OUGD502 - Life's A Pitch: Meeting, Terms and Conditions Research & Task

Today after the presentation and session, we met up as a group to discuss where we were at and how we needed to move forward.

This is the first time we have all actually met together as a group.

After watching the presentation we discussed where we were at and how we wanted to move forward, if there was anything we wanted to change about our initial ideas.

Grace and I went and had a talk with John about a few of the issues we had, and once we got back to the group we decided that we were definitely going in the right direction with where we were.

We have decided that we are definitely going to specialise in the food & drink sector, and we are definitely based in Manchester and going with the name Good Egg.

We also discussed possible ways of getting clients. As a new business clients would not just appear out of thin air so we discussed ways in which we could get their attention.

I initially suggested us coming up with some kind of exhibition of work in which we would invite people to view the work.

A a development from this, we though of maybe setting up some kind of food truck and giving out tasters of the food we have designed for. However we felt that this might be a bit confusing to people as they might think it's a new food company instead of a design company. It also wouldn't be aimed at the right people.

We needed to aim it at the clients themselves. We discussed the idea of some kind of event, before realising that there must be some kind of festivals or events in which we could go to, to promote ourselves to the clients that would be there. We quickly found that there were quite a few food/drink festivals around the country, and decided that this would be how we promote ourselves.

After this we started talking about the terms and conditions that we would need in place for when a client wants us to do work for them.

We wrote out a few basic ideas and then I suggested that I will take this as my week's task and research into existing terms and conditions for design agencies and write up our own.

With the name we discussed how we were going to brand ourselves. We decided that we wanted to play on the Egg idea and would promote ourselves with potential Egg puns as this is something playful and fun, which is what we want to get across.

We also set up a Facebook group in which we can share ideas and our developments over the Easter holidays as the majority of this project will be done while we are all at home and not anywhere near a mutual meeting point.


After the meeting I started working on the terms and conditions. I first found three existing terms and conditions from design agencies. They are all quite different in the amount, but very similar in what they are stating.

The Creative Clinic
http://www.thecreativeclinic.com/agency_terms_and_conditions

Synergy Creative
http://www.synergycreative.co.uk/terms-and-conditions-creative-marketing-and-advertising-synergy.html

Storm Creative
http://www.stormcreative.co.uk/terms


Terms & Conditions

1. No creative or developmental work will be begun until a contract is signed by the client & the deposit is paid.
2. Charge of a job will be defined by the brief & negotiated with the client. This charge will depend on the amount of hours it is agreed will be spent on the brief.
3. At least a 25% deposit must be paid upfront. The remaining percentage will be paid at the end of the brief.
4. The amount of initial creative options will be decided upon initial negotiations. The overall cost of the job will change according to this.
5. Costs provided allow for a maximum of three sets of client amends after which time additional charges may become payable, although the client would be made aware of this in advance.
6. The initial creative options will be two. In the event of a client being unhappy with either option the agency will present more ideas. 
7. The maximum of creative options is five. If the client is still unhappy with these, the agency reserves the right to terminate the agreement with the client with no refund of the deposit or payments previously made.
8. If the work goes over the allotted time due to client indecision, a charge will be added per hour and invoiced.
9. If the work goes over due to designer error, this will not be charged.
10. The agency will do its very best to ensure that agreed timelines are adhered to, but clients must be aware that circumstances, amends requested, or additional requirements may potentially result in delays. Timelines provided are estimates but the agency will not be held liable if the project over-runs due to delays caused by the client passing information or approval, or any third party issues or force majeure (act of God).
11. Clients have the option of either printing through us and our printing connections, with this payment added on top of the job charge, or the option of taking the work to their own chosen printers.
12. Payment for this service of our printing connections must be paid upfront on top of the initial deposit.
13. Good Egg takes no responsibility for third party error. (Printers, finishers, couriers, mailers etc)
14. Until payment is received in full, all designs, artwork and rights to design and artwork remain the property of Good Egg. Full copyright and ownership of all work will reside with Good Egg until full payment has been received, at which point the agency will surrender to the client, all claims of ownership and full copyright for final work produced (not including alternative designs, concepts, options, files, images or documents developed throughout the process). This agreement is subject to appropriate credit and acknowledgment appearing and the agency’s right to use the work for self promotion in its portfolio, in presentations, in advertising, in print and online.
15. Ownership and copyright of all unused or rejected files, documents and designs will reside with Good Egg for non-exclusive future use.
16. It is assumed that unless otherwise stated, most copy and images will be provided by the client, although the agency will contribute to this as a natural part of the creative process. The agency is able to provide a full copywriting service or copy advice, as well as illustration and photography at an additional cost if required.
17. Clients should be aware that due to a variety of factors there will often be variance in colours shown between in-house proofs, colours on screen, printer’s proofs, and final printed items. As a result of this the agency is unable to guarantee 100% consistency and accuracy of colour on all items and may not always be able to achieve the exact result expected by the client. The client may request a proof on the actual intended substrate with the actual inks to be used, although this will incur additional cost. The agency does not accept any responsibility for colour variations as a result of these indeterminate factors.
18. Appropriate credit and acknowledgment for work produced by the agency should be attributed to Good Egg where possible and may be referenced for the agency’s promotional purposes unless otherwise prearranged with the client. 

