OUGD502 PPP Self Branding Stone Etching

I spent a very long time in the laser cutting room  testing different intensities and velocities for the laser and had some moderate success. I tried first with some slate like stone (obviously the settings needed to be changed for each type of stone) and the letters came out all bubbled and unclear.

Then because the next stone was more like granite, the intensity was increased and I had a little success. I love the pale colour of the letters caused by the dust from the etching and it is surprisingly legible at this small size.

I attempted etching the website url onto the back of the stone to make it a proper business card but the software seemed to just give up at this point and would not allow me to do so without removing the apertures of the letters. I talked to the technician about this and   he said to go to one of the it guys with the problem. So, this was all I was able to achieve in the hour slot. However, I can now return and try again with the settings I saved and hopefully get these to work as a kind of business card. I could also use this etching and photograph it for my business cards, on a beach somewhere would be ideal.

OUGD502 PPP Taking Care of Business Evaluation

The presentation today had a really nice atmosphere to it. Although I was  little ill, we managed to bring together the presentation and the information we delivered orally, really well. We were all really relaxed and I feel that created a conversational tone to the presentation which fitted so well with our USP-people. Everyone remembered what they needed to say and we fitted a large amount of information in a very short time. This was mainly down to the organisation we put inlace over the entire preparation period. I am really proud of us as a group because we got started so early and were very prepared. We worked well as a team, playing to each of our strengths and delegating well. The fact that we managed to talk to so many people about this project, including The Hungry Sandwich Club, is testament to this. This was such a valuable exercise and it opened my eyes to how people can work together sometimes especially if the people concerned are very different. In this case this was very try, we were very compatible as a group and many times talked about working together on a few brief to see if we could make the studio work. I can only say that I hope we do.

OUGD502 PPP Brief 02 Taking Care of Business Last Minuet Accountancy and Business Card Design

The night before we were to present Josiah went along to the start up wednesday sessions which happened to be about accounting in the creative industries. He collected a large amount of relevant information which goes a long way to enlightening the mercy water of monitory management. This research can be found on Josiah's blog.

Another addition to our work is the designs for some business cards. They come from not only our branding designs but also our USP (people). The idea being that we each fill out the cards at the moment of handing them out. Creating the impression of time spent on the individual concerned and a personal touch. Ashley mocked them up.

OUGD502 PPP 2 Inspirational Illustration and the Penguin Book Cover Competition

I recently visited an exhibition in the parkinson building. It was only small but ther was a great selection of illustration for book covers that re sparked my interest in the pengiun book cover brief.

Some of Emily Sutton's work was particularly interesting for the way that the illustrations covered the entire book and created a lovely unified feeling to the cover. The texture of these illustrations was also beautifully composed.

Mark Haddon has been one of my favorite illustrators for a while now and it was great to see some of his work in its original form. The way that he collages his drawings creates depth and a lack of preciousness with his work which is refreshing.

Charles Keeping was the illustrator of the images directly above. They really caught my attention because of the transparency of the the medium. This is shown in the way the ink dribbles and trails across the paper seamlessly making the shapes needed. Although I was going to put this brief to one side in the interest of doing more work with the arts party, I think I will use it as a quick refresher to try and improve my drawing (something I desperately need).

OUGD502 PPP Taking Care of Business Slide Allocation and Presentation

We went through the slides and separated out the subjects so each person could talk about what they had researched and would be confident. We also timed the presentation and it should fall within the ten minuet limit.

Slide Separation:

1. Beth- Introduce and explain logo
2. Beth- explain textures of gif
3. Declan-what we are
4. Declan- summary of manifesto
5. James-USP explained
6. Josiah- meet the team and gifs explained
7. Josiah- meet the team and gifs explained
8. Josiah- same as above
9. Beth- explain role changes in each brief
10. Josiah- location of studio and perks
11. Josiah- decoration of studio Interdisciplinary and collaborative space
12. Ashley-Start up costs breakdown
13. James- Breakdown of running costs
14. James- rate best case scenario
15. James- rate breakdown worst case scenario
16. Beth- Structure of company and designated members
17. Billie- What we do as a studio
18. Billie- Targeting and getting clients Hungry sandwich reference
19. Billlie- Terms and conditions summarised
20. Ashley- Aims and aspirations
21. Declan- Open for questions
22. Beth- we were Bracket, thank you

My personal preparation for the presentation varied slightly from that of the groups. Although we went through a rehearsal of the presentation on tuesday night, long before the final presentation on Thursday, I found I needed to write down some bullet points for each of the slides so that I could look back to these during the final presentation if I needed to. The rehearsal was very useful and we each found extra things to talk about during the rehearsal that were important and needed mentioning. I am excited about the presentation and think that it will go really well, we have managed to fit large amount of information into a short presentation. 

