Financing

Business start up tips…

• https://www.gov.uk/starting-up-a-business/get-funding
• http://www.theguardian.com/money/2014/jan/05/money-businesses-start-up-entrepreneurs

Arts Council Funding: We don't qualify for a grant from the arts council, as you have to have been trading for 18 months to apply. Could be useful later down the line though if we need a boost!

• http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/funding/apply-funding/apply-for-funding/creative-industry-finance/

Big Lottery Fund: If we could prove that we are going to benefit local communities and fall into the third sector rather than just private, we could apply for a grant from the lottery fund. However, we are more leaning towards being a private business so this might not work.

• http://ask.biglotteryfund.org.uk/help/england/a4a/who_can_apply_a4a_eng

Crowd funding schemes: Crowd funding schemes that are unlikely to be a scam, as many people have used them. These have been recommended as the best crowd funding websites.

• https://www.crowdcube.com
• http://www.crowdfunder.co.uk
• https://www.kickstarter.com

Researching potential vehicles

I found a really good website for second hand vans and buses. They have a range of sizes and types to compare from and they are all pretty cheap. Buses are cheaper than old food trucks and vans, but might be to big for what we want at the moment (could get a bus later down the line as the business expands). Some need a lot of maintenance but many say they are working and ready to go, which is what we would probably want as none of us is a mechanic and we can't afford to spend loads on parts at the beginning. 

http://www.ncass.org.uk/ncass_catering_equipment_for_sale.aspx?id=1

http://www.usedcoachsales.co.uk

Summarising our brainstorms...

Our business concept:

A portable print van that drives around the country, bringing simple print workshops to festivals, schools, community events and fairs. 

Printing types involved; potato, rubber stamp, lino, basic mono and basic screen.

The types of printing involved will vary from event to event, based on how long we will be there (e.g. a festival could be three days whereas a fair could be one). We will also vary it based on who we will be printing with, for example children would be better suited to potato, rubber stamp and mono, whereas adults may want to try lino or screen as well.

We will pre make easy snacks and food to take with us, to sell alongside the printing, such as sandwiches, easy cakes like flapjacks and banana bread, including vegan and gluten free options for the hippies.

We want to spread our mutual love of analogue printing to areas of the UK that might not be that involved in the arts, as we believe it is important to be taught about it when many schools fully focus on maths and the sciences.

The charges will also vary depending on the event; for example, a spot at a festival gives customers the option to print and buy T-shirts or tote bags, as well as buy ones we have pre-designed and made, alongside paper prints and food. Day workshops could be a single charge for a full day and let the participants print as much as they want, or pick a specific theme and outcome for the day (e.g. today is jungle theme, you will design your own prints and then print them onto a T-shirt, or just let children go mad with stamps and paper). 

We will have various promotional platforms, such as social media (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter) to show everyone what we do and so people can view photos from the printing they have done. We also want to create a sort of publication, like a zine, featuring the highlights of the month and including prints from customers. 

There is a lot of stuff we will need to consider…

• How we will make the printing work in such a small space? We might need a simple marquee and tables to set up next to the vans for more space? An extra vehicle to transport materials? How will we wash the inks/screens/stamps if we are in a field with a limited water and power supply? What is the maximum size we can work with screen printing? Will we have an exposure unit based somewhere stationary (Fennell's Garage?!) or will we stick to stencil screen printing? What are the health and safety regulations with selling food, especially when there are chemicals around? How do we get round this? 
• COSTS: Insurance, van purchase and maintenance, safety checks, petrol…
• Competition and how we can work with this. 

I am really excited; I think it is a different business and so far our research hasn't found much else that is similar. It is looking relatively cheap to start up and could be loads of fun, as we would never be doing the same thing every day!

Business Concept and Manifesto

It was useful to be able to properly break down our business concept into sections and have a proper look at what the strengths and weaknesses of it are; when it is just floating around in your head it's hard to be able to see how rational the idea actually is and if it could actually work. It also helped us define what we actually want to get out of the business and what we want to achieve, for ourselves and potential customers! 

I am quite excited by our idea; if we can properly work out all the costings, space and safety issues and demand for our idea, it will all start falling to place and give us the bones for a professional presentation/pitch. 

