Roach Bridge brief

This last brief of the module involves creating a new and original tissue paper design for a company. 'A live brief'

After sampling many options including dolls, flowers, text and fruit printing I came up with a final design which features Russian dolls and text. The idea is that the design could be scanned in and then there are opportunitys to photoshop different colour schemes and themes into the design.

The pitch to the Roach Bridge company is tomorrow morning and Im dreading it as I really dont think mines good enough!

The class on 3/03/10 was aimed at making us understand costings and money skills when setting up a business. Especially in Creative Business, whether your a Textile Designer, Illustrator or Graphic Artist, independant designers find it hard to make profit, having to balance fixed costs, costs of materials and labour and also giving a price that is 'suitable'.

The class introduced me to the term 'fixed costs', which include all the standard consistent bills and outgoings, which are taken out whether you have sold 1 or 5000 items of your work. These include studio rent, heating and lighting bills, travel costs, tax etc...

To earn enough profit to keep a business going, these fixed costs need to be taken into account when pricing your work. The cost of materials is inportant and also the number of hours of labour you and other staff have worked.

A simple excersise using Lego bricks helped the class to find ways of cutting down material costs to create a larger profit margin. We were given a pricing sheet which contained images of the different Lego bricks, for example; Three brick, Four brick, Long four, Slanted Two... each size and shape had a price attached. We were then given an image of a model to create. Our group made a baby Giraffe and Elephant. These worked well, yet after looking at the overall prices to make the models, we looked at ways to get the costs as low as possible whilst still achieving the same appearance. For example, we found it was cheaper to use four small 'one' bricks at 50p each rather than using a single 'four' block brick at £3.00.

This excersise worked well at helping me to understand how costs can be cut when minor changes are made.

Final Models:

Baby Giraffe: £18.00

Elephant: £63.00

Expensive Lego figures!

The design below (Just a quick sketch) shows my finalised idea for the cereal bar. Ingredients include cranberry (antioxidants) vitamin C, cornflakes, natural colourings and a yoghurty base. Tasty yet nutritious and naturally flavoured and coloured. The product contains no E numbers or additives therefore making this a good all round start to the day :)
My ideas on advertising are for the product to be blown up on billboards around campus, the SU, and for the product to be sold and marketed in the Essentials store on campus. Looking at a wider audience, it could be advertised on social networking sites such as Facebook or Twitter, the product could also benefit from being advertised on television internet sites such as 4OD, ITVPlayer and BBCiplayer as these are generally watched by students due to tv liscensing laws costing too much money to own a television set and liscence in halls of residence.
I chose this packaging for the contrasting pink and lime green colours with the silver foil, as it gives off a modern, fresh feel. The logo features some sort of (undecided) 'Pacman' character as this is seen as retro and cool at the minute.
I named the design 'Get up and Go' as this puts forward the idea and purpose of the cereal bar staright away, obviously this name gives off a stereotypical idea about students staying up late and sleeping all day, missing lectures and so on, and sometimes this isnt the case, but from my own experience of university this stereotype is pretty much correct!
Due to illness I missed the presentation or 'pitch' of the classes products and I am actually dissapointed I didnt get the chance to show my independant work and ideas formally, although Im sure other chances will come up.
Happy Hangover Fighting!

The new mini brief for Creative Business was to create a new type of cereal or cereal bar which was original and new.
Although the idea of this project was to work as a team, groups didnt materialise due to absence, illness and also reflection on the performance of the team I was in for the the last project. So I took it upon myself to research and come up with ideas for a new and exciting breakfast cereal.
I firstly began to research different cereals on the internet and looked into what parents expected in the cereals they fed to their children, some of these factors were; healthy, nutritious, filling, low salt and sugar yet also appealing and tasty.
To come up with my target audience I started to look closer to home and thought about how I could introduce students to eating healthy breakfasts and gaining the vitamins and nutrients that are important for study. As students live a fast paced rushed life style I settled on designing a cereal bar, as they are easier to 'grab and go' on the run.
I also looked at different packaging and decided on a colour scheme which would entice the student audience, including bright colours, funky logo and shiny foil wrapper.

The sales event on Thursday 3rd December did not actually go as well as planned, personally expecting more flow of customers and products being sold, I was left feeling quite dissapointed with the 7 decorations sold... bringing in around £8.00/£9.00.
One reason that I feel restricted our sales was the fact that there was alot of people sharing two or three tables. This not only looked intimidating to potential customers (with around 20 people sat 'staring') but also didn't allow for the products to be displayed in the way that we had hoped due to lack of space.
Another factor was the position of the stalls. They were set up in the 'Atrium' cafe which meant that the potential customers were going there on lunch breaks or to meet friends so did not have the time to browse our stalls. Also, there wasn't a steady flow of people going through the site, and we noticed that the area downstairs (the entrance and reception of the SU) had a constant flow and it looked apparent that the units downstairs seemed to be getting more business.
As a group when designing our product we could have also tried to make the purpose of the decoration more clear, as they were made out of jewellery, many people thought they were earrings or brooches. We tried to overcome this by placing a few of the decorations on a christmas tree on the stall.
The advertisement for the event could have been improved to make the sales more significant, I personally didn't see any posters advertising the event so I presume alot of students didn't actually know about it. We could have also pushed the idea of profits going to charity, the fact that the products were ideal gifts with gift wrapping optional and that they were made from recycled jewellery (Eco friendly.)
With the chance to do this again, I feel that the next attempt at a business idea for either mothers day or valentines day will be more successful due to the mistakes made this time round and the fact that I have learned from them.

Creative business

The market research that I carried out helped me to understand the different colour trends for the 2009 season, these included the traditional golds and reds and also black and purple. So when sourcing out my materials such as ribbon and beads, I found that I had to actually buy the jewellery from retail to find the right colours and finishes I wanted, and although this defeats the object of the eco-friendly route, many of the other beads and 'nick-nacks' were recycled. The images above show a few of my finished decorations in which are going for sale tomorrow at the christmas market.