Group Business... Printers In Leeds

We need to decide who we will print with and establish a relationship with a printer in Leeds. To do this, we need to know who is out there to choose where we will go. I will research printers in Leeds.

I have already been to Team Impression print which produced really high quality prints. They are special because they take care of everything. However, because of the service they offer, they will be more expensive to use.

I then did a google search to find other possible printers and was surprised to see that there are so many in Leeds! This is good because we can look around to find the cheapest ones that offer the best quality prints. As a graphic designer I am naturally drawn to the ones with the good websites and automatically put off those with badly designed websites! Maybe as our company is about re-branding it would be good to offer to re-brand a printers identity in return for prints to establish a relationship and build up our portfolio of work. A lot of these websites could certainly do with our help!

 Duffield

Target

These were the two other printing places that people on our course looked around when we were doing the print module, so we know that they are respected companies who have a good relationship with the college.

pricelessprint

print solutions

leedsprintingcompany

I think this could be a good printers to use as their prints seem good quality from the examples given and they seem very cheap compared to the other printers. 

colourcopyleeds

prontaprint

printing

servicepointuk

harmerprint

Some of these examples I have put on just to show what is out there in Leeds. 

There is also the possibility of using an online printing company, however, these aren't really meant for mass jobs so I think this could get expensive.

Moo

Vistaprint

As these companies are online and not in Leeds, there is just something about them which makes me trust them less than the ones in Leeds. I would prefer to use a printing company where we can go and have a look around beforehand, and meet the staff, so that we feel like we are establishing a relationship, and can both work together to ensure we produce the best results.

Group Business... Answering Things Off Our Checklist

Today we had a meeting to talk about what we had done off our checklist and what we needed to do. Tomorrow we are going to look around the Unit, and we even thought about seeing if we could talk to the other graphic design company which is situated there, as if we were moving in there may be chance of a collaboration.

Issues Covered:

- Exact target audience: business to business - companies whose logo needs refreshing, can also create branding and identity for new businesses
- We need to earn £111 a day each to cover our business expenses and earn £20k each a year, and this is with us hotdesking. We need to earn about £15 an hour each. We will have to work long hours.
- There aren't any grants available, so our start up costs would have to be from our savings, a personal loan, or a business loan. We also think that we will need to each have a part time job, for one or two days a week, earning about £6k a year.
- To build up a group portfolio our strategy is to start the business in June 2013 when we leave, but up until then we would be entering competitions and taking on live briefs
- We would have a few briefs on the go at the same time to earn as much money as possible, and because there are four of us this is possible
- We had to decide how long we thought it would take us to create a logo. We would't necessarily need all of us on the same brief at the same time. It would be a good idea to all sit around and discuss the brief and bounce ideas off each other, then split up into separate roles so we are not wasting time. We could offer different types of rebranding, from just creating a logo, to creating a full identity and website for the company. This would alter the price we charge. We are thinking it would be about £400 to come up with a logo, but we aren't sure what the other companies out there are charging, so we need to do a bit of research and find this out.
- We have decided we will be a limited partnership, we need to factor how this will effect out costs though
- We need to choose a printers we will use most of the time in Leeds and establish a partnership with these. The printers we use may vary depending on what the client wants. For example, Team print probably provide the best quality prints but will be the most expensive
- We need to make the client feel special, we will do this by sending them birthday cards, an invitation to a networking event we've set up, free consultations, discount vouches, thank you cards, limited editions prints and more...
- We need to gather some pieces of work to do with branding and identity that inspire us to put together a design direction board
- We could talk to the other graphic design agency at The Unit that could be our competition for more information and possibility of collaboration

Tasks:

We split these tasks up between us. Tomorrow we will meet up and decide what else we need to do.

1. How much do other companies charge? (lisa)
2. Costs of being a limited company? (lisa)
3. Business cards, labels (marty)
4. Buy orange juice (marty & charlie)
5. Wording (me)
6. Blog post of printers in Leeds (me)
7. Finishing touches to designs (marty)
8. Invoice template (lisa)
9. Look into VAT costs (lisa)
10. Design direction (charlie)
11. Presentation design (marty)

Portfolio

claudiagriffin.blogspot.com

I have set up a bit of a portfolio blog to show off my final pieces. This is because to people not on the course, looking through my blog might not seem very interesting as there is so much writing, so if I were to give people my blog address to show them my work, they might get bored and forget about me. Therefore, by selecting my final pieces and putting these on a new blog without annotation, the viewer can look at my design work, and then has the opportunity to ask me questions about anything they aren't clear about or to go on and look at my blog. The blog follows the same design as this blog, which I would like to update when I have the time.

The reason for all this is that I have been asked about my work, and the possibility of me doing some freelance work, but haven't had time yet to set up a proper website. Also, I don't know if I feel confident enough to put my work on a website such as behance, so this is the first step, and eventually I will cover all the different ways of promoting myself!

I will keep this portfolio blog going and put on my final pieces at the end of briefs or any other work that I am particularly proud of.

Group Business... Finance

We decided because of her knowledge of accountancy, Lisa is in charge of finance. We had all previously filled in our own overhead costs sheets in the enterprise workshops, and all worked out we needed to earn about 

Equipment we need :

We have all already thought about our own personal assets that we can bring to the company so that we don't have to purchase new equipment, such as that we all have our own computers.

