Design & the Market: Finance Workshop.

Our final workshop for ‘Design and the Market’ was on finance. We discussed the direct (materials, advertising…) and indirect (salaries, rent…) costs we will face when setting up a business and outside factors that will have a financial impact on our business such as the economy.

We were each given a ‘Finance Sheet’ to complete. I completed this based on the idea of opening my own interior design business. I found the blue and yellow sections difficult as I don’t know how much an interior designer would generally charge for their work or what my competitors charge. Even although I’m not going to open my own business at the moment I am really interested to find out the answers, hopefully over the summer I will have the opportunity to talk to people in the industry and find out more.

The second half of the workshop was about raising money to finance a project or a start up. Instead of going to the bank for money we discussed an alternative ‘Crowd Funding’. Crowd funding is the collective co-operation, attention and trust by people who network and pool their money and other resources together usually via the internet to support efforts initiated by other people or organisations. It also allows people with good ideas to break through even if they don’t fit the pattern usually required by conventional financiers. However as work is going into the public domain theses people do face the risk of their ideas being stolen. ‘Kickstarter’ is an American website that allows people to show their work and gain support and financial backing from others. They set a monetary target and if they reach it they get the money.  In class we filled out a ‘Kickstarter’ pitch sheet. It’s a really good way of raising money and hopefully they’ll be a U.K. equivalent soon. Discussing this as a class we thought this would be a great idea for raising money for our degree show next year.

Now all the workshops are over I’m going to look back and see which are relevant to apply to my research proposal for assignment 2. It’s time to get the proposal finished, checked and ready to hand in after Easter. 

Design & the Market: Evidence Modelling and Fake Evidence.

Last Friday using the ‘NESTA’ toolkit our workshop was on ‘Evidence Modelling’, ‘Fake Evidence’ and ‘SWOT’.

I have only ever done a ‘SWOT Analysis’ before but not on myself so this workshop was very interesting. I found the ‘Evidence Modelling’ a little tricky at first as I didn’t have a business plan; I think this task is more difficult when basing it on an individual, not a business. After discussing it with others in the class however I found it a lot easier. I began to think of myself as the business and managed to complete the sheet. I’m still not sure if its 100% correct but I will post my results below. I think this task will be useful not only if I’m setting up my own business but for future interior projects. It’s a great way to identify exactly what you’re doing, why it’s relevant and what problems it might face.

After we’d thought about our business we had to create ‘Fake Evidence’ for it. To do this you need to think of your business as a success. ‘Fake Evidence’ is basically a persuasive visual argument of your idea. As I want to be a successful interior designer having my work featured in an established design magazine would show my success. I would love to have my work feature in ‘Frame’ magazine or on its website so I made a mock up web page using some of my university work to create my ‘Fake Evidence.’

Lastly I completed a ‘SWOT Analysis’ about myself. This is quite a good way to solve problems as it gets you thinking about what opportunities are out there to improve upon weaknesses instead of ignoring them.

I think these tasks were all very useful as they get you to take the time to examine yourself and whatever it is that you’re doing properly and figure out what you should be doing or what you should do next.

Design & the Market: Values and Mission Statements.

For our first group tutorial with our mentor we were asked to complete worksheet 2a from the ‘NESTA’ toolkit. This worksheet gets us thinking about our values and which values are most and least important to us. Here is an image of my final sheet below.

I then went on to write a mission statement. I looked online at some tips for writing a mission statement most are aimed to help businesses. I am writing one about myself but felt that the tips were still quite relevant. A mission statement should sum up who I am, what I do, why I do it and what I stand for and. I then wrote the following mission statement about myself;

‘I am an interior and environmental designer with a love for advertising and branding that I have yet to explore in more depth. I want to create spaces that are fun and exciting unusual from those we see in our day to day lives. I don’t want to live in a mundane world I want to be part of making the ordinary extra ordinary. Putting a smile on someone’s face would be a great bonus.’

After reading book 2 of the ‘NESTA’ toolkit and discussing my mission statement with my mentor I realise it needs to be tweaked a little. The most powerful mission statements are short and sweet. Richard Branson’s mission statement for Virgin Atlantic was;

 ‘To grow a profitable airline where people love to fly and where people love to work’

I’m going to try to think of my mission statement as my tagline, a few words that will some me up. People tend to lose interest in reading something that’s more than 60 words long anyway so the shorter and more to the point the better.

Looking back at my previous mission statement I have tried to sum it up in fewer words.

‘I’m an interior designer with a love of branding, aiming to create colourful, exciting spaces to make people smile.’

 I still think I will need to work on this over the semester. Hopefully as we go through the workshops and I get to know myself a little better the task will become easier.

Design & the Market: Assignment 2.

Design and the Market Assignment 2 asks us to write a 1,500- 2,000 word enterprise proposal that will outline work to be carried out further over the summer break. This proposal will then be developed into a 7000 word report. This report will either be; an in depth business plan, market research for the development of a product/service or analysis of a particular business market or model. I will most likely analyse a particular business market as I am not yet interested in setting up my own business.

In the next few weeks I will be reading the booklets from the ‘NESTA Creative Enterprise Toolkit’ and completing the worksheets. We will take part in workshops as part of the course to get us to focus on starting our own business and looking at a potential markets/business within which we want to be an employee. Even although I don’t want to set up my own business right now the skills that I will learn will be useful in the future when I may consider starting up a business of my own. The workshops are to get us to focus on our strengths and weaknesses, identify why we want to be designers, how we market ourselves and who our potential market is. I’m hoping that these workshops will force me to sit down and take the time to learn more about myself and what I want out of my course and in turn make me more employable.