Re-brand (Feb 12)

I've been wanting to re-brand my blog for ages and even thought of some ideas a while ago. My style has changed so much since I made the CRG logo a year ago, and I thought it just looked so poor that I had to re-do it as it was annoying me! And I thought it was showing the wrong message about who I am as a designer. So, at half three in the morning, I've used a pattern I created for an image brief as a banner on top of every page, and also I have changed the font and colour choices to make sure everything matches. The blog now looks a lot cleaner and represents me better. I'd like to get some matching business cards made up pretty soon to start giving out.

Development:

Chosen Idea:

OUCE255... Group Business Evaluation

Group Business Evaluation


This has been the first group work I have done when all members of the team have contributed, and so I feel this has made me work a lot better and inspired me to work even harder. I have learnt so much and I think setting up the group business makes putting what we have learnt in the lectures much more interesting and also makes it make a lot more sense. Before, I wouldn't have thought about setting my own business, but now I know what I need to do if I want to. This task has made me think about a lot of different factors I didn't know about beforehand, and in a way has put in to reality how difficult it is to run a successful business, so it is something that really needs to be thought seriously about to save me from rushing into something that ends up failing. There is so much support and advice out there as well, I would now know where to to turn.

Considering all the other things going on at the same time, such as our elective, module deadlines and critical studies work to be doing, I think we have worked well. We have done so much research, to the point that I feel we really could start this business when we graduate if we wanted to.

Looking back, there are a few things we didn't do, but these were only because of time limits. For example, market research is quite an important factor that we missed out, that if we were really setting up, we couldn't afford to forget. I also would've like us to be able to spend longer designing assets for our company, such as a website and other things. However, this isn't a design brief, so that is probably not important.

I feel the presentation went really well and we didn't receive any negative feedback, just a few things that we could have thought about, such as what the mail shots we send out to invite people to our business breakfasts could have looked like. I think our presentation was professional in the way that we delivered it, however, we should have spent longer designing it so that it matched the clean, sophisticated style of our other designs. The juice idea went down well and everyone was happy with their free juice, so that is an idea that I am pleased with!

Group Business... Presentation

Charlie has designed the presentation, based on the content of the business plan. The presentation is mainly just a visual aid for the audience to look at as we speak, rather than for us to read of. We thought it would be good if we all spoke during the presentation. I am going to talk about our location and also our competition, as these are two areas I feel I know the most about.

At the beginning of the presentation, we are going to play this clip made by Lisa.

Presentation Slides

I think the presentation went well, however, it didn't quite showcase everything we have done. It doesn't look as professional as our other designs, and maybe this is because we left it a bit late to design this presentation. On our blogs and in the folder contain all of our designs and these are what I am most proud of.

My Notes

Location
- The Unit
- Virtual office / on to permanent
- Platinum package
- £84 including VAT a month
- Visited found out more
- Hot desking / meeting room / presentation facilities
- City college facilities
- Free mentoring and support
- Networking events to promote
- Great location
- City centre
- Close to train station
- Collaborate with other businesses

Swot
- High demand for branding
- Lots of competition
- Did our research
- Target customers
- Comparisons
- Our USP
- 4 P's, PEST, SWOT
- Studiobelly timber, this is p works, ds emotion
- We are fresh
- Offer pricing plan
- Multi-skilled, friendly, talented team
- From prestigious LCA
- Look for collaborations & freelance

Group Business... Printed Portfolio

We want to represent what our company is about by the portfolio we will hand in with our business plan and spreadsheets and all other information. I decided to create a sleeve to go down the side rather than the one that came with the wallet to ensure our portfolio looks as professional as possible. Here are some of my ideas:

 

The final chosen sleeve printed and placed in the folder.

Group Business... Website

I am designing us a mock up website on illustrator based on the colours and typeface used in our existing designs. The website is important as it is a means of promoting ourselves, and will clearly display our price plan, which is one of our unique selling point's.

Website Design Inspiration Research:

http://imcreator.com

Inspired by my research, here are some design ideas. I would have liked to spend a lot longer on this, and even have possibly made it real, but creating it the day before our presentation meant that I had to rush as we still had lots of other things to cover.

