March 2, 2010
Creative Futures. Tuesday 2nd March
10a.m.
“How to get a job in Design”
Chris Ramsden – Chartered Society of Designers (CSD)
– Never make assumptions in design.
Victor Papanek – Design for the real world
– Creativity
– Professionalism
– Skills
– Knowledge – keep up to date, be well read.
11.30a.m.
“What does an employer/client want to see: Portfoilio’s and CV” by James Graham from Thoughtful. – Agency in Manchester
Greg Quinton from The Partners : “have to have persistance”
Portfolio – “No spelling mistakes” – Michael Bierut from Pentagram, keep clean, consistency, start with your best work and end with your best work, varieties – box portfolio, A3 wire-bound, newspaper format, screw-post book, saddle stitched book? preference = A3 book with bound pages. How many pieces? 10 to 12, less is more
E-mail – include attachment, research – find out who to send it to, know the work they do. e.g. Dear <full name> mention making tea?! nice person to have around in the studio, easy-going, i have a lot to learn but i can work alone, i own my own laptop – Say what they want to hear, key words. Know about the studio. PDF’s – keep to 5-7 projects, include link to website.
Patrick Baglee – “it’s better to be interested than interesting…you cannot not communicate”
Jonathan Baldwin – “don’t ask ‘what does design have to do with this?’, think ‘what could design have to do with this?'”
– Go to as many Art galleries and talks as possible
Paula Scher : Pentagram – “admire, respect the work the company does. Choose a studio/placement based on which one offers the broadest learning possibilities. It’s ok to make mistakes – they aren’t going to affect the rest of your life.”
Michael Wolf – “inquisitiveness”
Hillman Curtis, James Corazzo – “don’t give up.”
Summary :
1.) Which studio? Research
2.) Start a dialogue today
3.) Short, professional e-mail
4.) No reply? Call them after 3/4 days
5.) A3 book style portfolio
6.) 15-30 minutes interview. Prepare
7.) Thank you e-mail after interview
8.) Don’t give up
1.30p.m.
Portfolio and presentation in the digital age. Tessa Elliot – Surgery – digital art research
bloc:Creative Technology Wales
tessa@bloc.org.uk
Creative Futures. Monday 1st March
Notes I made during the talks at the Catrin Finch Centre as part of creative futures week.
10a.m.
A woman who started her own graphics and marketing business called Promofix spoke about the difficulties of starting out with a new business and the obstacles to overcome.
11.30a.m.
Garry Greenwood from Venture Wales spoke about business planning.
Six Key Sections
1. Introduction and background
2. Market and Competitors
3. Marketing strategy
4. Operations
5. Financial data and forecasts
6. Appendices
Things to consider – idea, detail, legal status, owner/management details, product/service details. Business idea, technical specifications, features and benefits, unique selling point, design, packaging, future development plans.
Features / Benefits (the benefits of the features is what’s important.)
-Marketing needs to match product/service of the business
-Marketing – linked-in is a ‘business facebook’, e-bay, twitter ..
-Target markets – who? narrow target market – better, cheaper, more focus
-Unique selling point
-Operations – health and safety, legal aspects, premises, equipment, suppliers, staff, processes, systems/procedures, quality control, insurance …
-Financial data – cost/prices/volumes, funding, sources, profit and loss account, balance sheet
-Appendices – previous work, photographs, evidence
-Executive summary – purposes, obstacles, finance.
Advice for anyone considering starting their own business – get an accountant.
1.30p.m.
Tracy Simpson, project manager
– Public Arts commissions
– Stiwdio safle
– Strategies and proposals
– Getting grants for new businesses. Usually time/aim-specific
– eligibility and deadlines – check carefully
– can’t get funding? what next? – interest free loans; form a group; get free advice; local authorities and galleries.
– check eligibility, priorities.
-Research – gather basic information, estimated total project cost
– show previous work, CV
– make notes, keep evidence to justify the business.
Safle – North Office
Principals House
49 Regent Street
Wrexham
LL11 1PF
01978 293 534
2.30p.m.
Shona Hambleton, tax assistant accountant.
(in) ££££ EXPENDITURE —–> business ——->(out) ££ INCOME
-sales, loans, grants, capital introduced.
– keep records, invoices and receipts.
December 8, 2009
Heres a video the Zone’s technical team put together of the beer designing competition event.
zone glyndwr beer competition
We took part in Zone Glyndwr’s entrepreneurship week for one day. The brief was to design a new beer for students – Glyndwr students to be precise – that captured the essence of Owain Glyndwr. We had to consider the bottle shape, colour and material, the beer’s taste and colour, and of course the branding and name of the beer. We worked with media students and were split into teams of 5 or 6. We were then given paper, and a netbook to do any relevant research. We had a few hours to come up with the designs, and had to make a video presentation of our beer to be judged and sent up to brew dog in scotland for the final judging to announce the winner.
