Top 10 things; interim evaluation.

This interim evaluation gave me the chance to reflect on the work I had done so far and see exactly how much progress I was making. The fact it had categories was really useful because it meant you could consider all aspects of your work rather than just thinking about certain elements such as sequence progress as this seemed quite high on the list of priorities at the time. It made me think about the things I could improve on throughout the rest of the duration of this project but also things I could improve on in the long term because a lot of the weaknesses are things that tend to come through in other projects too sometimes. It wasn't all bad because I could also see my current strengths within this project and could think about how I could maximise these. After reflecting on my progress I wrote an action plan so I knew exactly what there was left to do before the module submission. Straight away the fact I have quite a few things on there means that I could start building on my weaknesses if they were relevent to these things. The action plan was a good way of organising my time because it made me think about if there was anything I had forgotten about and also how I should prioritise these things. 

Enterprise & innovation; lecture eight.

Stash your cash!
Accounting
- Keep track of who owes you money. 
- See how much you are spending on materials etc. 
- See the money coming in and going out. 
- Make sure you don't spend more than you earn. 
Invoices and statements
- Invoice; the bill.
- Statement; reminder. 
- Essentials of an invoice; 
Your business address
Your customers address
The date
Item by item details of service or product provided
Total amount due
- Statement has a list of recent invoices you've sent out and also all of the above as with the invoice. 
Terms and conditions
- Designed to protect the rights and interests. 
- Costs
- Delivery arrangements
- Payment terms
- Credit limits
- Your right to charge interest on overdue amounts and claim compensation
- A commitment to quality
- Data protection
Statement
- Before or day before due date.
- Send out every month thereafter. 
- How much is owed. 
- How long it's been outstanding.
- A call to action. 
- Online quick books essentials; industry standard accounting software.
- Will need a certified accountant. 
- Ask for a quote before you choose.
Spending money
- Start up 
- Overheads
- Direct costs
- Start up costs
- Equipment 
- Website
- Register name
- Logo design
- Decoration
- Launch party
A loan is usually taken out to cover these costs.
Sources. 
- Barclays. Natwest, HSBC, Llyods.
- Crowd funding: opening a project up to strangers so they will help out. No return within this (online).
- The arts council, creative england, venture capitalists, shareholders; will invest but will want a percentage. 
- Prizes and awards eg. D&AD. 
What do investors want to know? 
- Marketing plan
- How much money do you need? 
- How much money have you got? 
- How will you spend it? 
- How will you pay it back? 
Indirect costs;
- Utilities
- Office supplies
- Rent
Direct costs; 
- A cost directly attributable to the manufacturing of a product. 
- Or what the customer takes away with them. 
- Tangiable assets; things that have physical existance.
- Other assets; company name, clients, reputation.
Cost and price
- What you spend
- What you charge
- Capital... the wealth of an inudvidual or business. 
- Receipts, payments, cash flow. 
(Cash receipts minus cash payments) 
R: money coming in eg. sales
P: money going out eg. rent and materials
- Balance; amount in the account. 
- Profit; money left over.
- Loss; no money left over after all has been deducted. 
- Income, personal income (tax) 
What to do
- Business bank account
- Certified accountant 
- Solicitor
- Register with inland revenue.
- Business link, start ups, HM revenue and customs, creative choices, t-shirts and suits. 

Enterprise & Innovation; Group press ad.

This is the press ad we created based on the 'X' logo we designed. We wanted to use black because this adds a sense of sophistication to this type of design and adding a hint of colour just made it a little bit more interesting. The neat aspect of the design could reflect upon us a design company too and give the right impression. We took screen shots of the design as we went through to show what ideas we had and how we developed these. We presented this design at one of the Enterprise tutorials to get a bit of feedback on the ideas we had and we were advised to change certain aspects such as our tag line because this wasn't really creating the correct impression. On reflection of this particular press ad, it doesn't really reflect us a group of professionals because it looks a bit too corporate and doesn't really suit our styles so it is likely that we'll revisit this particular design. 

