OUGD602 - Slump Sounds

I have been asked to produce a poster for a techno night in London named Slump Sounds which is run by two of my good friends. They wanted this poster to include their logo and to have low-res or static features.

Below shows development and final outcome:

OUGD602 - Creative convos

This week, Alec organised a variety of professional creatives to come into uni to talk about their practice. I found these useful as gave more option on how I could progress after uni. 

Rose Nordin
I found Rose's presentation to be one of the most useful as her practice is similar to mine, focussing on publication design. She is part of the OOMK collective and spoke about how she has used funding to fund her career. The notes are shown below.

Always work in print for interviews

Bookworks (good to stock work and have designer residencies)

Serpentine gallery

artist residencies
(some may not be paid however your own day rate comes from funding. £175 day rate when starting)

British Council

Rabbits road press

go to publishing fairs

Arts fund,
Art links,
Art Quest

Somerset house

Avoid doing any work for free

photocopy club

southyard zine fair

ASP fair

The Book Club

magculture talks once a month
Jeremy Lesley
Kiosk

Robot Food
Start with a workshop with the client
understand who you are designing for

Shout about the USP of the produce use TOV  to bring personality to life

Identify a consumer who is not being catered for
design for the audience

spends a lot of time on research

Time spent on a project
2-3 days research
5 days - 2 weeks for a project (couple of designers work on each brief)
Tailor portfolio for where you want to work

Abraham from The Pop Up Agency
Check-in before every session to understand the team you work with.

why
challenge themselves and the industry by solving brief in 24 hours
no roles so constantly evolving and growing
we are a reaction of our time
always define a process for how you will work.

Asking clients if they know anyone who we can work with.
Understanding your business
Make a video explaining what you do
Use time wisely. Can't do it when you're done
try everything to evolve as a business

charge what you are worth. Nothing Less!

Abraham and the pop up agency were originally charging £600 for a consultation. changed to £36,000

divide salary:
salary 33%
expenses 33%
Savings 33%

Business must focus on:
Sales
Development
Execution

Need a good understanding of how to divide time.

60% of time on sales
20% development
20% doing client work and making money

Understand what value you are providing

The value of guidance

Being sustainable is the most important value.

Create your own opportunities.

Don't lose sight of the goal as it can often changge and adapt

OUGD602 - Start up Wednesdays

As Ben and I are hoping to kickstart WYS next year an independent studio, we decided to attend the short courses on starting a new business and developing ourselves after graduating university, we attended as many of the sessions we could as we found these useful as we had previously not thought about the business and money side of things as much. Below show the notes I made on each of the sessions attended.

Being self employed

must learn a bit about everything however sales and marketing are most important.

starting up

profit, income and expenses

Printers find it easier to get work as a LTD company

changingcourse.com

have multiple sources of income

spend 4 days a week doing boring freelance work

2 days a week building business

provide a platform to expand the business.

Tax free until you earn £11,500

tax return tells government how much money you make each year up to the 5th April.

Don't pay tax until 31st Jan

29% of profits in tax

every business has:

sales (eg. £20,000)

costs/ expenses/ purchases (5000)

profit (15,000)

Copyright Laws 

How to use copyright

Who owns copyright

Post-it trick - in order to prove that you were the creator of something you can post it to yourself to prove that you are the original creator (kept sealed)

How long does copyright last - 70 years

Copyright restrictions 

Creative Commons 

Public domain 

Moral rights - Paternity/integrity/privacy 

Marketing and PR 

Building marketing approach 

7p's of marketing (Product, price, place, promo, people, physical evidence and process) 

Understand your product - Who are your competitors and target audience

Setting objectives - What do we want to achieve

40% Marketing 50% Making 10% Admin (time) 

Features and benefits - Whats in it for the user

Pricing a service 

Measuring success 

Action Plan - Where do we want to be in 6/12/18 months 

Business Structure

Sole Trader - easy to set up (GOV.UK) easy to go bankrupt 

Limited (LTD) Company - Has a business structure and business is libable to invadiual

LLP Limited Liability Partnership 

Checking business names - Company House website  

TM - Free to use 

R - Registration fee

Keeping records (Tax, transactions, achieve value, ownership)

Managing Money 

Budgeting 

Costing and pricing as an artist

Cash flow 

Accounts 

Overheads - Fixed cost and variable costs

Research and Development 

Labour 

Time costing (what is my time worth) 

Targets (income)

Profit and loss 

OUGD602 - Risograph Workshop

After speaking with one of the artists in residence at The Tetley about their Risograph machine we found out that Orlando, a tutor on our course often puts on courses and workshops to learn about zine making at the Tetley. Me and Ben decided to book onto this workshop to learn about Risograph and the other equipment the have available. Luckily for us, we were the only two people attending the workshop meaning we had the best opportunity to learn about Riso and how it can be used within our practice. We learnt how unpredictable Risograph can be because of how old the printers usually are. This can often cause the drum to bleed leaving unwanted marks on the resulting image. Despite this, Riso printing has benefits such as the ability to produce large print runs for a lower cost. Once the printed work has been transferred onto the drum the only print cost will be for paper. Because of this, Riso is useful for when a large quantity of prints are being produced.

Ben and I had the opportunity to experiment with Risograph ourselves, producing a poster to see how the process works for ourselves. The result is seen below:

OUGD602 - Presentation layout

To stay consistent through WYS and my PPP module I decided to produce a layout for presentations. This layout can be used for an presentations I have left to do on the course as well as if I ever need to present a piece of work to a client in the future.  The design of this has been kept simple to work well with our identity showing only the logotype and contact info.

OUGD602 - Print Fairs

Print fairs can bbe a good way to promote ourselves as a studio and publishing house. In the future we hope to have a stall at various print fairs however, for now it will be useful to visit as many people as we can. We have already gone to the Artist Book fair at the Tetley (seen in an earlier blog) however below shows a list of other book fairs we hope to go to.

OUGD602 - Competitors

As part of the research we completed as part of the WYS identity we looked into our competitors and how we differ from them. This blog post looks more in depth into who they are and how they can influence our studio progression.

Kiosk

Catalogue

Palm Studios

(other publishing houses)