OUGD502 / STUDY TASK 01 / BUSINESS MODELS

To begin, researching business types is essential in order to be knowledgable about the different directions we can take the task. We need to decide on what type of business our group will be creating and see the strengths and weaknesses of each to weigh up what will be the most appropriate and suitable.

limited company

noun

a private company whose owners are legally responsible for its debts only to the extent of the amount of capital they invested.

A limited company is an organisation that you can set up to run your business - it’s responsible in its own right for everything it does and its finances are separate to your personal finances. Any profit it makes is owned by the company, after it pays Corporation Tax. The company can then share it's profits. Every limited company has ‘members’ - the people or organisations who own shares in the company. Directors are responsible for running the company. Directors often own shares, but they don’t have to.

Types of company

Limited by shares

Most limited companies are ‘limited by shares’. This means that the shareholders’ responsibilities for the company’s financial liabilities are limited to the value of shares that they own but haven’t paid for. Company directors aren’t personally responsible for debts the business can’t pay if it goes wrong, as long as they haven’t broken the law.

Private company limited by guarantee

Directors or shareholders financially back the organisation up to a specific amount if things go wrong.

Public limited company

The company’s shares are traded publicly on a market, such as the London Stock Exchange.

OUGD502 / STUDY TASK 01 / CONTRACT

Signing a partnership agreement is an important part of this brief. We agreed that 25% each is a fair amount to own each as there are 4 of us and we are all equally doing shares of the work. 

Signing a contract makes the process seem realistic and legitimate, preparing us for the prospect of this taking place in later life in design industry. 

OUGD502 / STUDY TASK 01 / TAKING CARE OF BUSINESS / BRIEF

BRIEF

Working in groups of up to four you will construct a business plan or business proposal for a creative design studio and present it to your peers and tutors in a feedbacked oral presentation.

Your plan/proposal and presentation should be based on the analysis and content that you have been introduced to throughout the module.

Background / Considerations:

Two/three/four heads are better than one as long as they communicate. You will now have the luxury of four pairs of hands. How will you use them effectively? You will need to consider the following:

What skills and services do you have to offer?

Who is your target market?

Who is your competition and how will you compete?

What are your costs, charges and financial considerations?

How will you structure your studio?

Who will be responsible for what?

How will you promote your services? To who? Using what media?

Mandatory requirements:

It is essential that you refer to a range of marketing models and recognise business ‘start-up’ principles in order to succeed. You may make reference to the course materials, books and websites in order to demonstrate your understanding.

Deliverables:

The presentation will be 10 mins long.

You should use appropriate visual material to support your presentation.

Evidence of the research and development of your presentation and visual material should be posted to your PPP blog and labelled with the module code. You should also post pdf versons of your presentation alongside any notes and handouts to your PPP blog.

ANALYSIS

For this brief it is crucial that the group works fairly and efficiently together; and be more or less on the same page design wise, otherwise this will prove difficult to make group decisions and progress, and may cause disruption and hinder the overall response to the task. Throughout, business should always be taken into account, and it will be a challenge to ensure that all aspects of creating a business are covered and explored. It would also be great to agree on a proposed schedule that fits everyone. I personally feel although I am a hard worker, I could benefit a lot from this task as I am not experienced with business and marketing models. With a good group, solid research and a creative outlook, I feel this task can be completed to a great standard. 

I will be part of a group with Jack, Charlotte and Rhys. This set up will work well as not only are these members of the class well rounded designers, we appreciate what each other produces and most importantly we are all very good friends, meaning we should hopefully gel well and be able to produce something we are all proud of. The great thing about this task is that it is realistic, this could lead to something that can be developed later on in life, for example, the Hungry Sandwich Club was born through the process of this brief previously, proving that it is possible. 

OUGD502 / STUDY TASK 01

Throughout the Summer it is safe to say I took a much needed break, consisting of watching Friends and sitting on my sofa. However I also managed to fit some creative activities in as well. For example, lots and lots of drawing. I designed a sealife themed tattoo for someone back home, who has now actually got the design inked on their foot forever - which was pretty sweet. I also did a lot of personal drawing to further improve my skills. I read up on Tibetan style art and sacred geometry, as I’ve always been interested in these topics and wanted to learn a lot more about it. Design-wise, I tried out designing my own phone case and opened a big cartel shop which gave me a little bit of experience.

