SIE - Scottish Institute for Enterprise

SIE Logo

This morning we had a lecture from a woman called Dawn Shand, she is the regional business advisor for this side of Scotland.

Although I have not considered setting up my own business as that is not necessarily the route I want to take when I leave university. I found it interesting that there are companies/organisations set up to help those people/students to get advice on an idea and how to get the ball rolling to start up there own business.

They are there to help turn students into entrepreneurs, support, inspire and encourage them to make that step to getting there business idea going. 

She gave everyone in the room an old, out of date news paper article and told us to make something out of it to give it value. My initial idea was to make a picture frame out of it as the newspaper I got has a nice beach image on it - it did not turn out beautiful as the paper kept unfolding. The purpose of this exercise was for us to think about what setting up a business can be about - I took from this that if you find something, a product/service that can have a value added to it then it can be turned into a business. I had never thought of a business idea like that before. 

I will now consider my options, do I have any ideas/thought that can be turned into a business? I will think more about what is available out there for me before ruling things out like setting up my own business.  

Mentoring Group - Design and the Market

Today we had our first group mentoring session with Andy Milligan, before this we were asked to complete a couple of things. The first being ‘02a Your Values’ NESTA work sheet, write a mission statement and read NESTA book 01 and 02 up till page 16. 

I started of by completing my work sheet, this was interesting as it did really make you think about what is important to you when working on a project / in a business / in future life. My top five always important values are: work/life balance, self respect, honesty, be positive and excitement. And for my never important values I chose: status/fame and wealth.

02a Your Values

When asked in a previous lecture from Christina Hurst to write a mission statement I found it difficult to understand how it was possible to write one on yourself as I would always link it with a business/organisation. So I started to look at a few examples of what a personal mission statement looks like for other people - this in a way was not that helpful. Those that I seen were talking about religious beliefs and not about there aims/goals. From my values list I used a few words to help we create my own mission statement - this took me a long time to figure out what is was I wanted to say. In the end I came up with this:   

I will strike to achieve a good work/life balance - In work my mission is to be creative, learn and understand my clients’ needs to create the best spatial design solution for them. In life I will aim high and be an optimist as I believe everything happens for a reason. 

From the mentoring session I am not sure if this is what they were looking for as a lot of other students spoke more about a business/project concept mission statement. Personally for me I find if hard to understand how you can come up with a mission statement for a business/research project which you do not no what it will be about yet. My next step is to make my personal mission statement more focused on my discipline and what I aim to achieve through it. I will also begin thinking about my personal enterprise proposal, work out what it will be about so that I can then write a mission statement for it. 

When reading the NESTA books ‘Arrivals and Destinations’ and ‘Getting off the Ground’ I thought that the best way for me to remember what they talked about was to make a mind map whilst reading it. 

NESTA - Book 1

NESTA - Book 2

I found it helpful making the mind maps as it was easier to look back for something and find out the details of it again, in comparison to a list of bullet points - for me a mind map works best. 

NESTA - Book 1 Mind Map

NESTA - Book 2 Mind Map

New Project

At the end of last week we were given a form to fill in defining what our new 'Personal Project' would be about and to create a brief. Initially I had a few ideas floating about my head so today I sat down and started figuring out what direction I wanted to take this project down. This was not an easy task!

Personal Project form

Two concepts

Through out the day I narrowed my thoughts down to two potential concepts. They both are aimed to work with the same organisation but at the same time they would create totally different outcomes. I hope by tomorrow afternoon I will have picked from the two briefs which one I feel will create the best project for me so that I can get started on it - I am excited to be getting stuck into something new. 

 

International GIDE Workshop

From Tuesday 14th - Thursday 16th February, we in Dundee were the hosts of the International GIDE Workshop 2012 - Group of International Design Education. 


The seven colleges join together for the few days to work together on a number of different bomb projects to exchange design ideas and cultural experiences. The seven colleges are:

- Leeds College of Art 

- University of Primorska - The Academy of Design in Ljubljana 

- University of Applied Sciences of Southern Switzerland 

- University of Applied Science - Magderburg 

- Lessius Mechelen University College - Design & Technology Department 

- Politecnico di Milano 

- Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design - Dundee


There are groups created with a mixture of people from all the different colleges - they are then given an individual bomb project. My groups brief was to 'Develop a concept proposal for a portable chair for gallery vistors, talks and events at DCA - Dundee Contemporary Arts. Design this to reflect previous exhibiton event at DCA. Produce a full scale 1:1 rough mock up/prototype using basic materials.' 


From this we went to DCA to look around the gallery spaces, from this we seen that storage is a major problem as they basically do not have any. We took this to be a big influence is our design, as it was a large team not just one design could be agreed on so we decided to design and produce two prototypes. Below is shown to presentation and our outcomes. 

We as a team I feel were happy with the outcomes for it being a three day project and hopefully the people from DCA will also like our designs.


