10 Statements

I have decided it will be easier for me to list a selection of my skills and then elaborate on them in relation to the needs of clients / collaborators.

- I have a drive to work within the music industry, utilising the design process to process to create appropriate and unique promotion and branding for artists, producers and labels

- I have a strong focus towards print, with a drive towards commercially viable outcomes on a range of budgets

- I enjoy collaborating whether this be with a studio or another designer to produce work outside my usual comfort zones and expanding my skills as a designer

- I am conceptually and process driven, working within a small studio would be ideal for me to get involved in the whole process from meeting clients, research and practical development

- In order to self promote I aim to develop my own website offering me a professional and easily accessible place for my target audience to see my work

- Over the course of summer and rest of the year I aim to get involved in freelance and collaborative practice with other studios, this will broaden my understanding of this region of graphic design and give me an edge over my competitors

- I love colour and wish to express this through the use of pantone books and print to produce work that satisfies not only the needs of my clients but my own creative aims as well

- I am type and image driven, both areas that I will continue to improve on through my own practice, contextual development and visits to studios

- Ethically I feel it is vital for myself as a designer to consider how my work on a larger scale, I will strive to consider the most environmental or sustainable print methods, stocks and processes

- Creatively I want to produce work that satisfies my aims as a designer, the main areas I wish to explore are print, editorial, branding and identity - again this will come through studio visits and my professional development

My skills?

I think to start of this task I will write down my skills, and positions in a bullet point format and then narrow it down so it truly represents me. This is the basic list of my skills as a graphic designer I just need to compare them with the clientèle that I intend on working for / with.

Practical Skills
Knowledge and use of type
Use and understanding of colour
Ethically and environmentally considered
Knowledge and understanding of print
Process driven

Creative Skills
Visual / critical thinker
Idea generator
Experimental / playful approach
Problem solver

Personal Qualities
Enjoy working with collaborating with others
Enthusiastic and highly motivated
Sense of humour
Strongly opinionated

Software skills
Illustrator
InDesign
Photoshop
After Effects

Notes for Presentation

Notes for Presentation - Supplies / Advertising / Funding - we feel that having only me and Dom speaking will give a more professional feel to the presentation. Also being slightly more confident with talking we were both more than happy to do so.

Slide 1 - Dom
Slide 2 - Dom

Slide 3 - Studio
- Looked into 5 person houses
- More expensive
- M-one studio Manchester
- Professional environment to bring clients to
- In the city centre
- Separate home / work

Slide 4 - Expenses
- £10,000 loan - Natwest
- Spoke to an advisor there - helpful good rates
- £25 a month repayment of loan
- Summer jobs - first 6 months rent
- CASH FLOW FORECAST - £8000 first year

Slide 5 - Supplies
- What the bank loan would cover
- Mac Pro - Environmental, reliable
- LaCie screen - High colour gamut - best print results
- Pantone books - Best results for print
- Latest software
- Harddrives - keep everything safe
- Using uni printing resources for first year
- See what is appropriate for second year of businesst

Slide 6 - Dom

Slide 7 - Advertising
- Events similar to give up art / rinse
- Collaborating with the artists
- Getting involved in the process
- Promotion for the studio / music
- Studio manchester £100.00 a day

Slide 8 - Dom

Creative Clusters

Just wanted to hi-light some of the key information that Dom picked up on about Manchester / creative clusters. This is a screen shot showing particularly up and coming / successful areas in relation to music and design. The darker areas represent higher success in these categories, really influential piece of information as to where we should base our studio.

Advertising Mock up

Just playing around with the different advertising ideas, the final designs would be gifs containing more information I just wanted to get a better idea of how to deal with the sizes. The green stands out but doesn't contrast with the page design to much giving it a professional finish.

Studio reconsidered

I was working out costings for housing, and how much we would save by getting a studio apartment instead of a house and a studio and realised that it would be more expensive to get the flat. If we stick with the initial houses we looked at and pay £65 a week we can get space at 'M-one' studios in the city centre and save around £2000.00 a year. Below is an image of the website, it was Will who found this studio space initially.

Cash Flow Forecast

After speaking to a business advisor at the bank about cash flow charts and what our loan would need to cover I completed this cash flow chart.