OUGD502 PPP Taking Care of Business Photo Shoot/meet the Team

We knew we needed a meet the team page on our hypothetical website because the Team is our USP. We booked the big photography studio and started playing around. We knew we had to be practicle and so we got some normal head shots for flexibility's sake.

However, we also felt that that we should have some charisma because the USP is that we are people not designing machines and very different people at that. So, after some playing we came up with gifs, that play on the idea of selecting a player for a game. Declan put them together and we love the result.

In a website context this animation would only happen when the cursor rolled over the image, to stop it from being over powering. These work really well by expressing the playful side of our individual characters. Tonally it fits with our USP-People, showing clients that we are not some increadibly unreachable creative types.

OUGD502 PPP Brief 02 Taking Care of Business Creating the Presentation Framework

Just as I was about to do the same thing Josiah went and created a slide show with titles, covering everything that we needed to mention. We then sat down and started filling out the presentation, as we went we found extra things to mention and had to negotiate the content that went on the slides and that which went in the notes, so that the audience is not overwhelmed with information. We will run through this at the end of the day and ensure that it fits in the allocated time for the presentation.

When it came to the design decisions in the presentation we went through a number of iterations to get a neutral look but with an open tone of voice. Josiah managed to get some screen grabs of this process and can be found on his blog.

OUGD502 PPP Brief 02 Taking Care of Business Meeting The Hungry Sandwich Club

As a group we were aware that we could do with some direct advice from some professionals about the challenges everyone faces when setting up a company. The newest start ups we know are The Hungry Sandwich Club, who used the incubation period at Duke Street Studios. We set up a casual meeting with them to get some advice.

Despite being a very casual thing, we got a lot of valuable information. Foe example, details about the Duke street start up support: we had no idea that they helped with the accounting and legal aspects of setting up a studio, this makes it a very attractive option. They had some very decisive advice about working with clients and had a few horror storied too. Details like getting 50 % paid up front at the signing of the client contract, and being confident to enforce it. They also suggested that and project mock ups or even finals should be water marked so that they don't get the work until they have paid.

When it comes to getting clients they said that there dominant method was just talking to people both in and out of the creative industries. Word of mouth seemed to be most effective for them. However, a studio that works in the same space as them, passport, has lots of jobs through behance, so we have added this to the platforms that we would want to use to promote ourselves. 

They had some interesting advice on the creative industries specific to leeds. They said that they have such a niche discipline that they often get to work with bigger studios and their skill set meant that they weren't stepping on any toes in leeds. This is something that we have struggled with, because we just didn't want to do one thing. However, this could also be our selling point. 

All in all it was a very fruitful meeting and definitely a contact worth fostering.

After the meeting we talked about our placement within the Leeds Creative Market and how we would make ourselves useful. Josiah Summarised these decisions perfectly on his blog.

http://j-craven1316-ppp.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/bracket-competition-leeds.html

http://j-craven1316-ppp.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/bracket-where-would-we-position.html

Highlighting independent ventures works well in our ethics as a studio and our view of the importance of working locally as well as nationally. 

OUGD502 PPP Brief 01 My Brand Experimentation

This was a bit spare of the moment, but through experimentation the lettering design was transferred to acetate via felt tip.

It creates a really nice texture where the grease on the plastic stops the ink in the fleet tip from fixing fully to the surface.

It works quite well over a soft focus image, as cane bee seen from all of the above.

Some background textures are less conducive to legibility than others, so for maximum flexibility, which is required in a brand, this design would need to be digitised in some way.