Final Website Design

After asking for the others feedback, here is the final website design. It contains our mission statement, our tagline, our logo, our contact details, as well as examples of our branding and identity work and examples of work we aspire to create. Marty suggested I make a screenshot looking as if a mouse was hovering over a link to show that they are links down the side. Overall, I am happy with this website design, especially as its something I've never really done before.

Group Business... Final Design Work

I have taken these photographs of the final design work created for this module.


Business Card

Labels on Re: Fresh juice

Statement

(Marty also created a similar looking invoice with terms and conditions on the back to make it more realistic - this can be seen in our business plan file)

Invitation to event

Group Business... Business Plan (Changes)

After Lisa made an initial business plan and designed it so that it matched the rest of our work, we all got together to discuss the content and to see what else we could add.

Lisa has also looked at pricing [see blog post], as one of our unique selling points is that we can offer a price straight away. By researching what other companies cost, what our time is worth, and the price of printing, we now have a pricing plan.

Market Research

There is a section about market research that we have left out as it is not 100% accurate, whereas the rest of all the content has been thoroughly researched and is accurate, so we don't want to put this in the business plan. However, I am recording it here so it can be seen that we have considered market research.

Trends in your chosen market:

- Older/smaller businesses are falling under as they don't know how to promote themselves effectively

- These businesses don't have enough money to spend on high end design agencies

- Businesses are going digital and taking over social media, so they need a company to do this for them

- Lots of new businesses are starting up and so will need an identity

How you know this:

- We have spoken to those looking to start a new business, such as other students from the college

- We have looked at websites with information about businesses on them, such as the design council and business link

The customer groups you will be selling to are: 

- Small to medium sized Businesses 

- All industry sectors

- Business start ups

- Public Sector

 Your customer research has shown what your customers want is: 

- Affordable packages

- Fixed price

- Experience, knowledge

- To see a portfolio of work

- To feel they are in safe hands

- Friendly team who cares about their business

How you know what your customers want:

- We have spoken to those who own their own businesses

- We should have done a survey to accurate honest answers from target customers

Final Plan

After making these changes, here is our final business plan:

Re-evaluating cost of living

For the original cost of living worksheet I did back in October, my cost of living was about £23,300. I realised that some of the spreadsheet hadn't added it up probably either so it was more like £24,000. For the first year of the group business we can only afford to pay ourselves £20,000. As well as this, I would be taking on a part time job to ensure that if there were ever times when we didn't have any business I would have some money to fall back on. 

I decided to re-do the cost of living worksheet, as when I had originally done it it was based on me living on my own, and still living the kind of lifestyle where I don't have to worry about money that much. In reality, I don't want to and won't be able to afford to live on my own after university, so costs around the home will be shared with at least one other person, so I have accounted for this. I may start by returning home to be able to put some money away in to savings. Also, luxuries like going on holiday every year aren't necessary, so I have cut these from my worksheet. 

As our business gets more successful, I could re-do my cost of living worksheet, to mean that I would have more money to spend on luxuries and to allow me to move in to my own house eventually.

My living costs have now gone down to £19,718 which I think is a lot more realistic.

Group Business... Enterprise Lectures

I have been back and re-read all my notes and here are some things we need to answer about ourselves based on the notes I have taken from the Enterprise lectures. I will try and answer what I can, and then discuss these with the group.

LECTURE 1

[X] There are 6 key roles in a small business

Identify customer needs to develop new products - Market research

Develop pricing strategies - Find out what the going rate is and how much you can charge

Promote products to a target market - Help people know if you're the right person by targeting a select audience. You need to show you're a specialist

Identify distribution networks

Add value to your product through customer benefits - Give the customer more than they expected every time and they will come back for more

Monitor the performance of the products - See how well you're doing against competitors. How can you do something in a way thats new? You need to understand customers needs. Got to be able to communicate with them to find out whats good and whats bad.
[X] What does a customer want and need? Identify, anticipate and satisfy customer requirements profitably.
[X] We need a value proposition
[X] We need a mission statement
[X] Need to consider the internal and external past and future you
[X] Need to consider the 4 P's: Product, price, place and promotion