This cash flow chart based on a steady incline in business based on increasing publicity and a growing portfolio. It was a substantial step forward finally seeing how money would work and what the loan would cover, I feel we can now start to progress with pricing, although this is an unclear category working with music and low budgets.

Cash-Flow Forecast

Me and Yaf took a trip down to the bank to speak to an advisor about business loans and to speak to him about how we would go about making our business plan.

The advisor told us that we need to create some Cash flow forecasts to show our incomings outgoings on a monthly basis. This will show how our income will go from initially losing money while we our getting our selves out there and when we build up our client base we can progress and start making money.

He showed us some examples of other customers (without showing any names because of customer privacy issues) to show how to do it and I feel confident with the financial information we have gathered that I can complete one for our studio.

The other area he covered with us was what financially we would cover and what the bank loans are supposed to pay for. Essentially the studios incomings would have to pay for its rental so this would be something we would cover and things like initial set up equipment would be what the bank would pay for.

Bank loans are rounded up to the nearest £500
An example cash flow forecast

Initial Notes

Didn't want that much writing on my notes as I feel confident about what I am talking about and having something to scripted would only confuse me. These are my initial notes but I will also post my updated versions.

Advertising / Marketing
- FACT magazine - Music orientated target audience - £450.00 a month - bi monthly to save on costs
- Online presence - Cost effective - Direct to audience
- Don't panic - Print costs / circulation - Rest of the pack is less relevant
- Events - Promotion for both studio and artists / studio values

 Supplies
- Our own supplies - where we saved
- What we felt was necessary for the first year of business
- Mac Pro - Environmental impact, reliability, technical ability
- Screen - Best results for print
- Hard drives - back up our work, reliability

Funding
- £10,000 loan - £2,500 financial security / set backs
- Natwest - Helpful and reliable - Been in to see an advisor

- Summer jobs - £1500 each (£6000)- first half of the year for all of us
- Rest of the rent - Cover through part time jobs, eventually studio will take over these jobs
- £25 a month to repay the loan - which we can increase when profits go up
- Cash flow forecast - £8,000.00 - first year of business (studio profits alone

Studio
- We considered getting a studio flat instead of a studio and a house (bottom left image) but ended up being more expensive
- A former Georgian Cotton Mill.
- 10 Minute walk from Manchester Piccadilly. Close to University’s/city centre
- In the heart of the city.
- Fully Furnished / CCTV

WHY
-Appropriate to bring clients to.
-Cheaper than setting up home studio. (Explain previous plans) *
-Separates home life/work life.

Budget Cuts 2

We went through the studio supplies and I worked out the final costings for everything we need for the studio. This was a breakdown that I came up with running parallel with the loans that Yaf has been researching.

We worked out that within our £10,000.00 loan we have -

Supplies
£400 - Pantone Books
£3500.00 - Computers etc
£2240.00 - Software
£6140.00 - Total

Marketing / Online
£389.00 - Advertising Fact Magazine
£52.91 - Website
£441.91 - Total

House / Studio
£6540.00 - Studio
£3380.00 - Housing x4
£20,060.00 - Total

£20,501.91 - Yearly Budget
£6140.00 - One off

£26,641.91 - Total Money Needed

Pay for rent on part time jobs - £65.00 a week
- This can be paid through part time jobs giving us a bit more financial stability
Saves - £13,520.00

£13,121.91
- £6,000.00 - All earn £1500.00 over summer

£10,00.00 - Loan
£2,878.09 - Stability / Spare for supplies

Presentation

It was my role to do the presentation slides, I wanted to keep them as visual as possible, the only slide with any written information was the one about banking. I decided this was important to include as reading it out would be boring for the audience and would take up valuable time in the presentation.

I tried to keep the branding consistent with the ideas and work ethic of the studio as well as trying to keep the tutors interested keeping imagery relevant and to the point. We have run through and got it down to around 8-9 minutes giving us a tiny bit of room to overrun and still stay within the required time. All my notes are sorted and ready, we were going to give out a CD but felt it would be unlikely that it was going to ever be played so decided against it.

Don't Panic

I have been looking into some more advertising options and sticking with the music theme I researched pricing for don't panic. They don't have any information online but I emailed / phoned the Manchester branch. The advertising in the pack is expensive and we would have to pay for printing / stocks etc.