GIDE as a whole for me was a great experience, and I would love to go and experience it in a different country. Fingers crossed I get to go to Slovenia next year!

Ice Cream Architecture Presentation

Yesterday morning we as a group had our presentation showing our findings about the company icecream architecture - we felt that it when well and that we got across what it is that the company does. Here are the slide from our powerpoint presentation. 

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Icecream Architecture

After contacting Sarah Frood from icecream architecture to arrange an interview time, we sat down as a team and came up with a list of questions that we wanted answers to. So on Monday the 13th February, Yasemin and Esther went to Glasgow to met Desmond Bernie at there office on Nelson Street to carry out the interview. During the interview notes were taken along with it being recorded. On the train back the two girls discussed and compared notes that they had individually taken then joined them both together. 

We met up to discuss there findings, when about to listen to the interview recording we realised that it had not worked properly and there was no recording after all. Although a little disappointed we soon understood that it was not important as the notes the girl had taken were all the information we needed. Desmond gave us some great information about there business and how it operates, what they get from it and some good advice.

After a number of days (busy working on another projects deadline) we formed an image of what we wanted the presentation to look like and what it had to include to get the message across of what the business does. We talked a lot that day and then came up with 20 slides each falling under a certain category to do with icecream architecture. We split the slides up so that each person could take control of what image(s) were going on there slides, the next day we came back together and formed our presentation. At this point it looked great, the only thing we had to figure out was what was going to be said. This part took a little time to get each slide exactly right, once all the words were written out, we separated them giving each person 4 or 5 slides each. At this point it was time to start learning what to say and forming a list of words that would help if we got stuck in the presentation. 

The next few days were all about rehearse rehearse rehearse, I have lost count of the number of times we went through the presentation. - Now I am glad we did as it made us all a lot more confident speaking about this topic. 

Now it is time to complete the presentation itself! - Good luck team. 

   

Personal Enterprise Proposal

On Wednesday I was given our new project for the Design and the Market module, for the rest of this semester I have to create a 1,500 - 2,000 word enterprise proposal. The proposal is to outline the research that we wish to produce during the summer, this will then lead into the Design and the Market part 2 module in fourth year. This research will develop into a 7,000 word report.

The report can be : an in depth business plan/ feasibility study, market research for development of product/service or an analysis of a participial business market/module. This to me a bit daunting to me as I have not wrote this much about a business before, it will definitely be challenge for me.

We will be using NESTA - Creative Enterprise Toolkits through out the rest of this semester as they are a good way of taking you through an idea. I am currently trying to think of an area/company that I would like to explore and take on further to be a basis of my research.    

Sourcing Placement

A few weeks ago we received a lecture from Kirsty Miller and Karen Sleith about the types of work placements that are available to students along with advice on how to secure them. For me this lecture was very useful as I am keen to try and fix a couple of placements/work experience/work shadowing for over the summer months to give me a better insight into the industry. 

At mid point of the lecture we were asked to think about our personal branding - Biscuit question. We were asked to right down which biscuit we would brand ourselves to be like and why! I decided to pick a Twix - due to the fact that I feel I can have a strong exterior (the biscuit) but at the same time have a soft center (the caramel). This made me think more about the way I perceive myself and what are the best words to use to brand myself. 

Kirsty went on to talk about employers and gave some advice as to the best way of making a good impression. A few key points about what employers are looking for are someone with a good : attitude, approach, is flexible, self motivated, sociable, reliable, polite, punctual and focused - only to name a few. 

First Impression Counts - Smile, give eye contact, good posture, appearance and speech in a good pitch, tone and pace. 

The best approach to follow when contacting someone - Phone > Email > Keep a record > Follow up. It is also useful to have a name first, makes it more personal.

All this information have been useful to me and I will definitely use it when I start organising work placements. 

Cultural Kiosk - Final Images

On Monday morning we presented to VCU Qatar via Skype, this caused a few technical difficulties when presenting as the slides did not run in time with the speaking etc but these things happen when you rely on technology. It was a great experience for us to get the chance to work with a sort of client base, I am very happy we got this opportunity to do something so different. Below are the images from our presentation.

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Cultural Kiosk - Interiors Project

For the past number of weeks I have been working on a project with Fawn Russell which comes to an end tomorrow with a skype session (this will be a new experience for us as we have never had to present to someone who is in another country).

The project brief was to work closely with Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) Qatar to design an kiosk that represents Islamic culture. We were split into teams in both Dundee and Qatar, then each team were given a group to work along side. Each team had to set up a blog as an easy way to communicate information to each other that was not available on the internet or books etc, along with group skype sessions every Monday.

This is a link to my teams blog: www.djcadteam1.wordpress.com

The blog above documents the process of start to finish of the project and how we can up with the design we did. I will create another blog entry soon with images of the presentation, models and final images that will show the design we came up with.

