Enterprise & innovation; lecture five.

10 steps to a future you. 

From the works of some great thinkers.

1. Proactivity 

stimulus > response (animals)

stimulus > choice > response (humans)

we should engage in proactivity that expands our circle of influence.

Get more contacts, get more jobs, to push the boundaries of the circle of influence. This is known as the circle of concern. 

Internal environment;

- Your skills

- Your resources

- Your lifestyle

Micro environment;

- Your network of friends and associates

- Your competitors and other practiconers

- Your suppliers

- Your local community

- Stakeholders

Macro environment;

- World market 

2. Project

Develop a vision of your future.

Create a principle-centered personal mission statement.

Extended the mission into long term goals.

Priority management;

Business vision.

Business plan.

Life plan.

"Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans" - John Lennon

"Begin with the end in mind" - Carl Hopkins

3. Provide

Clear explinations to people.

Speak in their language; not yours.

Talk about benefits; not processes. 

Think - who you are talking to.

Create - clear messages.

Inspire - people with your creativity. 

What can you do to benefit a client? 

4. Prioritise

Put first things first.

Keep a proper balance.

Stick to your personal mission. 

Study

Social life

Rest 

Money

Time

Focus - results

If getting the degree is the focus are you really prioritising correctly?

5. Presents

Think - win/win.

Seek outcomes and relationships that are mutually beneficial. 

Do a favour to gain a favour. 

Don't work with people that aren't going to benefit you in the long run. 

Kohlberg's theory

Pre conventional

- I want 

- Why should I?

- Nobody listens

- Short term

Conventional

- I would be happy to

- Your needs

- I understand

- Medium term

Post conventional

- We can

- Together

- Mutual benefit

- Long term

6. Pause

Pause to listen - give all your attention. Give yourself to the moment. 

Empathise, walk in someone else's shoes. 

Don't re-iterate or interpret - just listen. 

Do you really know how they feel or are you just saying how you feel? 

Giving yourself to listening is the place where you learn unexpected things.

See first to understand; then be understood.

Learn from your differences.

7. Proven

Consistency

Integrity

Reliability 

Delivering a certain performance every single time. 

You can get known for consistency. 

8. Partner

Synergy multiplies your talents.

Work with other experts outside your field to achieve greatness.

- Hollywood model. 

- 600 - 800 credits for Avatar.

- All freelance or small businesses. 

9. Pit stop

Sharpen up - bolt on, get new stuff.

Rest - renew, re-vitalise.

Explore - challenge, excite. 

10. Propel 

Extinguish your fears.

Exude confidence. 

Instil faith. 

Print visit to Team.

Myself and a few others were lucky enough to attend the print visit at Team printers near Beeston. I documented the tour we were taken on as this may come in handy in the future and so I could discuss what exactly I learnt from this. When we arrived at Team we were greeted by Simon who spoke to us about what they do and then took us on our tour. 

http://www.team-impression.com/

This is where it all begins. This huge board (that had a room of its own) its the production board. Its organised in sections depending on what the print job requires and a little piece of paper with all the print job information on goes into a slot in the right section. This is so that everything stays organised and the team are aware of the job thats are running. 

After viewing the board we were taken to the area in which people check over the artwork to make sure the best possible outcome will be produced and see if anything needs changing, this is a really important process before printing because the job could be worth a lot of money. 

The first process we were shown was lithography. The images above are of the machine which exposes the printing plates so they show the design once they have been through the machine. This process takes quite a while and as you can see the machine is rather large! 

We were then taken to the lithography printer. The paper is stacked up at one end of the machine ready to go. 

Another massive piece of equipment!

The part of the machine above the paper sucks the sheets of paper up and send them through the printer. This means that a lot of paper can be sent through all at once instead of having to do it manually which would take much longer. 

This red image and the blue one are the rollers, theres seperate sections of the machine for each colour of the CMYK process. 

Here you can see the rollers inside the machine and also the plate which prints the image onto the piece of paper as it goes through. This is a plate like one of the ones I have photographed previously (above). 

This is the panel that operates the machine. The guy who operates this panel was telling us how much longer the process used to take before something such as this was invented. With this panel he can see how much ink is left in each section of the machine and control this and you can also see how the quality of the print is going to be. He had an example of Betty's christmas catalogue placed on this panel so he could look over it and checked the quality. He made us well aware that stock has a huge impact on the design. 

These were piles of printed material that were being stored in the warehouse, a lot of which were greetings cards, it was quite strange to see them in this form before they have been duplexed because they didn't look much like cards at this stage. 

This was the electronic guillotine which was able to cut through a huge batch of paper at one time (as seen in the image) it had little air holes on the flat surface to make it easier to move the piles of paper into the correct position. 

This machine folded paper at such a fast rate, it was quite hard to keep up. The guys operating these machines kept checking pieces every now and then to see if they were still achieving the quality. 

Digital screen print machine. 

Colour stock swatch booklet that Team have created for a client. Certain things like each rectangle samples are stuck on by hand, there was a separate team of people to do this task. 

Amazing glitter stock - something else Team are able to achieve with their facilities. 

Die cutting machine. 

If a client requests a certain shape for their printed piece, Team make up a die cut of the exact shape which in then put into the machine seen above. They had a whole collection of die cutting boards from previous clients just in case they would come in use again. 

Foil blocking machine. Yet another very quick process, the cards are stacked at one side of the machine and then are pushed through by the machine to have the foil heat pressed onto particular areas of the card. There was a range of different colours and styles of foil to choose from depending on what the client would like. 

Team also create various types of packaging for various clients. This room was filled with pieces they have created and we were able to have a look round to see what exactly you can achieve. Below are a few of my favourites. 

Nike.

Flocking finish. 

Foil blocking. 

This is a digital press machine. I can honestly say i've never seen a printer so big. This is generally used for smaller jobs and we were shown examples of the business cards that were being printed at the time. The general quality and colour quality was quite impressive. The last image is of the ink store, thats a lot of ink!

We were given this lovely book as a gift at the end of the tour. This is a promotional book that Team have created themselves to give clients and idea of what they are capable of producing as it was produced in their own workshops. It shows some of the finishes they can create with foil blocking and spot varnish and general colour options. The book is of a very high quality and we were all very grateful to get something so interesting to add to our personal collections. 

All in all I find the print visit a very successful opportunity because I learnt some things I wasn't already aware of and we were able to ask questions that could maybe inform our own practice. These are the people we will be working with at industry standard so it was really good to see exactly what they do and begin building a relationship that may benefit us later.