However, as soon as this happened the project hit a snag. The uneven edges created by the texture of the ink on plastic combined with the large flourishes of the text instantly connote pirates. Not something I wanted to communicate. Indeed it seems that the definite edges of the design are what makes it so distinctive, the obvious next step it to vectorise in illustrator.

OUGD502 PPP2 Brief 02 Taking Care of Business Studio Promotion

Now we have the basic frame work of the business set out we need to start considering how we would get work and how we would let people know about the work we could do for them. I put together a pinterest board, which I shared with the others, showing some inventive ways other people have done self promotion. The next task for this is possibly to come up with businesses in leeds that we could approach were we to become a real studio.

OUGD502 PPP Self Banding Development

After the crit for the self branding, I did have a direction to go in. However, this direction didn't enthuse me and felt wrong. So, I went back to pinterest to see if anything inspired me and if I was approaching this whole brief in the right way. I knew that I wanted to achieve something solid but also quirky and open with a strong silhouette for scaling down. I found this incredible piece of work and I realised what I possibly needed was the right font in the background to add the augmentation that I invisioned. For this font I went back to the idea of being traditional and neat which lead me to one of my old favourites (baskervile), this felt too delicate and almost weak on the page which was not the connotations I wanted to foster. So, I simply tried the bold version of the font and printed out a lot of different versions of the Elittlebeth Design. The idea of adding the word design came from roz, who noted the way the design below had interaction between the words which made it great.

I went through a couple of options in which I increased the scale of the first letters and first increased and then stripped back the augmented strokes to stop them from dominating the design too much and effecting the legibility of the design.

The stroke weight of the the original font makes the augmentation feel more definite and confident which is exactly what I wanted to achieve. This design will work much better when transferred into vector format for the laser cutter (to be etched on stones) which is crucial for clarity and legibility of the finished product.

OUGD502 PPP Taking Care of Business Client Contract

As you can tell from the o do list on the previous posts my job recently was to write up a mock client contract, or a fill in the spaces sort of set up. I have not addressed the aesthetic yet, because this would come from the branding which we have not done yet. We are also in the process of creating the website, which still has a long way to go but this will also come from the branding once we have developed it.

OUGD502 PPP Taking Care of Business Terms and Conditions Refined

In Previous meetings we had written down our terms and conditions in an add hock manor, in this session Billie went through them with a fine tooth comb and wrote it up on our slowly forming website. We are using wix to create a mock up website for our studio that can be used as part of our presentation. 

TERMS & CONDITIONS

• Any material provided by the client must be fully copyrighted and all legalities must be addressed. If this is not done all liability transfers to the client and not the studio. If a client provides materials that are copyrighted by a third party, [Bracket] are not liable for voiding copyright.
• Any changes after the designs are agreed will incur additional costs.
• Copyright will be released when full and final payment is received, if agreed in contract. If not, additional costs will incur.
• The client will be responsible for the timely making of decisions to allow for the progression of a project.
• Final proof reading is the responsibility of the client. Any mistakes that incur extra charges will be passed on to the client.
• [Bracket] have the right to reproduce, publish and display the work for self promotion and advertisement.
• If work produced for a client is used in any way aside from what is agreed in contract, copyright is void and we retain the rights to ownership.
• By agreeing, clients acknowledge that we are able to work with more than one at a time
• Errors, such misspelling, editorial errors are the responsibility of the client. Augment costs to fix such end, will be paid by the client.

PROPOSAL

• After presenting the proposal to the client it will be effective for 30 days. If client does not engage, the proposal may be subject to change.
• Any additional costs outside and after the proposal/contract agreement will be billed to client.
• Unless specified in original signed proposal client shall pay fees for changes
• Invoices must be paid within 15 days of receipt. Some circumstances may require deposit.

CHANGES

• Project end; all deliverables are deemed complete once signed off verbally or in writing.
• If contact with the client is not heart within 30 days after project end without explanation, then the project is deemed complete and satisfactory
• No liability will be placed on [Bracket] if client loses data and/or work is damaged in transit.

TERMINATION

• Relationship may be terminated by either parties immediately.     
• (a) Client shall pay expenses up to termination point (kill fee)
• All rights and obligation stay valid upon termination

One member of the group has also set up a pinterest board to create a sense of the type of studio we might want (or might be able to afford after a few years of hard work.)