This is another press ad that we designed at the same time and this, although it has area for improvement too, is a step in the right direction that more so suits our personal styles. Its a bit quirkier and has a much more laid back look to it but at the same time is professional looking. Due to the fact there is a variation in fonts within this design, it better suits a representation of the fact that as designers we all have particular areas of interest. Something that may make this design look better is a greater use of colour because as it stands it looks a bit old fashioned and we want to promote the fact we are quite a modern design studio.

Enterprise & Innovation; Our group/intial ideas.

In terms of the grouping for the business project I had an idea of the type of people I would like to work with, this was people with a range of different skills because I felt that this meant people were likely to have a wider range of ideas to give us the best possible chance at creating something both visually exciting but also engaging. 


Our group consists of myself, Kirsty Hardingham, Liv Chapman and Lewis Francis, we all appreciate different areas of graphic design more so than others and this meant that we could bring all these ideas together to create something that covers a range of areas. 


Our intial idea for our business came first before considering a name, this was probably more so important than the name because this is the main part that we have to present and the name could possibly work around the ideas we had for the business. The idea is that we would have a work base that had two floors to it so that the upstairs could be the design studio and we could sell work from a shop we would create downstairs. This means that you could have income in two forms because we would have clients that we would do work for in our studio and also we'd make money off the work we'd sell in our shop. We would however, possibly have to consider hiring someone to work in the shop so this would mean sharing our income out as a fifth wage. 


Some of the initial ideas we had for names came from the idea that because all our initials are KKLL (Kirsty, Kirsty, Liv, Lewis) we could create a star design.
We then came up with ideas such as star design and North star with using being a company born out of Yorkshire. Although we were still unsure about this idea, we went with it when we had to present our idea to everyone else in the class. Due to the fact we weren't altogether happy with this idea we went away and tried to come up with other ideas, some of mine were: 

Although I can't say that coming up with names is my strong point I decided to work with circles because they are continuous so this could mean the quality we give is continous and we are a circle of designers. A lot of the ideas considered the fact that we could each choose our favourite colour in the places that colour is place above so we each had our own unique part to it. 

Kirsty came up with the idea of 'the paramount collective' for a name because paramount is another word for star so our star logo idea would still apply and collective represents the fact we are a collection of styles. 

Top 10 things; second crit.

This crit was another very useful one because I was at a stage where I had started to storyboard my ideas  and because there was still time to change these ideas, any useful feedback that included change was much welcomed because it may help me develop better ideas. At this point I had only created storyboards in which I used red, black and white and I hadn't really considered using anything other colour. There were a lot of key things mentioned in areas for improvement that i'd either forgotten about or just generally hadn't really thought about yet. The fact I haven't begun to use after effects at this stage for these sequences is really hindering me because my storyboards have no understanding of what capabilties there is and are therefor quite simplistic and boring. Some of the really important points made in this crit that I feel will help me move on is to look at the comic book asthetic and see how I can work with this, use colour that relates to each film because this automatically will help the storyboards look a lot more exciting and begin experimenting with textures as this may make simple ideas come to life a bit more. 

I then wrote myself an action plan again that I could use to go away and explore some of these things brought to light at the crit. This would again help me move on from the stage that i'm at and hopefully develop my ideas into something better. I feel that because this was the first time the people in my crit group had seen my ideas/work that I got very genuine feedback as because I wasn't talking about the work it was just a case of how they interpreted my ideas. It was clear that the ideas were communicating how i'd like them to, there is just area for improvement which I will take forward. 

Enterprise & innovation; lecture seven.