Stuff to do
Find transport/vans and look at pricing (van/insurance/petrol etc.)
Look at pricing of printing materials
External power sources
Look into health and safety regulations
Make maps/'floor plans' of the van and how we can make the most of the available space
Find specific target customers/clients (festivals, schools, fairs etc.)
Look at competetion in depth and work out how to work with/around them
Start thinking about advertising
Look at start up grants for creative businesses 
Sketch design for van
Think properly about food (and if we are going to do it)
Website mockup
Logo

Life's A Pitch - Brainstorming ideas

Gig Poster

I was asked to design a quick poster for a gig in a local pub back at home. I did cheat a little bit by using the design I made for a recent screen print practice workshop (!) but as it is not going to get used for a university final piece and it's still pretty ok, why not in a tight time limit? I am really happy with the colours and feel like I am getting better at using type within my work where appropriate. I also used the Cintiq for the first time and experimented with some digital brushes, which is so much fun and I don't know why I have never done it before!!!

Study Task 3

Tertiary Sector

Private Sector

Communication Design/Digital and Multimedia Design

Animation/Illustration and Graphic Design/Branding and Identity

Tertiary Sector

Private Sector

Communication Design

Publishing and Editorial/Illustration

Tertiary Sector

Private Sector

Communication Design/Digital and Multimedia Design

Publishing and Editorial/Illustration

Tertiary Sector

Private Sector

Communication Design/Digital and Multimedia Design 

Branding and Identity/Music Industry/Graphics and Illustration

Tertiary Sector

Private Sector

Communication Design

Product and Packaging/Branding and Identity/Graphics and Illustration

My first real illustration job!!!!

Recently I was given an opportunity by the company I work for back home in the holidays to create a poster. They are a chain of upmarket care homes, mostly for the elderly with specialist dementia units and care staff. Their ethos is to treat every resident with dignity and respect, not just shove them in the corner because they are 'on their way out' or 'won't remember anyway'. Since working there and interacting a lot with the residents, this is something I feel very strongly about; I have met some of the most fascinating and brilliant people, who completely deserve to be treated with full respect.

The poster had to include a poem written by one of the head dementia nurses, a couple of my own illustrations and be organised clearly so it is easily readable. They also asked for it to be positive, almost a bit twee, "maybe watercolours or something" so it doesn't look negative and care staff would want to read it. I found it SO hard to work with the type; looking back I probably should have collaborated with a graphic designer.It's not the sort of thing I would usually want to make, but I do feel like I have done a fairly ok job and the company said they were super happy with it, so I suppose that's all that matters! It is to be distributed across all their care homes in the UK and used in specialist dementia conferences and meetings, so I am pretty proud! 

Study Task 2

Character and Narrative 

Matt Forsyth - Adventure Time

Quentin Blake - just everything

Jamie Hewlett - Gorillaz

Bill Watterson - Calvin and Hobbes

Aardman Studios - Wallace and Gromit

Editorial and Reportage

Olivier Kugler

Laura Carlin

Adrian Tomine - New Yorker

Lucinda Rogers - The Guardian

Lotta Nieminen

Product and Packaging

Kate Gibb - Chemical Brothers 

Marc Jacobs - Coca Cola

Maurice Sendak - Where the Wild Things Are

Mark Gonzalez - Supreme 

Unknown designer, but very effective message and design!

Big Heads - Kate Gibb

I really enjoyed Kate Gibb's skype; her work is amazing! I've seen it everywhere before and never knew who the artist/illustrator was. I wish I could work with texture and shape like she does, and screenprint so well. She was very different to Kyle Webster in how she works and why she creates her work. It has inspired me to try and get better! Maybe stencil monoprint again?

Points to take away:

• Do as much work at university as possible as use all of the resources!
• Find ways to create work you want and push it on other people if possible; don't just do what they want all the time.
• Be really experimental and play!
• Don't faff too much with roughs (great as I don't like doing roughs!) and just dive into experimentation.

Session 3 - Life's a Pitch

I really enjoyed this session; it was interesting to expand ideas of what we could actually end up doing and not necessarily be 'illustrators' (although it would be an amazing job). I sort of feel that if my self-confidence within my work doesn't pick up I won't be successful making a living drawing pictures; I can solve a brief, but I'm never completely happy with my work. It is great to realise the skills we learn on this degree can take us to so many places within the creative industry! It was also very uplifting to hear that we probably can get a job, after so many people tell you it's competitive and you will be poor for a very long time. 

It's also really valuable to be able to understand the economy and market of what we are trying to venture into. I feel like this knowledge can give us skills that are as relevant and important as being able to draw if we want a creative career. 

Notes:

• Primary Sector: extracts/harvests products from the earth.
• Secondary Sector: manufacturing goods.
• Tertiary Sector: the service industry.
• Quaternary Sector: consists of intellectual activities.

These four sectors all work hand in hand; without one, there wouldn't be the other. Understanding them gives us deeper insight of the economy and how we can improve it.

Illustrators fit into the service industry. By understanding this, we can see how we fit into the economy, how we can contribute to it and how we can harness opportunity and actually make a living. The service industry breaks down into the...