OUGD503 - After Crit Progress Review

After the final crit for this module, and everything that was discussed in that, I decided that it would be best to review all the work I had done for the module at this point to see if there were any gaps or issues in the work I had done in each brief and for the module as a whole.

At this point, my two large briefs, Domino's & Oasis, are at the point where they need to be submitted in a few days so huge changes can not be made on them. On review of these, I decided that the Domino's brief was completely at the point for submission and didn't need anymore work on. However when it came to the Oasis brief, both Daisy and I had read the feedback given and agreed that there were a few issues that needed addressing, mainly in the way our response has been executed and put together. While we have done what the brief asked and answered each outcome, there is not really an overlying concept behind the work, which is definitely something we need to address to tie it all together and make it much stronger.

The main focus of my review is on my individual briefs. In reviewing these, I looked back at what I initially set out to achieve in this module, and what I wrote in my interim evaluation in January.

Overall there is a sense that I have fulfilled everything I wanted to get out of this module and everything I wanted to do in this module.

Things I have achieved in this module so far:

• Improved presentation skills
• Improved quality of work
• Improved conceptual ideas & carrying them through
• Submitting to live briefs confidently
• Good time management
• Creative compromise
• Experience working on a real brief for a real cause (not just a university driven brief)
• Win a cash prize
• Improved portfolio
• Improved quantity of work
• Worked on briefs which I wouldn't have necessarily done before/areas of design I had not have much experience in before
• Experience working with a client and their vision

I do feel that I have done a lot of work for this module and have thrown myself into as many live briefs as I could find and had an interest in. However, what comes with that is that I do have a sense that some of the work I have created for this module, for the smaller briefs, has not necessarily been to the best of my ability, and that is a bit disappointing to me as a designer. I wanted to create work which pushed me as a designer throughout the whole module, and while I do think some of the work has achieved this, there is some work that hasn't.

Some of this that can be put down to the clients brief or vision. I have found it hard with some of the briefs to create visually good work when their idea of a good design is not my idea of a good design. However I don't think that this is an excuse for some of the work I have created as some of it has been lazy and not had a lot of time spent on it. At this point I would say that at least three of the briefs are not up to par and don't have enough developmental work or good work in general.

These three are:

• Tigerprint Christmas Cards
• Charlie & Reed, Charlie's Foodshop
• Harry's Bar & Grill

I also feel that while I enjoyed the 'Object Marketing' brief I skipped a lot of developmental work because I got one idea and went straight into it without taking a step back and planning it all out. I think that this has been the underlying issue with the other three briefs above. I got one idea and then stuck with it, making the brief very quick and easy without thinking what else I could do and how else I could approach my response.