Copyright.
- sole right to reproduce copies of your work. 
Protect your ideas
- As long as we are students, we are allowed to steal.
- Leeds college of art pay a liscense so we can photocopy copyrighted elements. 
- Intellectual property; refers to creations of your mind. 
- 4 basic types, patents, trademarks, registered designs, copyright. 
- Patent; electronic, mechanical and medicines - inventions. 
- Trademark; if something has 'TM' its under investigation but if it has 'R' it has been approved and is a registered trademark. 
- Heinz have their design and colour registered. 
- Guinness has its glass shape trademarked as well as the liquid that goes within it. 
- BP and Shell have their colours registered to them. 
- Registered designs; something that appears to be new. 
- Registering the arrangement of elements.
The iPhone is a registered design. 
Intellectual property office registered design catologue so you can see if things have already been done. 
- To register a product is £60 
- Copyright; art, literature, music, animation, film, games. 
- Date a record your work.
The post office and banks will stamp your work with the correct date. 
If your using an image for commerical gain, it's against the law. 
To secure copyright now; C 2012 Kirsty Alderson. 
Keep a log of significant creations. 
Publish it to a blog or start a log book. 
Log the title of the piece and the location of it, as well as the date. 
How long? 
- Patents last 20 years.
- Trademarks and logos last forever but are renewed every 10 years. 
- Design rights last up to 25 years and can be renewed every 5 years. 
- Copyright lasts until 70 years after death. 

Top 10 things; revised concept boards.

After crits and feedback i'd been given my ideas began to change quite significantly so I thought it was also necessary that I updated my concept boards to fit with this so that someone who was viewing these for the first time could tell exactly what I was thinking without me having to explain these ideas were now incorrect on my previous set of concept boards. The main changes I made to these boards were the 'top 10' after advice that having a greater range of characters would make my work more interesting, adding quotes from the films instead of reviews because the way I want to interpret this top 10 is that its about each of the films and not really public opinion, updating the visuals because i'd made a decision to use sillohettes and also changing my colour pallet because I'd made the decision to use colours from each of the films. I'd also decided to use just Grobold font for my sequences so I didn't need to include all the other fonts as seen on previous boards. Even though these changes seem pretty minor it makes sense to update the boards as they are a vital part of the project because the evaluate my ideas. 

Time management.

To help me better organise myself throughout this module I decided to write tasks down in my diary on the day I got them so then I could go back and do these tasks within self directed study, on an evening or an a weekend. This would mean I wouldn't forget about anything and i'd know exactly what I had to do for the following the week. I would just tick each task off the list as it was done. 

Enterprise & innovation; Designer rates.

After using a similar sort of sheet to work out how much we would need to earn as designer on a yearly basis for the 'ideal lifestyle' we then worked out how much we would need to put into our business and employment costs, to finally come up with how much we would have to charge our clients. If we were to work with four other people plus the cost of business would be a lot cheaper for us because all the costs listed above would be split between four people, where as if we worked from home the cost would be more because only you are paying for this but then you don't have to think about things such as paying rent on a studio and extra heating costs ect because you'd be using facilties you already have. Whilst doing this particular workshop I realised there was a lot more to think about than I had first thought because I hadn't really considered factors such as the cost of books or magazines or legal costs (may or may not apply). I did this based on the fact I was a designer working from home but realistically i'd like to start by working for another studio rather than myself. 

Top 10 things; first crit.

For the first crit we had to prepare our concept boards so we could present the ideas to a small group of people to see if we were going in the correct direction and if anyone could give us any guidance. This crit was particularly useful because I didn't really have any ideas in mind at this point and people began to suggest things to me that I could experiment with and it really got me thinking about how my sequences could begin to work. One of the main useful pieces of advice was to go back and revisit my top ten because i'd used sequals for some of the superhero films and it was pointed out that this might not be very interesting when it comes to creating my sequences as the imagery would be similar. To solve this problem I would go back to the survey I did and choose some of the next popular films so there is a greater range. This crit also gave me some idea of what imagery I could begin to experiment with because I was quite stuck on which direction to take wether it be a cartoony looking style or a more realistic one. Another good piece of advice was to extend my target audience to 30 years old, this was another thing I was unsure about because superhero films are so popular that you are always likely to miss someone out of the age range, but it needed to be defined to a certain point and the choice of channel helped with this. 