OUGD502 PPP Taking Care of Business Organisation of the Team

On our Google docs at the moment, this is our to do list. Th code IM is the details that might need to go in an internal manifesto.

TO DO:

Contact Hungry Sandwich Club - Whole Group

Shopping List - Ashley DONE

Organise a photo shoot - Ashley (for monday)

Decide roles within a brief - Ashley DONE but still up for review/discussion IM

We are all designated members of the group and legally equally liable IM

Business Plan - future milestones (London office etc.)

Accounting split up for the year

Who signs the cheques - Whole Group DONE  Answer: all of us IM

Finished logo design to use on website/presentation - Dec & Jos

Simplify manifesto - Declan DONE, (create internal manifesto)

Break down of what the client is getting - Beth

Client contracts - Beth IM

How are you going to build your business, what will you sell? what is your USP? DONE IM

Chillax, max and relax - Ashley DONE IM

Studio - Price & floorplan? - Josiah  (Look at Mother, London)

Buy everyone pizza (“Yeeeeeah” - Dec) (“Peperoniiiii baaabyyyy” - Ghandi) - Billie IM

What market are we aiming at? small businesses and organisations? IM

Aspirations / Added Value? IM

Clients are part of the process IM

Create Facebook & other social media pages + Email - James

Collate Pinterest Inspiration (May also inform shopping list?) - Declan DONE

Complete profile questionnaire for website

Design website

OUGD502 PPP Taking Care of Business Refining the Manifesto

Although I wrote the first draft of the manifesto, after the meeting with John, we felt the need to slim line the manifesto somewhat to more effectively communicate us to our clients.

MANIFESTO SECOND/SIMPLIFIED DRAFT

• We are not afraid to try new things to produce uniquely crafted work.

• Our practice is people, we know how to work with each other and our clients. Collaborating well together constantly is what makes great work.

• We are always open to new challenges and are constantly seeking to increase our knowledge, experience and skills through tackling the unexpected.

• Here at Bracket we are not held back by trends and styles, but make each project with a strong foundation of conceptual understanding, so that your message is communicated as effectively as possible.

• We work with our clients, rather than for them. We focus on close communication from the start, to create work that both the client and their audience love.

• We foster this relationship between ourselves and our clients through creative exercises and art therapy, so that our clients understand the value of the work they’re paying for.

• We don’t like showing you the door when we’re done. We aim to set up a relationship with our client network that lasts.

• We are a relatively small studio and like to focus on a few projects at any one time, so that our ideals of quality not quantity are explicitly exercised.

• We sweat the details so you don't have to: we care about the small things so that the big things work.

• We consider the consequences of each of our designs and use ethical consideration to try and improve the world with our work, and not simply feed a consumer beast.

We are Bracket, and we want to support your creative venture, no matter how big or how small. We want to foster collaboration, communication and creativity. So, let's make this work.

MANIFESTO: FINAL/SIMPLIFIED DRAFT
EDITS

We are [Bracket], and we want to support your creative venture, no matter how big or how small. We want to foster collaboration, communication and creativity. So, let's make this work.

• We are not afraid to try new things to produce uniquely crafted work.
• Our practice is people, we know how to work with each other and our clients. Collaborating well together constantly is what makes great work.
• We are always open to new challenges and are constantly seeking to increase our knowledge, experience and skills through tackling the unexpected.
• Here at [Bracket] we are not held back by trends and styles, but make each project with a strong foundation of conceptual understanding, so that your message is communicated as effectively as possible.
• We work with you, rather than for you. We focus on close communication from the start, to create work that both you and your audience love.
• We take great pride in the relationship we'll have with you, our client, by completely involving you in our creative process,so that you understand the value of the work you're paying for.
• We don't like showing you the door when we're done. We aim to set up a relationship with our client network that lasts.
• We are a relatively small studio which allows us to have full control of what we create. We like to focus on quality rather than quantity.
• We sweat the details so you don't have to: we care about the small things so that the big things work.
• We consider the consequences of each of our designs and use ethical consideration to try and improve the world with our work, and not simply feed a consumer beast.

A very useful resource that we have started using today is the collective google docs, which is like a word document that we can all access and edit at all times. This is where we have our team to do list and through which we allocate tasks and share information.