At this point I think that there is not much point trying to reinvent my response to the Tigerprint brief as I never saw this as a brief to focus my development on. It was more of a fun brief to do and play around with. The response I am particularly disappointed in is the Charlie's Foodshop brief, as I feel I did not create a very good response at all and did it very quickly without much thought. There doesn't seem to be much design in it. I feel like I just put some words in a hiarachy and put it in a box. This is a brief that I would like to revisit and create a response that is a bit more visually interesting and has a running concept through it.

Something I have also noticed is that there is quite a lack in image work throughout my responses to briefs too, which is disappointing to me as this is something that I wanted to experiment with and improve my skills with during this module. While I have worked with images in Glacier Coffee, Tigerprint & Secret 7", I feel that this is because the briefs required image work and not because I decided to include it myself. I would like to use this and incorporate this into the reinvention of the Charlie & Reed brief.

It was also mentioned in peer feedback that I hadn't done any work with photographic images. While I did experiment with this in Secret 7", the final design was vector based. With this in mind I would like to find a brief which does incorporate the use of photographic images in some way.

It was also said that I had a lot of small briefs which were quick, and didn't have many which were a bit larger. I would like to address this and find a brief where I can be a bit more developmental and create a larger amount of work. I have found that the majority of the large briefs are now finished or very close to the deadlines so it would be unrealistic to attempt to do one of these. In hindsight I do think I should have created a response to one of the Starpack packaging awards briefs. These were briefs which needed a lot of work and had good prizes for winning, and I do think I should have taken advantage of this while I had the chance. I will try find a couple of briefs that I can use as larger briefs and create a larger response to.

While I have a fair few logo design briefs, I do feel that I could definitely find another one which I can develop and create a very strong response to, and create a whole brand identity behind it. This is definitely something I want to explore, and to create an outcome which I am proud of. Another type of brief that I haven't had much experience with is creating an App or Website. I am not so confident in my ability to create something commercially viable for a client in this area, but the only way to get confident in this is to find a brief and respond to it. 

With all of this in mind, the next step I will take is to find a couple of potential briefs addressing these issues I have, and to reinvent the Charlie & Reed brief.

OUGD503 - Studio Brief 1/2 Final Crit

Today was the final crit for both the studio briefs 1 & 2. For this we needed to bring along boards of every brief I had done up to this point.

I took my 10 final Domino's boards, the 11 final Oasis boards and my 9 small briefs.

The first part of the brief was to present our collaboration boards and spend half an hour walking around and criting other peoples boards.

Overall the feedback on our collaboration was good, but a lot of comments were made on the fact that  we had quite a lot of boards and could do with condensing them down. Comments were also made on the fact that the images were very bold so more white space on the boards might be a good idea.

Daisy and I discussed the comments made and agreed that we would need to make changes to our boards as they were not yet professional looking or showed off the images as well as they could.

The second part of the crit was on our individual boards. In pairs we went around the table and looked over everything each person had and filled in a peer review form, stating the strengths and suggestions for the following sections:

• Presentation
• Project Management
• Have you answered the brief?
• Any other comments

My feedback:

Overall the feedback I received was positive. There were a few good suggestions pointed out to me. One was that in my smaller briefs I had been working in vectors for all of them and hadn't really worked with photography or any other kind of media. This was something that I hadn't really realised until it was commented on until now so if I have time I will try find a brief which will work with other media.

Another comment was made that I didn't really have any substantial briefs apart from my two main ones, Domino's & Oasis. Although I agree with this, a couple of the smaller briefs have been larger than I have put across in the boards, so this is something I want to work on and represent my work in a much more fair view of what has gone into the designs. With this in mind, I am intending to find a brief that does need a bit more of a development stage to it and a bit more experimentation. A comment was made on the fact that I had gone by the briefs and not really 'broken' them, however I do feel I did this to an extend with my response to the Domino's brief. While I did create a campaign to advertise the deal, the angle I took for it wasn't the typical angle advertisements take.