There are some things that we will need to purchase new, such as:

- Imac - Good printer - Adobe software licence - Light box - Camera - General crafting tools

Finance to think about :

- Website hosting - Promotional - Equipment - Licences - Insurance - Copywriting - Accounting software - Rent - Back up data - Registration costs

From Lisa's Blog:

Lisa worked out our 2 Year Overhead Costs. In the first year, we are working it out as if we each will earn £20k, and in the second year £25k.

 

Group Business... Wording

Tasks

My task is to sort out:

- mission statement
- executive summary
- slogan
- tagline

I have chosen to take on this task as I think I am quite good with words. It will take me a few goes before I come up with something I am happy with but I want to be able to make us sound professional, but at the same time, a fresh and loyal company who puts our customers needs as a priority.

Name: Re:Ltd

Slogan:Re:fresh Re:vive Re:brand

Tagline Ideas:
The freshest graphic designers in Leeds?
Bringing new life to your business?
Leeds freshest branding and identity?

Mission Statement:

Before I can write our mission statement we need to be able to answer the question: 'What do customers want?' To do this market research is necessary.

Research

I think we should have done market research at the start of the project to check that our idea for a USP for our business was working, but as its too late to do that now, we can do another form of market research by finding out what customers would be looking for when choosing someone to brand their websites. If I'd have had time, I would've like to do a proper survey to analyse the results, but instead, I just asked friends and family, some with their own businesses already and some looking to set one up, about what they would be looking for when choosing someone to brand their business. Here are a few of the answers:

X affordable packages
X to know a set price
X experience, knowledge
X to see a portfolio of work
X to feel they are in safe hands
X friendly people they feel comfortable with

Ideas

We are a talented team of graphic designers, fresh with knowledge as we have studied on the prestigious BAGD course at LCA. Our aim is to bring new life to businesses who need reviving at an affordable price. Between us we have expert knowledge to ensure you your business is in safe hands.

- vision - mission - objective - strategy -

Group Business... Promotional Designs

To be memorable and to stand out from others, we need to create some promotional designs. Marty is working on business cards & stationary for the business, but we all got together to discuss our ideas for other options.

My idea for bottle design:

Give out a bottle of pure orange juice at the business breakfasts as a promotional item. The orange juice relates to the fresh theme and also fits in well with it being a business breakfast. The bottle will contain our logo, and information about us. Such as our qualities could be written as ingredients. This idea was inspired by an innocent smoothie bottle I was drinking from at the time of the meeting. This would be more memorable than a business card or a leaflet, as at these types of networking events people may receive many and forget about them. We would give out a business card anyway,  to go with the bottle, so that when people see it they remember us. Relating to the theme of re: we could make sure to write that the bottle should be reused and recycled.

Some other of my ideas for promotional material:

- Sticker with our logo on on fresh fruit
- Mini fruit box with packaging with our info
- A battery with our info on the packaging (As we revitalise)
- Packaging as if it is for medicines or vitamins but with a leaflet of our work rather than product info
- Tea bags with our info on
- Rubber and pencil (as we erase bad designs and replace with new creative ones)

Marty's Designs:

As this isn't a design brief, we don't have a lot of time to spend on designing, but here is Marty's take on the fresh bottle idea. The imagery will be focused upon our logo which we spent a while creating.

Chosen Font

Business Cards & Label

Above are some development ideas for the business cards.

Here are the final printed business cards and label made by Marty and Charlie. They were printed onto thick, off white card, and Charlie used embossing tools to emboss the logo to give an idea of how we would want it to look if printing it professionally.

The label contains lots of information about what our business is about. Marty and Charlie have also been creating mock up invitations to a networking event we could hold.

Event

These are invitations made by Charlie to an event we could hold.

Mock ups:

Final: 

Group Business... Content for Presentation

After our group meeting and looking through the initial plan Marty made, I have thought about what might be missing from our presentations. I went back through all of the enterprise lecture notes I had written, as well as the notes I had written from reading a business studies book and found so many things that we need to include! Some of them are only small things that won't take long to decide on, but it is important to cover everything to make this business seem as realistic as possible.

My list of what we need to include

Slides
- Logo / Slogan / Tagline
- Who we are / What we want to achieve / Company Image / USP / Our roles
- Business Plan
- Location
- PEST Analysis
- SWOT Competitors (immediate/national)
- Market and Promotion
- Finance
- Our Pricing (example for rebranding a company - how many will we need to do to break even?)
- Design Direction (work we have created, work we aspire to create)

- How we will copyright / legal issues
- Contract / How we will make sure we don't get ripped off (e.g. Lisa's example of having a fixed number of redesigns in contract)
- Short term business and financial goals
- 3 Year Plan (where we see ourselves in the future - long term business goals)
- Collaboration / partnership possibilities
- Which equipment we have to bring and what we need to buy to comply with legal restrictions
- Vision, mission, objective, strategy
- Marketing mix
- Promotion costs
- How we can get a good customer client base (how we will treat our clients)
- Shareholders (will we be limited?)
- How we will take care of finance (who will our accountant be?)
- Business Insurance
- What we will produce (examples of our work)
- Where we will print our work
- What our contract/invoices will look like
- Clearly defined target customers
- Market research (primary research)
- Objectives / Strategies to achieve these




Things to print

We have booked two print slots to print out: business cards, invoices, letterheads, bottles, stickers and maybe some other pieces.


Terminology we need to include

- 4 P's
- SWOT
- PEST(LE)
- SMART objectives