LECTURE 2

[X] Need to do a PEST analysis: political, economical, social and technological analysis to see if there is a need for our business in todays environment and if it will work. Can also be known as PESTLE when considering legal and environmental factors
[X] Need to access our competitors strengths and weaknesses by looking at their 4 P's and doing a PEST analysis on their business, this making up a SWOT analysis as we find out what there strengths and weaknesses are, and which opportunities and threats this leaves for our business
[X] We need to look at the market demand vs industry supply for our service
[X] We need to think about the environment around us:
- internal - all about you
- micro - immediately impacting
- macro - PEST things that effect

LECTURE 3

[X] In our value proposition will be our:
- overall aim - (mission)
- specific aim - (outcomes)
- objectives - (how to go about achieving our aims)

LECTURE 4

[X] Need to look at how to promote ourselves using the marketing communication mix checklist
[X] We will get the customers attention through following AIDA - Attention, interest, desire and action

LECTURE 5

[X] We need to decide on a business vision for the future

LECTURE 6

[X] Decide what roles people are fulfilling within the business. From the way that we have worked so far, these are the roles I think we are taking on:
- Me - Plant (ideas), Shaper (tells people to get on)
- Charlie - Resource investigator (research and deals with people), Completer (motivates)
- Marty - Specialist (technical skills), Implementer (gets on with job)
- Lisa - Monitor (cautious, realistic, makes you think), Team-worker (communicator)
[X] We all work as a team with no leader
[X] Implications of being a limited company: see blog post
[X] We will each pay 20% tax because we are aiming to pay ourselves £20,000 salary, so this is £4,000 tax a year

LECTURE 7

[X] Our creations are our intellectual property, so we will copyright them so we don't get ripped off, by using the copyright symbol, signing and dating work, publishing it somewhere (our website), and keeping track of everything we have copyrighted so we can take legal action if ever necessary
[X] It costs £60 to register your design to protect it, we could protect our logo, so it would initially be trademark then when it is register it would have an R registered symbol
[X] Logo trademarks have to be renewed every ten years, design rights can last 25

LECTURE 8

[X] We need an accountant
[X] We are designing an invoice and a statement
- invoice - what has been purchased, itemised, dated, total, VAT, grand total, remittance advice slip, t&c
- statement - list of unpaid and recent invoices and total amount outstanding
[X] Will use standard accounting software to keep charge of finances
[X] Could make a list of tangible (can touch) and intangible (can't touch) assets, such as our company name, knowledge...

Group Business... Ltd Company Trading

Private Limited Companies

Why we have chosen to be limited:

- We can place restrictions on who our shares are sold to

- Want to keep the business private so outsiders do not become involved

- Don't want another firm to buy shares in our company to try to gain control


I looked on the business link website and watched this video: http://bcove.me/jk0a5iqh to find out a bit more information. All this is very worrying and makes me not want to set up my own business as I don't think I'd ever make any profit!

We need to register ourselves as a limited company at companies house. Price List:

If you have a limited company, it has shares which reflect how much of the company people own. Need to have AGM meetings, need to register with companies house, you need at least two employees (you can own 99% and someone own 1%), need to pay NIC, corporation tax and VAT (extra 20% on all goods and services), you need to pay corporation tax which is 21% of your profits. 

Information from business link:

Legal structures: the basics

Starting a private company

There are broadly two types of private company:

• private limited company
• private unlimited company

A private limited company may be limited by shares or by guarantee.

Common features of private companies

In relation to set up and administration, a private company:

• Must be registered (incorporated) at Companies House. You can register either via a paper application form or electronically using a third party with access to the necessary software - eg an incorporation agent, software provider or solicitor. Alternatively, if you are a private company limited by shares which is adopting model articles in their entirety, you can incorporate your limited company online with Companies House.
• Does not have to appoint a company secretary but if one is appointed, this must be notified to Companies House.
• Must file it accounts annually with Companies House. The accounts must be audited unless the company is exempt.
• Must send an annual return to Companies House.

You can send your annual return and other documents to Companies House electronically using its WebFiling service. For more information, see the page on submitting documents to Companies House using WebFiling in our guide on submitting documents to Companies House.

Both types of private company must also have at least one member and at least one director.

The director or - where there are two or more directors - at least one director must be an individual. Each director who is an individual must be at least 16 years of age.