OUGD502: Life's A Pitch: Group Meeting

Today we were all in for a practical session in the morning so decided to meet up at lunch to look over everything we had found out so far and just see where we were at.

Unfortunately due to a mix up with times Caitlin wasn't able to meet us for the meeting, but it didn't matter so much because we just ended up going over what we had previously discussed and moved a bit further on with the general idea of the group.

We each presented our research work that we had done and discussed them, deciding on what the best way to move forward was.

Grace had researched into places in Manchester where we could hire out studio spaces/desks, as well as looking into creative industry accountants.

Charlie had done a bit of research into competitors and had started working on names that were related to food & drink.

As Anna had been ill the previous week she had not yet completed her research work, but at this point it doesn't really matter so much.

I presented my research into business types and we agreed that a limited company was the route we wanted to go down as we didn't want to be liable for debts if things went wrong. We decided on 20% of the shares each.

Grace presented her findings. She had found a creative industry  accountant based in Manchester, so we agreed that we would go with that. She also presented her findings of office space in the Greenhouse in MediaCity, Manchester. It is a building where there are multiple desks in a room, each going for £50 a desk. She had downloaded a brochure and plan of the building.

Link

We all agreed that this was a good place to set up, especially because an office contains six desks, meaning we could take a whole office and be in a place where we can communicate with each other.

We chose an office in the corner of the building as it will have two walls of windows and we felt this was beneficial if we were to spend a lot of time there.

While we understood desks went for £50, we were unsure if this would stay at the standard price for renting a whole office. There was also no indication into how long offices could be rented for, just a minimum of a month.

With these queries we emailed the enquiry email and hoped for a response.

We then discussed possible names. Charlie had come up with quite a lot of names, and we decided on Good Egg.

Reasons:

• It is relates to food 
• It is positive, quirky, friendly and fun
• It reflects our wholesome image

The client base that we are going for is start up businesses. We thought that this will give us a strong sense of loyalty from the client as we will be  going through all the design processes with them from the beginning and helping them get a established and strong brand. We will also grow as a business along side them.

We agreed that we are open to commercial work on a large scale but as we are a small company at the minute a large amount of work in a short space of time might not be achievable.

We then decided on an action plan of things that we all needed to work on:

• Wait for the reply to the email
• Look into taxation, insurance and security
• Work out an hourly charge
• Local printers, specialities, prices, digital vs. traditional
• Brand identity, ethos, brand guidelines
• LOGO, colours, type - ALL
• Does the rent include internet?

OUGD502 - A Design Strategy: Behance

Today I decided to set up my own Behance profile.

This is something that I have been wanting to do for a while, but felt that I didn't really have much of a portfolio to put up to the world. However at this point I do feel that there are some projects that I have completed and am happy with enough to put out there.

As well as setting up the Behance profile, as I am a student, I am able to link the account to one of Behance's sites 'Student Show' which is a dedicated server to students. This means that my work is now being shown in two different websites and I only have to maintain one profile as it is all linked together, which makes everything much easier for me and means I don't have to upload everything twice.

Behance profile:

Student Show profile:

I found it much easier than I thought to set up this profile and put my work up. I will now try update it as much as possible in a hope of getting a bit of recognition and putting myself out there in the design community.

Something I need to do is work on my self promotion and branding so I can create a strong identity through the display of my projects and how I put myself across to the people on these websites. Obviously this is a pretty hard task and something I will need to continuously develop.

OUGD502 - Life's A Pitch: Group & Initial Research

After last weeks briefing session for the new studio brief, we were told to get into groups of four or five and complete the partnership agreement form.