We have decided after analysing the current music scene that it would be better to advertise online because of the cost benefits and direct delivery to the target audience.

Studio / Home

We discussed the pricing of a studio and felt it was slightly expensive and possibly not necessary in the first year of business. We have decided that it might be appropriate to look into some other options.

Will researched into it and found these flats that would cost around £200.00 a week more between us saving us around £5,000.00 a year on the price of a studio. This is one option, to save a bit more is to get a house with a converted loft or a room with space for a studio. Based in the centre of Manchester they are ideal for what we were after.

Budget Cuts

We decided that we wanted to give our self a bit more creative freedom for the initial year of business so we did some cuts across all fronts. This is a basic breakdown of where we can save...

- Getting a studio flat instead of housing and a studio saves around £2000.00 a year
- Studio supplies - don't get the iMac stick with the Mac pro saves around £1500.00
- Don't get screen print set up and use college resources for the first year - £1200.00
- I already own a hard drive so we wont need two for our studio - £150.00

We also thought about what we could do to put some of our own money towards setting up. As a general consensus we decided that we can all save at least £1500.00 over summer to put towards supplies.

Studio Spaces

Wills research into studio spaces...
Our initial idea about where to place the studio was based around our discussions into current music scenes / cost of living. Dom developed this research and looked into 'creative clusters' and discovered that Manchester was the most suitable place to base ourselves. Below are some of the studios that Will looked into.

Final Logo

These are the final logo and the developments for our slogan. I wanted something that reflected the tone of the quote, so I played around with the layout and the way its read. we decided on the second image as it would work across more fronts, i.e web banners etc. The top image was the final logo, it was done using a sans serif type to reflect the contemporary approach to design the studio want to take.

Initial Logo Experiments

We didn't want to spend an excessive amount of time on the logo but wanted something that reflected the studios creative aims. We wanted something fun but reasonably formal, the general consensus was to go with the box logo but we wanted something a bit clearer to work across all fronts. 

Fact Magazine

Thinking about some more appropriate advertising options, and fact magazine with its music and art influences seemed like a good place to start. It is possible to get either online or magazine sections, and quoting their target audience seems exactly what we are after. The options are much cheaper than Creative review and still has an extremely high number of readers / viewers online.

"Discerning, eclectic music and arts lovers who want inspiring, informed stories and upfront cultural recommendations. 60% are male, 30% aged 16-24, 65% aged 25-34."

ADVERTISING OPTIONS AND COSTS
Costs – Tenancy
728×90 leaderboard (every page) = £129+VAT/week or £389+VAT/month
300×250 mid-page unit (every page) = £119+VAT/week or £359+VAT/month
160×600 super-skyscraper (article pages) = £89+VAT/week or £249+VAT/month
468×60 newsletter = £99/insertion or 4 for the price of 3

Costs – CPM
£5 CPM for the mpu or skyscraper positions
£6 CPM for the leaderboard slot
£8 CPM for expandable banners in any position

Final Supplies

This is the final list of supplies for the studio once the budget cuts have been taken into account, also the information I worked out in relation to money / housing etc for the year.

Supplies
£400 - Pantone Books
£3500.00 - Computers etc
£2240.00 - Software
£6140.00 - Total

Marketing / Online
£389.00 - Advertising Fact Magazine
£52.91 - Website
£441.91 - Total

House / Studio
£6540.00 - Studio
£3380.00 - Housing
£20,060.00 - Total

£20,501.91 - Yearly Budget
£6140.00 - One off

£26,641.91 - Total Money Needed

Pay for rent on part time jobs - £65.00 a week
Saves - £13,520.00

£13,121.91
- £6,000.00 - All earn £1500.00 over summer

£7,121.91 - Total Loan

£10,00.00 - Loan
£2,878.09 - Stability / Spare for supplies

Catch-up Event

As we were planning on setting up events with the artists we thought it would be a good idea to look at similar events in different sectors of the creative industries. Me and Yafet attended the monthly catch up even run by Catalogue, we wanted to enquire on prices and what the events gained them. They both said that in terms of exposure for the studio and artists / photographers / designers that they worked with it was a massive push into the creative fields. Also because their studio space was close it meant that it was all kept on a relatively small budget. Really enjoyed going to the event and learning about the possibilities our studio can offer. Apologies for the appalling photography