Icecream Architecture - Design and the market

During the past week we have decided to split up our group of six into two smaller groups, this was decided after we found out that there is not enough work in this project for six people and that we would not benefit from working in a large group. In my group now is Esther Lockhart, Yasemin Memis and Lynsey Barr. On Wednesday lunch time we decided after not hearing anything back from the four companies/people we had already emailed that we should find all find a couple of other companies we are interested in. In the afternoon we sat down with nine new companies that we would like to investigate, we had an email already wrote out and sent it to each of them. With in the space of roughly 30minutes after emailing the last company, one company responded saying they would be delighted to help with our research project. This was a great relief as we were starting to worry that we would not get any word back from them and therefore have no one to interview. 

The company we are using is called Icecream Architecture who as based in Glasgow. I started to do a little background research into them to find out what they are about, I came across a question that they seem to get asked a lot, ‘ Do you guys sell ice cream?’ there response to this was, ‘Nah J, we sell architecture (design, planning permissions, interactive workshops, building advice)’. This was a great starting point for me to find out what they actually do. 

The main thing that stood out to me about this company was that they pro-actively go out and interact with potential clients using there ice cream van. There van is called Betty and is a 1971 transit - something unique to them especially being in the architecture business. 

With researching into them further, it has made me excited about this project and to go and interview them to find out more on them and what they do - it is so interesting how they work architecture into the way they feel most comfortable doing it! Next week I plan on contacting Sarah Frood to arrange a time and date for the interview to take place. 

Creative futures - Design and the market

After today’s lecture from Mike Press it got me thinking about the question he asked ‘With a degree in design what jobs can you do?’ The first six things I thought of were:

Interior designer

Interior architect

Furniture designer

Exhibition designer

Installation designer

Model maker

Mikes answer to the question was ‘You can do mostly anything!’ It got me thinking about my future and how it could shape up to look like, I could end up doing something that I would never have thought about in the past. To make my future turn out the best way possible I need to be independent (which I think I already am quite independent), to do so you have to keep going even if it fails first time - try again and again. Be flexible, passionate, distinctive, have a feel for the market, make work fun, don’t aim too high, keep business lean, have a partner (if having one) as committed as you and be ready to split from this partner. This has definitely gave me food for thought on how I will look at and take control over my own work that I will complete in the future. 

The second part of Mike’s lecture was on ‘Making presentations work’, although I have already had to complete a number of presentations it was great to hear his perspective on how to make them run perfectly. 

The main two things I found that he drilled in/emphasised the most were preparation and rehearsal, when listening to the things he was saying about these topics it was basically common sense. He made the clear point of saying about the presentation slides ’It is not the message nor the messenger’ and that it is only there to support the message you are talking about. 

I would not have thought that a lecture about how to create a good presentation could be as fun and interesting as Mike Press made it. I was sad to hear that this was his last lecture that he would be giving this semester - all of his lectures have been exciting and kept me focused on the topic he was talking about, hopefully the lectures to follow will do the same!

New Challenges Lecture

Yesterday we had a lecture from Mike Press about new challenges in work, he started of by staying that most people in the 20th century do not like their jobs but they have no choice but to go to them - now this is changing! He spoke about how things have changed in industries, such as manufacturing has gone down and entertainment has gone up in the economy. About the different types of generations like the baby boomers 1946 - 1964, generation X 1965 - 1976, generation Y 1977 - 1997 and how they all have progressed in many different ways, the main change in my opinion is that they have become more creative -they have different brains now. 

We were then shown a clip from a TED talk ‘Creative Education’ by Sir Ken Robinson, he said that ‘creativity is just as important as literacy‘, I couldn’t agree with this more!

It was said that we are being taught for jobs that we do not yet know off or exist. He then talked through 6 changes that will happen over the years to come with in the job sector, for example, more women will take lead roles, we will become T shaped practitioner and all work will become globalise. I find it strange to think that we do not know what the jobs will be like in another 5/10years onwards, but at the same time things are more likely to keep improving which could create better opportunities for everyone. We will just have to wait and see!

After Mike’s lecture we had a talk from Emma Walker the chief executive of Craft Scotland. I found Emma’s lecture very interesting, although I would not classify myself to be a trades person such as a jeweller, the things she was talking about you could relate them to any form of work/business. 

Never use the word JUST!

Never shot down your work!

Don’t say sorry for your work!

To develop an audience these words/phrases should not be used in any way towards your work, if you speak badly about your own work, know one else is going to believe in you or your work. 

A few other things she said to do now as students were:

Brand yourself

Business Cards

Artist statement

CV - update all the time

Network events - go to as many as possible

Online: Blog, social networking,

FIND OPPORTUNITIES 

It was interesting to me as I personally have not thought or considered making myself a business card, when Emma suggested everyone have them and to give them out at all opportunities. Thinking about it now it would be a great way to make connects with people that may be able to help once I have graduated to get the job that I want. I have started to think about these things and about how I should start making myself look to the outside/business world. I thought it was a very inspiring lecture.