I am in a group with Grace Buckley, Charlie Rotherham, Caitlin Walsh & Anna Sergison.

Completed partnership agreement form:

 We immediately decided that we would split the work evenly between us all, taking 20% of the credit each, and would do this by each taking a set question/s each week and fulfilling them for the next so we can move forward as a group and at an efficient pace.

Questions to answer:

• What is the nature of your business? 
• Where will you work from?

• What MUST you consider? 
• Who is your intended market area?
• Are you a Sole trader?
• A partnership/CooP?
• A Limited Liability Company?
• A Limited Company?

• What financial things must you put in place? 
• What records must you keep?

• Where will you work from?
• Working from home?
• Within another Studio (Desk space)?
• From a start up organisation? 
• Renting Office space?

• What important things will you need to consider and research?
• How much do you charge?
• What liabilities do you incur?
• Will you pay taxes? 

We decided that some of these questions we could decide together and some of them needed to be answered before others.

Together we answered the following questions:

• What is the nature of your business? 
• Where will you work from?
• Who is your intended market area?

We have decided that we will be a design company that works primarily in the food & drink sector. This narrows our work down but still keeps it very open for us.

We have decided that we will be based in Manchester as we feel this is quite an up and coming place for design.

At the minute our intended market area is for start-up businesses. This is so that we can essentially work with them to create their branding and grow our business alongside theirs, working in a collaboration to give them a strong brand identity.

We then split off the remaining questions and added a couple more in in terms of research, looking into competitors and other design agencies in the food and drink sector to see what they are doing.

Individual Task 1

The question I took was to decide what kind of company we wanted to be. I took this question as I have done business studies for A level and understand the types of businesses and all the terms which will come along with them. I felt that this would mean it would be a lot quicker and easier for us to choose the type of business we wanted to be instead of one of the others trying to learn it all and decide at the same time.

Types of businesses:

The majority of businesses in the UK are one of three: Sole Trader, Partnership & Limited Company.

However there are a few more to consider: A co-operative, PLC & LLC.

Sole Trader/Partnership

A sole trader is someone who sets up a business on their own and deals with the day to day runnings. They invest their own money and are completely responsible for the debts of the business. This is a risk as it means that if the business goes under, the individual must still pay the debts. In turn though, the individual will get all the profits if all goes well.

A partnership is where more than one individual join together to form a business. Like a sole trader, the partners are responsible for the business and are not financially protected against the business if it fails. One partner is nominated to be the one who keeps all the finances in order, however all will have to pay if the business goes under. Each partner must also pay tax on their share of the profits.

Limited Company

A limited company is the setting up of an organisation to run the business. The good thing about an LC is that only the business is accountable for debts and if it goes under, the individuals won't have to foot a huge bill.

The majority of LC's are 'limited by shares', meaning the business is split into a set amount of shares, and the owners are those who hold the shares. These shares are distributed accordingly to the agreement of the shareholders in the initial set up of the business. If a shareholder owns shares but has not paid for them, they will have to pay the price of these shares if the business goes under, but that is all.

The shareholders are called company directors, and they are not responsible for the debts of the business, unless the law is broken.

Off this there are two kinds of limited partnerships:

• Limited liability partnerships
• Limited partnership 

A limited liability partnership is where the partners are liable for the debts of the business. Their liability stops at the amount they invested into the business.

A limited partnership is where if the business has debts, they must be covered, and more often than not it means there will be an uneven input from partners. Limited partners are only liable for the amount they initially invest, but general partners are liable for all the partnerships debts.

Public Limited Company

A PLC is usually the type of business which larger businesses transfer to once they have got themselves a good place in the market and are doing well. A PLC is where the shares of the company are put out onto the stock exchange and members of the public can invest in these.

This is not an appropriate kind of business for something small.