• Public Sector
• Private Sector
• Third Sector

The creative industries - people actively choosing to use their creative talent as a means to generate wealth. More than a hobby, it is a profession. You create opportunities for others as well as yourself. Generates roughly £13.8 billion in annual turnover and is ever-growing.

Illustrators service most of the sub-domains in the creative industries (hooray!) We can work for design studios/agencies, in-house creative teams or freelance.

67% of designers in the UK are under 40.

Life's a Pitch:

We came up with the very quick idea of creating a colouring book that you can personalise via a website. We would curate submissions from budding illustrators and then customers select from types of book; stress busting, relaxation, colouring for children, colouring for learning difficulties etc. You choose what pieces you want in it and can personalise messages if it's a gift. 

It gives young and undiscovered illustrators a platform and customers something current and fun! 

Our quick name: 'Colour Me In' (we will probably change this).

Session 2

Session two was another recap on a session from a similar time last year, but more in depth and to see if our understanding had developed. We had to identify different areas within the illustrative practice and separate each area into product, context and function. It was useful to see how (and if...) our opinions had changed, as we should know more about illustration than we did this time last year.

If we don't know what illustration is, how can we expect to be successful illustrators? We have to know where our work will exist and where what sort of jobs we will be looking at when we graduate. Context was weirdly hard to list; we realised that "context" itself is a very broad term and could be sub-divided into physical context, conceptual context, disciplinary context etc. 

Product = what

Context - where

Function = why

Drawing = process

Image making = visual language

Illustration = communication

A brief = a problem we are there to solve.

Worries for when we graduate...

• Not getting work
• Being exploited/not getting paid properly
• Style/development stuck in a rut
• People stealing your work (copyright issues)
• Not enjoying the work any more

A nice quote: "Creative people answer questions with another question."

Big Heads - Kyle Webster

I found Kyle Websters skype lecture quite interesting; it wasn't what I was originally expecting. He is as much of a businessman as an illustrator, as he has combined his creative skills with entrepreneurship to create his Photoshop digital brushes, which are massively popular and have made his name huge. 

I also found how he doesn't work with one particular style for all of his commissions quite interesting. He explained it as "whatever the client asks for, I can do", which is really different from what all of the other Big Heads have said. It depends what you want to gain out of being an 'illustrator' and whether you care about the money loads (you do have to make some sort of living), but he is definitely a good example of how you can use your talent in different ways and really make a profession/business out of it. 

I didn't really like Websters work that much; he is very talented, but I like work with more texture or intricacy than what he creates. 

Points to take away:

• Digital brushes won't make your work instantly amazing; you need to be able to draw first.
• Learning to sculpt can be a good way of really understanding the anatomy of a subject you are trying to draw.
• Have a nice space to work in.
• A business idea can be great, so do it!

Study Task 1

5 things I have learned so far on the programme:

• That I need to start appreciating my own work  and identifying my strengths to develop any further.
• You can never do too much experimentation.
• It is good to research from books, magazines and galleries and not just use the internet.
• It is also good to keep up with contemporary illustration work to get a good understanding of the profession and current demand (where my work could fit into the industry).
• That planning my time and actually sticking to that plan is very important. 

5 things I want to know more about:

• How to get interesting textures into my work using analogue methods (e.g. screenprinting without a flat colour outcome).
• How to market my work well after graduation and not be ripped off. 
• How to  eventually work for myself and actually make some money.
• About graduation schemes and internships.
• About more editorial opportunities.

5 strengths:

• Colour schemes 
• Line quality
• Optimism!
• Diversity in the media I use; will try anything.
• Sociable (good at making valuable contacts?)

5 things I want to improve on:

• Get better at managing my time!
• Get better at composition and frame, to add depth.
• Get better at using texture within my work.
• Confidence within my work
• To get more involved in external projects e.g. commissions for friends and competitions. 

5 Websites/Online Sources that demonstrate my areas of interest within the creative industries:

• itsnicethat.com
• thisiscolossal.com
• theaoi.com
• nousvous.eu
• nobrow.net

Lynnie Zulu - I love the way she uses bold shapes and colours to create her fashion prints! Shape is something I want to get better at working with so she is a good person to refer to for inspiration.

Drew Millward - amazing screenprints and how he manages to get so much detail into each colour seperation (something I also want to get better at).

Matt Forsythe - Can adapt his style to fit whatever he is working on but retain enough for people to know its his. I also love the textures and magical worlds and stories he creates. 

Quentin Blake - childhood idol! His characters are just the best ever. 

Laura Callaghan - love her colour schemes, how she uses pattern, the badass characters AND the watercolour textures.