Along with this, me and Charlotte have been getting the newest edition of our zine ready for print. We have taken a more contemporary and professional approach this time around and are hoping to get it sold in the Village Bookshop.

I did some travelling in Summer too. In between frequent trips to London, I visited Poland, Krakow first which was extremely fascinating. I got to finally see Auschwitz & Auschwitz Birkenau; which was the largest concentration camp during the holocaust. It was a strange feeling to be somewhere where there was so much death, but interesting nonetheless. At the end of the Auschwitz tour I felt very drained from trying to take in the scale. I also visited the Wieliczka Salt Mines which we had to descend 380 steps to get to the 1st level. Pretty much everything was made of salt (I licked a statue). Overall, after the tour, we had only covered 1% of the mine. I really enjoyed the atmosphere in Krakow, just walking around the main square was fun.

The next place I visited was Berlin which I loved. There was a lot of tourist destinations so the trip involved a large amount of walking. We visited places such as Checkpoint Charlie, the Topography of Terror, Berlin Cathedral, The TV Tower, Gunther Von Haagen’s Bodyworlds (my personal favourite exhibition), Berlin Wall, East Side gallery, Jewish Memorial, Brandenburg Gate, Reischstag. We also managed to fit in a trip to the Bauhaus Archive.

OUGD402 | STUDIO BRIEF 3 | PRESENTATION SLIDES

 

 

 

 

OUGD402 | MODULE EVALUATION

Initially this module for me seemed the most fun and relaxing of all of the briefs given to us. Over time I have become more challenged by the briefs in the module. It has been a lot more difficult than what I first thought.

Studio brief 1 is a constant brief that has lasted throughout the first year at the college and is easily forgotten about, because of the other modules and the other briefs. It's easily swept aside a little more than the rest which should not be the case however if I could do this module again I would definitely try and keep more on top of these blog posts and put more detail into them. I feel I have learned how to analyse design work to a better quality and explain the pros and cons. Time management is key for PPP, and keeping up to date with it. I've become more aware of the way design is everywhere and there's always something being communicated to you in some aspect. 

As I previously said, branding myself was especially difficult for me as I hate my last name. I took the decision to use a different brand name which I feel increased my confidence and freedom to do what I feel would be the right design choice. Branding the word "wilcock" would be a challenge, as it doesn't sound or look appealing. I feel I have experimented more with my style of design, such as hand rendered elements, which I think is obviously my favourite medium. In a way, Studio brief 2 was great to exercise the skills I've previously learned from other briefs and techniques I have picked up along the way. Once I decided on a concept it was quite easy and fun to develop. I feel I experimented throughout the brief well. However it would have been interesting to at least attempt to create something using my own name instead of just going for "Medusa". If I could do this brief again I would probably prepare my stock choices better and do test runs of how the ink will take to the stock instead of diving head first and just going for it.

Presenting to the class is not my favourite thing to do as it isn't one of my strengths but I feel throughout PPP I have began to become a lot more confident and comfortable, even if it still isn't one of my strong points. Throughout the course I believe this will keep improving as time goes on.

 

OUGD402 | STUDIO BRIEF 2 | PRINTING BUSINESS CARDS

I initially tried to print my business cards on my friends printer since they do photography, however I had a lot of problems with this. The stock choice wasn't as thick as I wanted and even though I lined up the document with what I thought was correct, they turned out not lining up properly.

So I chose a thicker stock, which I thought would be much more robust. When they came out however I realised the black ink did not come up as rich as I'd of liked because of the thickness. There isn't anymore time to rectify this problem now but if I was to do this brief again I would think about this a lot more and probably do more test runs to make sure the cards come out exactly as I want them to. 

However the texture created by the printer doesn't look entirely bad, and the white sections look great as they are. I'm still pleased with how they came out even if the black ink is slightly faded.

OUGD402 | STUDIO BRIEF 1 | HUNGRY SANDWICH CLUB

On their visit back to Leeds College of Art, The Hungry Sandwich club gave us a brief which is to design a map for the North Leeds Cycling Trail. One design was picked from the submissions and will be included in the Leeds Indie Food Festival extended program. Our name will be included alongside email, so everyone knows who designed it. This is a great opportunity to begin to get your name out there in the city.