The director - or the board of directors - makes the management decisions. Note that directors may also be shareholders.

Directors must notify Companies House of changes in the structure and management of the business.

Finance comes from shareholders, loans and retained profits. Any profits are usually distributed to shareholders in the form of dividends, apart from profits retained in the business as working capital.

If the company is active, it must tell HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) that it exists and is liable to Corporation Tax. It must then pay any Corporation Tax that's due and submit a Company Tax Return to HMRC.

Companies also need to comply with HMRC's requirements for PAYE for employers, VAT, the Construction Industry Scheme etc. For more information, see our section on tax, payroll and company information.

Private limited companies

Limited companies exist in their own right. This means the company's finances are separate from the personal finances of their owners.

A company may be limited by shares or limited by guarantee:

• a company is limited by shares if members' liability is limited to the amount, if any, unpaid on the shares held by them
• a company is limited by guarantee if members' liability is limited to an amount the members agree to contribute to the company in the event of its being wound up

For a company limited by shares, shareholders are not responsible for the company's debts unless they have given guarantees - eg a bank loan.

However, they may lose the money they have invested in the company if it fails.

Shareholders may be individuals or other companies. However, shares cannot be offered to the general public.

Tax and National Insurance for company directors

Company directors are an office holder of the company and therefore regarded as an employed earner for the purposes of paying National Insurance contributions (NICs). As such, company directors must pay both Income Tax and Class 1 NICs on their director's earnings.

However, while regular employees' Class 1 NICs are calculated on their monthly or weekly earnings separately, directors' NICs are calculated on an annual cumulative basis.

For more information, see the page on calculating directors' National Insurance contributions in our guide on calculating NICs deductions (paper methods).

Company directors must complete a Self Assessment tax return each year. You will need to give details of the income from your directorship on the employment pages. If you do not usually fill in a tax return you must register for Self Assessment. See our guide on registering for Self Assessment.

Group Business... Business Plan

Here is the template for the business plan we will be using. We have looked at a few others provided by banks and off other websites but have decided that this is the best and easiest plan to fill in. Looking through the plan, we realised that there are many things that we haven't really covered that much yet. Setting up a business from scratch is a lot of work and I think we are doing a good job considering the millions of other things we have going on with the other modules too!

Lisa will be putting the business plan together, based on the work we have already done, bringing together different aspects from our blogs, and bringing together the financial side.

The work I have done for this can be seen on my various blog posts.

Enterprise & Innovation... (Task 5 - Proposed Position Statement)

Enterprise & Innovation... (Task 5 - Proposed Position Statement)

Task

Over the past 10 weeks you have been asked to research and respond to 5 key questions in the form of a set of tasks. These are:-

Who am I - who are they?

Where are they - how will they find me?

How will I promote myself - what do they want to hear?

Who else is out there - how good are they?

Write 10 short but informative statements that identify your distinctive ‘positioning’ as a Graphic Designer. Your statements should consider your ambitions, skills and areas of creative interest in relation to the market, your clients, competition and possible collaborators and should be based on the information that you have collected in response to the set tasks.

You will need to compare a list of your skills and services against customer/client needs to those of your competitors, this should help you determine how your company is unique.

Response 

1- I am still not completely certain about what I want to do after I graduate, which I do not think is a problem, as I still have a year left so I may learn new things then change my mind. But doing the group business task has opened my eyes up to setting my own business up, as previously, I just thought I would go freelance. I didn't realise how hard setting up a business actually is and all the things you need to consider.  

2- My main area of interest is image. I think when working in a group, it is good to have different skills, rather than to all have the same, and in our group business, we all have different skills so can bring other qualities to the group. Even if we didn't really get chance to show off what our individual main areas of interest are, it is good that we considered them. In image I particularly like illustration, and would like to continue to create editorial images.

3- Earning a lot of money is not an ambition for me, as what I am interested in is creating work I am proud of and that I think represents my style as a graphic designer. I want to be true to myself, and stay true to the value statement I will write. If it is possible to do so, I would like my work to be as environmentally friendly as I can make it.

4- By studying on such an intense course, and working so hard, I think I have lots of skills that students studying graphic design at other courses won't have. I have good software knowledge, theoretical and enterprise knowledge, team-work skills, communication skills, organisation skills, and many more that should hopefully make me stand out against my competition.