After this crit I came to the conclusion that I needed to go away and really defined what it is that i'm trying to do and what direction I want to take because as it stood, I had no solid ideas. I wrote a list of things on my action plan that I had to away and look at in the next week or so in time for the next crit and also wrote a little reason why I would do this to show how it would help me move on. I also decided that I would take a cartoon-like approach to my illustration which will later become clear why. 

On top of this we were told what stage we needed to be at in time for the next crit and in a way this should help me organise my time so that I manage to do all of these things. 

Enterpise & innovation - lecture six.

"Don't just get a job!"
- Johnny Cupcakes; started a business from nothing, didn't study the nessecary courses before hand. 
Tips
- Do what you love.
- Start a business whilst a student or in a job. 
- Don't do it alone. 
- Write a business plan. 
- Do you research. 
- Seek professional help. 
A business plan; 
- A statement of what you are you going to achieve. 
- It's not what you'll do, it's how you'll do it. 
Why do you need one? 
- To focus your efforts. 
- Set clear objectives. 
- To enable you to track growth. 
- To raise finance. 
- Attract collaborators. Freelanceuk.com. 
Where to find them? 
- A bank. 
- The arts countcil. 
How to write one - www.businessballs.com or www.businesslink.gov.uk
- To get organised you need to decide how you'd like to work. 
- If you want to work as a team then you need a balance of people, people with various different skills. 
- People can play more than one role in a team. 
- Role culture applies to Leeds college of art; each course is self contained and staff stick to their particular role. 
- Task/matrix culture; team effort for a temporary project eg. a festival or film. Creative businesses tend to work like this. 
- Person culture; needing the support of other professionals. 
What culture does your business need? 
- Need to think about what you want to do with the profit to determine your legal status. 
- Only apply for tax reclaiming if nescessary and sometimes this isn't very useful to creatives. 

Top 10 things; concept boards.

Based on the fact my chosen subject is 'the top ten superhero films' I created concept boards to suit for my intial ideas so when it comes to things like the crit people can see what i'm beginning to think i'll do in terms of my sequences, what inspires me and certain elements i've started to consider that will exsist within my sequences. A lot of the elements I have put together for these concept boards have come together quite easily because they are based on research I have done or decisions I have already made. I found it quite difficult to come up with specific content (in this case reviews) because at this stage I pictured my sequences to be mostly image based in a sense that they would leave the audience guessing. Visual concept came about as a quick decision because I hadn't really thought about backgrounds, textures and colour or how I wanted it to look specifically because I knew these decisions would change as I began designing. I placed colours that I knew were linked to superheroes and particular fonts I may consider using as a starting point. This board in particular will have to be revisited at some point to suit my idea better once I have thought more about the specifics. I feel as though these boards communicate a general idea but it needs to be more focused once I am given feedback on this. 

Silent movie; FINAL SEQUENCES & STORYBOARDS.

I decided to use the word 'spin' for all my final sequences instead of 'spin' and 'float'. This is because I feel as though I came up with better ideas for spin that would test my after effects skills more so than the other word. It also meant that I could challenge myself more because I had to come up with five different sequences for the same word and wanted to make each stand out from the other. 

Probably the most simplistic of all my sequences as this was the stage in which I was just getting to grips with the after effects software. It shows a simple spin sequence using the rotation tool as though it is sat on a central axis. There is no particular relevence to the inner of the 'P' being a different colour, I just feel as though it makes the sequence look a bit more interesting with this added hint of colour. Using a lightweight font suits the word because lighter objects tend to spin easier so I imagined the same would work for light fonts if there were actually able to spin. The font was also chosen because it has quite a rounded look to it and when I personally think about things spinning I automatically picture an image of circle. Spin is usually connected to quite a fast movement but I also feel that it could be slow too so I wanted to represent this within my sequence. I think this works so well because its very simple and no confusion can be caused as to whats occuring in this sequence. 