Co-operative

The business planning side of starting a co-operative is very similar to starting any business. There are, however, two main differences in the process:

The start-up process generally involves more people in a democratic, inclusive planning process. These people will be the future members; as customers, workers, tenants or users. This means that you create the business that the members want.

There are lots of people and organisations who can help because you are a co-operative. The co-operative movement is great at helping more co-operatives start. Indeed co-operation amongst co-operatives is one of the seven co-operative principles.

After researching into these types of businesses I have come to the conclusion that we should form a limited liability partnership. I will present my research to the others in our next meeting and see what they agree with.

I decided on this because doing this kind of business means that if it were to fail, our personal affects would be safe. This could be seen as us not putting everything into the business, however it seems like the safe option to do for a first time business. It also means the business is registered, which could potentially give clients more confidence in us because sometimes things like that matter to people.

In terms of payment, from the research and my own knowledge, I know that all payment for jobs will go directly into the business and not to the individuals. This means that all the income goes straight into the business and becomes the businesses earnings. From this, we would each take a salary, which would be covered in the expenses side of our finances.

I think that this is the best way to do it, as it means we each get a definite paycheque each month. It also means that the businesses incomings and outgoings could be easier to keep track of.

As of yet, this payment technique is something I haven't discussed with the group, and will need to, to further develop how we would get paid if we were to individually work of briefs and receive some kind of payment from this.

Individual Task 2

I also took the opportunity to research into other competitors in the market to see what kind of work they were doing and who for.

I first looked into Pentagram

http://www.pentagram.com/work/#/all/food%20&%20drink/newest/

Pentagram is the world's largest independent design consultancy. The firm is owned and run by 19 partners, a group of friends who are all leaders in their individual creative fields.

With Pentagram being such a large business, they have a large amount of work in the food & drink sector, ranging over a variety of different media and uses, as well as over a large amount of products.

Some of their work:

Pentagrams work has shown that there is a huge variety of work available in the food & drink sector, from branding & identity to designing the interior of a restaurant/bar etc.

I found that while Pentagram is a large company, a lot of the design work in this sector was for smaller/single businesses wanting a very individual identity/design for their business. There were a couple of works that are mainstream and large businesses, but the majority is lesser known businesses.

After looking into Pentagram I started looking for smaller design agencies which work in this sector.

Bluemarlin Brand Design

http://www.bluemarlinbd.com

Bluemarlin is a design company founded in 1993 by two designers. It has grown to become a multi-national company with studios in London, New York, Sydney & Singapore.

Some of their work:

Quite a lot of the work by Bluemarlin is recognisable. Their main focus is on packaging in general over a range of products.

OUGD503 - Studio Brief 2: Session 4/Crit

For today's crit I made five design boards for Daisy and I showing the brief and our responses.

An immediate issue with these boards was that we were told the feedback was going to purely be on the boards and not the actual work. I had designed these boards to display the content, not to be final submission boards so immediately knew the feedback we got wouldn't be brilliant, especially because they were being reviewed by people who knew nothing about the brief and our response.

Feedback:

Overall the feedback wasn't too great, and this was expected. However a few of the comments on the second sheet were a little harsh and a bit unintelligent. One comment says we need to give more information on the scale and format of advertisements, but there is a clear situational image of an advertisement showing scale, format and placement. Another comment was that we need some consistent weights in our type. All the type has been done to be the exact same size and weight throughout, so this is an irrelevant comment. Another comment was made on the fact that it wasn't clear who the audience is, however on the first page there is a written explanation stating that these messages will be placed inside the Oasis store primarily, with the clear audience of their customers. Another comment is that we haven't shown one of the messages. As these were design boards, we didn't feel it was necessary to show all the work as it is all proposals and all very similar so it seemed like a waste of space to put these on when there were other deliverables that needed to be shown.

The feedback on the first sheet was definitely more constructive and was actually positive in some areas, whereas the second wasn't positive at all and seemed like it hadn't been done with much look into what was actually on the boards.