5- I would like to collaborate with someone with a different set of skills to me, as I am doing at the moment with the OUGD203 collaborative brief. I would like to continue to do this, as by working with others I can learn new things, and be inspired if I feel a bit stuck. This will make sure that my designs continue to develop and I don’t just stick with the type of style I feel comfortable with.

6- I am a problem solver who enjoys generating ideas and thinking of clever concepts to form a creative solution to a challenge, and I class this as one of my greatest skills. This will be one of my unique selling points, as some people will focus only on creating design that looks good, where I think also about the reasons behind creating things, and go beyond the obvious outcomes.

7- I am always looking to learn more, about all areas of graphic design, and always hoping to improve my skills, by doing tutorials and workshops, and by asking for help from others. This will be something which will continue on through my career, and won't stop when I graduate, as I am aware that there will always be new things to learn.

8- Loyalty to my clients will be something that is important to me to ensure that clients are happy with the work that I have created, and so come back to me again when they need more work doing, and recommend me to others. This is something I have thought about while doing the group work brief, as we thought about things we could do such as sending out thank you cards and keeping in touch.

9- I am interested in finding out more about teaching, as this is something that I could do part time while working for myself or a business. I am aware, from the financial aspects we worked out during the enterprise module, that I would need to work part time as well to make enough money to survive in the first couple of years. I have applied for some teaching work experience to help me gain more of an idea of what teaching is about, as I enjoyed my experience as a leader for girl guides. I have looked in to doing a PGCE but am not sure that this is exactly what I want to do right now, however it may be something I decide to do in the future.

10- I want to be able to do work placements at different sized studios, as I am not yet sure whether I want to work for a big or smaller company. There are different things I could gain from both, and I think the more studio visits and placements I do, the more I will learn and the better idea I will have about what I want to do in the future.

Group Business... Answering Tasks

We all sat ourselves tasks after yesterdays meetings and here is what we have found out after completing them:

I have found us a printer we could use [blog post]

Lisa has found out terms and conditions of a business from business link and through an example:jpink design.  [blog post]

Lisa has found out whether or not we need to pay VAT. Doing this research has brought up an issue we need to decide on, do we register as a VAT paying business or do we register as freelance graphic designers who can earn up to £73k each? This is something we need to discuss.  

Marty and Charlie have worked on finishing the designs for our business cards and labels [See blog post]

Lisa has found an example of an invoice, which Marty is re-creating with the assets he has created for our identity.

We have all been thinking about our design direction and what examples of graphic design have inspired us, and example website is madebyanalogue

Lisa has found out some information from business link about whether we need to be limited or not...

The best structure for our business could be a limited liability partnership where we would all have equal or determined shares in the business.  By valuing all equipment and the amount of capital each individual could contribute this could decide how much 'share' each person has in the partnership.

Group Business... Location... The Unit

Today we visited the Unit for a tour around their office spaces. We were given a lot of information about what they offer and some helpful advice of things to look for. It was exciting and made us want to set up a real business. The Unit has recently been rebranded and is now inc enterprise, so that all of the City College's business are all grouped under one business.

Scans of leaflet of what packages they offer:

Frances, who showed us round, talked us through all of these packages, explaining what each feature meant.

Eventually we would like to hire an office space here as we expand. Frances said that companies normally stay with The Unit for about three years before they expand enough to have their own place.

Here is a leaflet advertising our competition at the Unit, the graphic design company sbt. They are different to us in that they are specifically for print, where our focus is branding and identity. There is possibility for a collaboration here. We asked if having two graphic design companies in the one building would be a problem, but as we have a different USP, it shouldn't be.

Here are some leaflets with examples of the help that is available to us at the Unit. I was surprised about how many courses and training programmes there are available for the businesses, so this seems like the perfect place for a new business.

Here are some photographs from our visit:

The offices are modern, good sizes and come furnished. I like how it is communal so you have to chance to chat to the other businesses and make new contacts. There are also a lot of networking events available and so the possibility for businesses to work together. By being a part of The Unit you have access to the college's facilities, such as the canteen, printing facilities and shop.