I used the same font and style imagery as the sequence above to create my second sequence because I came with a less literal idea I felt it could work for. This sequence has the idea that the text looks as though it is going round in a circle, linking back to the point I made previously that spinning reminds me of circles, the text looks as though it is following a path and when it stops it will have spun round in a circle in terms of position but not actual rotation. This idea could maybe be a little more successful if I was to speed the sequence up a bit seeing as it only hints at the idea of spinning and isn't very self explanitory but it was a step in the direction of looking at less literal ideas. 

This idea began as quite a simplistic one with just a normal letter 's' going across the page when I decided I was happy with the sequence. To make it look a bit more exciting I altered the artwork in photoshop so that the letter 's' had a wave to it and then I added in the black lines. Once I played this back in the sequence it made me realise that the 's' looked like a boomerang. The fact that the 's' stops at the end of the frame and does not completely go off is intentional because its as though someone has caught the boomerang. This sequence is quite successful overall because it meant I could experiment in after effects with the idea of rotation at the same time as movement and see how the two techniques worked together. 

This sequence was another which was less literal with the concept. I used the scale tool in after effects to make the letterform look as though it was rotating around a central axis. As I scaled the letter down and brought the size back up again it looks almost as though the letter is flipping, therefor spinning round but in a way thats almost as though its playing tricks on your eyes. Although this could probably be improved I feel that the concept is quite good because it came from just experimenting and playing around with different aspects of the letterform within after effects. It was a slower process than most of the other sequences because to make it look as though it was actually spinning the scale had to be slowly altered down and back otherwise it didn't have the same effect and sometimes i'd get so far and then a little bit woud go wrong so i'd have to start again. The black dot in the middle was a personal visual because when I watch this sequence I imagine there to be an invisible suspended path where this is that the letterform follows. 

The font used within this sequence was another one I chose because it was quite rounded and again the idea that to me spinning links to circles when I picture it in my mind. It's quite a good font to work with because although its quite thick it seems to be subtle at the same time. For this reason I decided to take more advantage of the white space within the frame and make the word a little bigger. Due to the dot being in a different colour and quite a bright one, the eye is automatically drawn to this which is a positive thing as this is the section of the sequence that moves. Having a capital letter at the beginning of the word was deliberate because as the dot is spinning round the rest of the word, this letter being heavier brings balance to the whole sequence. 

Part of the requirements for this brief stated that we needed to have a 15 frame post production storyboard for each of the sequences. This has really helped me understand my sequences better because when you are watching them through vimeo or MOV file you never see them in slow motion so although you are processing what is happening on the screen, are you really understanding the movement? It has also brought to my attention that within some of my sequence storyboards you can't really tell that the letter or word is spinning round, this tends to be with the more complex sequences so does this mean that the sequence is not as effective as I initially thought. The whole concept of creating these storyboards seems like an evaluation point in a sense because it is making me question wether or not there could be room for improvement on a lot of these sequences where the storyboards are harder to interpret. 

Although this may be the case I feel as though I have learnt a lot from the brief because I learnt how to use software that i've never been faced with before and I'd also never created moving image sequences before. Although my sequences are really simplistic, I feel as though I have really achieved something because i've learnt a lot throughout creating them about speed, timing and storyboarding. These are all things I wasn't really familiar with before in terms of my own work. One thing i've found most significant throughout this brief is the fact that storyboarding really helps a lot because without this I would have just been faced with a blank canvas on after effects and no idea what to put on it. Storyboading also helps get a range of ideas down so you can consider which are your best. I feel that everything i've learnt within the brief will definitely benefit me when it comes to creating sequences in the next brief. This has been a good starting point and learning curve.