Final Year preparations

Through out the past few months I have began preparation for my final year to begin (scary how time fly's). I have been completing research that I suggested I would complete in my enterprise proposal - I have wrote a blog post explaining it a bit further : http://emmahegarty.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/enterprise-proposal.html

The enterprise proposal which I completed in last semester is to develop into a 7,000 word report which will be completed during the first semester of level four. I chose for mine to an analysis of a particular business market.  
              *This report is an alternative to a dissertation, this was one of the options given due to  
              reconstruction of the course/modules this year. 

With this being a new module and having no previous examples/templates I am finding it difficult to understand what the structure of a report it meant to be. With the research I have completed I have began trying to plan out the sections that will be with my report. At this time I am currently using the template of a dissertation to roughly mark out the things I still need to research. Although this could be incorrect! I feel we should have been given some form of indication as to what was expected from the report at the end of last semester. Hopefully we get more/better guidance in the early stages of semester one. 

Final third year interiors project

Over the past few months unfortunately my blog has got a bit of neglecting, from completing my final third year projects, moving back home, reconnecting with friends and beginning research for fourth year it has been a busy summer so far. 

For my final project in third year I created a separate blog documenting each step of the process which I completed to achieve the final outcome. I have attached the link below: 

http://emmahegartyinteriors.wordpress.com/

For this project I designed a centre called Marina for the Marine Conservation Society, the propose for the centre is to bring in children and educate them on marine wildlife through workshops. I have attached the two main renders that showcase how the surroundings would look on the site.  

Look out Point - at the back of the building

Building at night time

Enterprise Proposal - Companies

In a previous post 'Enterprise Proposal' I spoke about how I was going to research into two design companies in the area of environmental design, an international and a smaller scale company. Over the past number of weeks I have been researching into a lot of different design companies that I would want to work on, I have now decided on the two I hope to use. 


My smaller scale local architect company is:
Gaia Group in Edinburgh (http://gaiagroup.org/)


My larger international architect company is:
White Design in Bristol and San Francisco (http://white-design.com/)

TED talks 'William McDonough on Cradle to Cradle design'

I was guided towards looking at a TED talks video 'William McDonough on cradle to cradle design'. William is an american architect who believes that green design can prevent environmental disaster and drive economic growth. He champions 'cradle to cradle' design - it considers a product's full life cycle from creation with sustainable materials to a recycled afterlife. 

It was really interesting listening to him talk about design as a whole rather than just about architecture - it gave a better indication what believes to be bad designing. 

He speaks a lot about the environment and what it should be like, during the video he said "cradle to cradles goal is a delightfully diverse, safe, healthy and just world, with clean air, water, soil and power - ecologically and elegantly enjoyed, period! What don't you like about this" -  I thought it was a very powerful statement. 

I would recommend anyone going and watching this video as it does make you think about the things you do and use in your life - how easily you could do things differently to make a massive difference. You can find the video through the link below. 

http://www.ted.com/talks/william_mcdonough_on_cradle_to_cradle_design.html

I have taken the book 'Cradle to Cradle' by William McDonough & Michael Braungart out on loan from my library, from the video above it has intrigued me to find out more about the things he was talking about. I also think it will help me with my enterprise proposal. 

Enterprise Proposal

Over the last few weeks I have been thinking about the personal enterprise proposal (that is due after Easter) and what I want to base it on. There were a few types of options of different routes you could go down but I have decided to go down the research into a type of market/model route. From this I have come up with the basis for my proposal which is, 'To research into two different architecture/interior design companies in the same market area of environmental design. I will pick two companies an international and a smaller scale company. I want to investigate how they work in different ways to achieve the same goal - if there is a difference!'


After going to speak to Mike Press during the week to discuss this idea he made me think about the types of things I want to find out from the companies, here are a few examples of what I came up with.
- Progress and growth into a large business
- How did you make the transition from small to large
- Marketing 
- Advertising 
- Maintenance during the economic climate 
- Types of clients they get
- Problems + benefits of working in the environmental design side


This morning we had our last mentoring session which was good talking about my idea and hearing about other peoples as it gives you new ideas that you may have not have thought about. Getting feedback and advice from my mentor Andy Milligan was great as he was able to help me think of people and architecture companies that may be good to use/look into. After researching some of his suggestion I have an idea of the companies that I wish to work with - it is now a case of making contact to see if they are willing to speak to me. 

