limited - drawing style wise?
He runs out of ideas of where his work can be seen?
He doesn't take enough risks?
He becomes too much of a sell out?

Group Pest & Swat analysis
We took each illustrator/group that we felt were our main competition and wrote them out on large sheets of paper so that we could analyse which areas we felt our business would be simillar to or tips that others have done that we could take on board. We conducted a PEST and SWAT analysis of our own business with comparison to the other businesses/illustrators to come up with what we felt were our own strenghths, weaknesses, threats and opportunites we could take.

Here are some examples:

Personal And Professional Practice

Thursday, 11 December 2014

Studio Brief 2 What are your costs?

Sunday, 7 December 2014

Organisation across all modules

Studio Brief 2 Our Business & Our presentation

Monday, 1 December 2014

Studio Brief 2 Study Task 4 Assessing the competition