We discussed colour choices, illustrations, typefaces and patterns to use on our design. A strength of mine is hand rendered elements so I was eager to do some sort of hand rendered type or illustration that could be used. So, I came up with the main title and subtitles for the different locations on the map, using quite a thick, tall and capitalised hand rendered type.

Becky also came up with different style ampersands and some illustrations in a similar style so they matched the text. And finally we came up with this design:

We created the path using the different shapes, and the text was all hand rendered in my hand writing. James added little illustrations of buildings in the same style so it all looked consistent. Becky organised the information and layout.
  
Our submission was actually the design that got picked for this brief which was extremely exciting, and I'm pleased with what we produced together. I feel that our design was quite unique and although it was hand rendered, it is quite simplistic colour wise, and consistent.

OUGD402 | STUDIO BRIEF 1 | SECRET 7"

I was lucky enough to be chosen for Secret 7", in which my vinyl design was included in the 100 for Underworld's song Born Slippy. There was 700 contributions in total, 100 designs for each song.

Having my work displayed in a gallery is a new experience for me so it was obviously very exciting to attend the private viewing in the Easter holidays. The other pieces of design were extremely creative and each had a unique take on their chosen track. It was great to walk into each room and view the next lot of designs, and even better when you finally see your own work amongst them. 

My name as one of the contributors.

My design for Born Slippy

OUGD402 | STUDIO BRIEF 1 | HAND RENDERED LOGOS

I found these iconic logos redesigned by using hand rendered techniques. It's interesting to see the logos you see on a daily basis reimagined and looking completely different, however sticking to the same colours and shapes.

These suit my style of working a lot and they have a very unique quality to them. The only thing is I'm unsure that some of them work for the audience and purpose for example Burger King is a greasy fast food chain and the logo communicates a more elegant style, which doesn't really work. The Coca-Cola logo is a lot more modern than this hand rendered version which I feel looks outdated. The samsung one is my favourite as it is simple and still looks modern as it is for a technology company.

http://www.creativebloq.com/logo-design/iconic-logos-reimagined-handwritten-type-41514719

OUGD402 | STUDIO BRIEF 1 | JAMES VICTORE

When I got round to creating myself a Behance, I discovered an artist called James Victore, who has done a lot of hand drawn type. 

What I like about this style is the way that it is very imperfect; sometimes that is the beauty of a piece of design. By not worrying about the edges of the brush strokes or the readability of the type you get a raw look that can't really be replicated by anyone else.
 

SELF BRANDING | GIF

Experimentation with an animated gif, to combine both of the colours of my self branding. I wanted it to be in your face and 'edgy', and it turned out exactly how I imagined; nothing fancy just very flashy.

OUGD402 | STUDIO BRIEF 2 | FINAL OUTCOME

The name of my self branding. I did not want to use my last name, Wilcock, for obvious reasons. It would be very difficult in my opinion to brand a name with a cock in it. For me, Medusa represents an old nickname, originating from a hairstyle I had (dreadlocks), that I took forward and used as a pen name for quite a while for my illustrations, and also comes from the name of a piercing I have on my top lip. I am also interested in Greek mythology and find that the name Medusa has a good ring to it and is very memorable.

 This is the logo I have worked with for this brief. I decided to leave it looking hand drawn as that is exactly what it is. When flipped anti-clockwise, it loosely resembles an "M" which I initially aimed to do, however it ended up looking much better portrait than landscape.

My final business cards in both a black and white version. I decided not to limit myself to one colour as it is more versatile. 

I then mocked up how the various elements of my branding would look on collateral. Even though the majority of it is hand rendered, it still looks minimal and clean.

Final display typeface. I chose to do my own typeface because I felt this was a good way to express myself as since this brief is about me, hand rendered type is a medium I work with a lot in my designs. It made sense to me to create a messy, reckless looking type from paint.

 Body copy - Letter Gothic STD. Reminds me of a modernised typewriter, I also use this font a lot in my work and it's one of my favourites.

Colour scheme - keeping it very simple in black and white.

Presentation grid.