NESTA Workshop 4

On Friday we had our final NESTA workshop session with Mike Press where we used toolkit 5 to work through things about money. From the last workshop I had not been looking forward to this as although I am good with mathematics I find it hard thinking about money/a business when it does not exist. I soon found out that it was not as bad as I thought it was going to be, although I could not answer some of the finical questions - I was in the same boat as most of the people in the room (a slight relief). 


To me Mike summed up how important money is for a business in a short sentence perfectly, 'If you don't make money then you don't have a business, you just have an expensive hobby'. 


We were given the finance sheet to work through the green section - it was about identify things about yourself such as how much you would like to earn a year, how hard would you work and would you work with a partner/employees, with a few others. You can see my answers in the image below.

Green section

We then quickly moved through the next three sections of the sheet, the blue part I personally did not have a clue what to put for most of them - the questions where about annual turnover, competitor prices etc something I do not no anything about. The next part was the orange area which asked questions that I found a little easier as they wanted to find out about what costs will have to be incurred for the business to run. You can see my answers for this in the images below. 

Blue and Orange sections

The last part of the sheet was about asking questions to get you thinking about the kinds of way you could get finance to set up your business and how long would they be able to cover you for. My answers are seen in the image below.

Pink section

Types of costs:

Direct - making a product or selling a service (materials, labor, advertising)

Indirect - running a business even if you sell nothing (salary, rent, insurance, lawyers)

These two types of costs form a big part in your cash flow along with other factors like the money you take in and dividends etc. You can see from my drawing below how a cash flow works. 

Cash Flow Diagram 

The workshop then moved onto Crowd Funding - describes the collective, cooperation, attention and trust by people who network + pool their money together usually via the internet, to support efforts initiated  by people or organisations. This first time I have heard of this type of funding, it seems to be an easy and straight forward way to try to gain finance for a project. The good things about it is that it will secure funding and word of mouth of your product/service etc but the bad thing is that your idea/design is on the internet so anyone could steal it. We were given a KickStarter pitch sheet to fill in on something that we would want to gain money for right now. The image below shows the idea of my pitch - it was to get enough funding to travel to London to show my work. 

KickStarter - Pitch Sheet 

As this was our last NESTA workshop we have been taught as much about business that we need to know at this stage, we should be able to take it forward to help us through our Personal Enterprise Proposal. 

Press Release - Fake Evidence

At the last NESTA workshop we had spoke about press releases and how important they were as they created a good source of advertisement and news coverage. With this in mind we were asked to complete a press release for the business we had been looking at for all of the workshop tasks. 

I began research the internet to find how a press release is wrote, how long it should be and what information should you incorporate into. I completed my own press release which you can see below. 

For immediate release 

Headline:

Marine Workshop Launched to help Broughty Ferry

Paragraph 1:

The Marine Conservation Society have teamed up with the local Broughty Ferry Development Trust and a student interior design currently studying at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design to create a centre. The centre will used by a team from the Marine Conservation Society to hold workshops for children from schools and community groups around the Angus area. It has been set up to help educate the children about the marine wildlife in our seas and to get them and there parents evolved to help save our seas and the wildlife in them. It will be officially opened for there first workshop on the 1st April 2012. 

Paragraph 2:

In the centre the workshops will be held though out the week, depending on the interest there will 4 workshops a week. There will be all different ages groups of children taking part, each workshop will be catered to the age and needs of the children participating. Student design Emma Hegarty, through her individual university project has helped come up with the design for the centre. She has worked on it for the past number of months with both groups to come up with a design that everyone was happy with. 

Paragraph 3:

Ruth from Broughty Ferry Development Trust, “It will be a great opportunity to get the children involved in the marine environment.” “..also help the parents understand more about the sea.”

Ann from Marine Conservation Society, “This is exactly the type of thing needed for this area, to get the children and parents involved, and to generate interest in the beaches and dolphin sightings.” 

Notes for Editors:

- Pictures of the new centre

- Interviews available with the marine conservation society team

- Beach beside centre not up to standards and dolphins sightings in the area 

Contact Details

Name: Emma Hegarty 

Telephone Number: 01234567898

Name: Ann 

Telephone Number: 09874561231