We came up with the idea for a name to be ‘Saviour’, because of Owain Glyndwr’s status as the saviour of Wales, as he was the man who fought for the right of a government and universities in Wales. It is also a play on words with ‘save your beer’. We also came up with the idea of using Glyndwr’s identity stripes along the label, which would then be wrapped around the bottle, like is seen on the university’s website. We decided to make the bottle black, as the dark colour glass would better preserve the beer, as we found out through research, and also because it would make the colourful stripes stand out. As for the name of the beer we decided to have it embossed and running vertically along the bottle. We also made the bottle caps a variety of colours, ranging from the colours present in the stripes. We thought this idea could be used by the university as a marketing idea, such as 10 bottle caps could be collected to win a free bottle of beer. We thought such a strong use of the university’s identity would make an attractive memorabilia of a students time in university. Here are some images of the paper work designs we made on the day.
websites i like
I have been looking into design and illustration websites that i like the layout of to try and get inspiration for my own website which I intend to build this academic year. As I don’t specialise in building websites I will find it rather difficult when it comes to production stage, but for the moment I am concentrating on developing my own style which I want to be seen on my website. The first impression of a designer comes from the first thing possible clients see, which is the business card, and if they then decide to look at the persons website it needs to show the same style and quality of the business card design. A well designed and printed business card may attract potential clients to look you up on your website or blog, but if they get there and the design isn’t to the standard expected they can still change their minds. Therefore I think it’s important to have an interesting, well designed website that shows your ability to design well and show your unique style, this will make the viewers want to know more. Here are screenshots of two websites i particularly like.
November 7, 2009
Klaruw Christmas Cards
Me and Sean were approached by Klaruw (as Sean’s mum works for the company and mentioned that we were studying Graphics and looking to do some Professional Practice) to design company Christmas cards for them to send to clients and possible new clients. Klaruw is a road re-surfacing company, and it’s goals are to reduce the number of accidents on the road, and to do this in a cost-effective, environmentally-friendly way. Their first idea was for us to try incorporate this into the design, and to use their company colour scheme, which is yellow and black.
We weren’t sure how we could use the colour scheme successfully, as well as show what they do, whilst still being a Christmas card and not a marketing card. We did 4 similar designs for them….none of which we were completely happy with!! They worked as a marketing card, we showed what the company did, and we used their colour scheme but I don’t think they worked very well as Christmas cards. They then sent us feedback on the first designs, they confirmed what we already thought, they changed their minds and wanted us to design a card that was ‘more Christmassy and less Klaruw’. We then did 3 more designs which we were happier with, and I got to do some illustration! They were happy with them, and preferred the more humorous approach. They decided to go with one of them, but wanted a few changes. Here is the final design which they will be using this year.
We also designed the inside of the card.
April 1, 2009
industry practice
What I learnt doing this brief for the council…
working towards a deadline that’s not flexible, the work is not for assessments, it is for a client that has an event to prepare for and at the end of the day you’re not working for yourself any more you’re working for a client and as I found out with this particular project there is no time to waste! I felt like I had to work harder and make more of an effort to be on time and stay later, as I didn’t want to let the group down nor the client!
I was disappointed that I couldn’t attend the event on the Saturday, I already had other previous commitments. I felt like at the end of the hard work and long days I didn’t get to enjoy the results! This made me wonder if this is what it’s always going to be like working for someone else?? Having your work up somewhere or displayed on something where nobody knows you made it? It bought me back to thinking of copyright and how it relates. Is working for clients in the future always going to mean they own whatever you produce for them? I learnt from this experience that working for a client is completely different to working for yourself or the university. You have other people to think about and so more responsibility and therefore more pressure!
I did enjoy this industry practice, for many reasons. Firstly I got to work with a wide variety of students at the Uni who I don’t usually work with, and it was fun as well as beneficial to me. I picked up a few illustration tips from John, and I benefit from discussing my work in a team, and getting feedback from different people was definitely helpful. It helped me out a lot. I also enjoyed the project as i like drawing characters and wanted to get to draw some more and have illustration-based work. It was a good experience also that we discussed the possibilities with the council workers, and that we didn’t have a set brief, they told us the issues they wanted to address to the locals in the event and that they wanted to get their number out, then we had to come up with ideas. Communication with the client was good at the start but I think they could have got more involved in the process, as they could have disliked the end pieces as they didn’t see any of it in progress. But maybe that was a fault on our part as a team that we didn’t contact them to come down and see how it was going.
Thursday
Final drawings get projected onto boards – I traced them all in pencil onto the boards making adjustments as we went along. We all pitched in finalising the drawings on the board to get it looking right. Fallyn and Sam were deciding on colour schemes and started to paint. Had to leave the painting for the others on Friday as I couldn’t come in.
March 23, 2009
Wednesday
Met in the morning, discussed the drawings and make a few changes. Later we took the boards down to Dave in the woodwork studio to cut the holes into them, then sanded them all down to make them safe! Bought white emulsion paint from Wilkinson’s and got painting! Were in till 7:30p.m. getting them ready for tomorrow, we had to put at least 2 coats of paint on each board and it’s feet!!
Tuesday
Received recycling paper from the council for the origami today. As a group we tried to finalize which characters to use on the boards and what size we were going to make the boards. We had wooden boards delivered and were unsure if we wanted to connect them together to make one large board which many people could join in, but decided to use them separately so the council can transport them to other events with ease. Today we also started making the large numbers out of cardboard. We used the 3D style numbers Sam drew up and projected them onto the cardboard, then we drew them and cut them out. We cut two of each so we could later make them 3D. That night i went home and finalized the drawings.
Lisa Jones' PDP 