Whitespace

On Friday afternoon we had a talk from a guy called Iain Valentine who is the creative director of Whitespace a digital design company based in Edinburgh. He spoke about how he graduated from DJCAD as a graphic designer, got a placement (moved to London), how it wasn't for him so moved back to Edinburgh and many doors opened up to him. 

Iain spoke about the company and how it has grown over the years - by the end of the month they will have 41 people working there, interesting to me that only 8 of them are creators. Even though the company has now got to the size that it is they still have to turn down work/jobs so that they do not provide poor quality products. When he spoke about the way to work and how to think about it a couple of phrases stuck out to me:

- Good things come to those who work their asses off

- Make work play and play work 

- Love what you do or move on

- Good success comes best if there are mistakes learnt along the way

It was an interesting lecture in terms of thinking about it from the business point of view which is great for what we are currently doing in this module but I felt like I couldn't get into it properly due to it being a graphic design background. I think if there was a lecture from someone that relates back to my discipline (architecture, interior design, furniture design, exhibition design to name a few areas) I would be able to understand the business process better and be able to ask questions that would help me gain a better insight into how that specific industry works. 

NESTA Workshop 3

Last Friday we had our third workshop with Mike Press using the NESTA toolkit 4 - on Marketing.

- Marketing is the management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customers requirements profitably.  

We looked at marketing mix 7 p's:

Product - Is there a market/demand/desire for your product/service? Does it have a USP (Unique Selling Proposition)?

Place - Where is it sold? How is it distributed - impact on cost?

Price - What price can you change in that market? Profit= price-costs (if too expensive - won't sell, but if too cheap - no profit + infer poor quality)

Promotion - Appropriate method to make people aware of what your offering - know who your customers are and how you can reach them

Types of Marketing + Promotion Tools

- PR (Public Relation) - creates and maintains image, press release

- Advertising - awareness, persuade the customer 

- Internet + Online Marketing - website, blog, social media

- Direct Marketing - Mail listings, telemarketing etc

- Sales Promotion - price reduction (can damage image), money off vouchers, multi-buy

- Personal Selling - face to face marketing

People - Your staff/representatives - can be your biggest asset

Process - the procedures you take to deliver the product/service/brand

Physical Environment - the impression of your business (workplace, retail presence, online image)

Task 04a) As individuals we worked out the 7p's for our own business idea. After working alone for so long we got into groups of threes to get feedback from others - see if they could some up with something I could not see myself. You can see from the images below the outcomes that I suggested/created. 

For us being students and some of which may want to go straight from graduation into setting up there own business or even to help gain employment - the best way to us these tools is to focus on your PR and online profile. A person should be able to answer these lists of questions from looking about you online: who am I? How can I help you? How did I get here? Why can you trust me? What do we have in common?

The Marketing Plan

1. Mission Statement

2. SWOT Analysis

3. Marketing Objective - definite, quantifiable, achievable, realistic, time sensitive 

4. Marketing Strategy 

5. Implementing the plan - intentions, how achieved objectives, by what means

6. Measuring + Controlling the plan - monitor + review progress

Task 04b) With this worksheet we had to apply it to our business idea, we narrowed it down to doing it for our social media strategies. This beneficial to find out what ways would be best to get your name and brand out there into the public eye via the internet. We worked the same way again, as individuals first and then into the same groups of threes. You can see my outcome in the images below. 

Our last workshop next week is on money - this could be interesting/difficult for me as when it comes to the tasks/worksheets that ask you to answer about money I always find it hard to think of it terms of a real life business as it is only a proposed idea. 

NESTA Workshop 2

This morning we had our second workshop with Mike Press, we worked through new exercises that helped us try and understand the market and customers we would be working with. The first task was 3a 'Your Customers' - we started by talking through the types of customers we could have and how to we define them. Through values, gender, sexuality, age, location and culture were some of the ones we came up with. We had to them come up with the customer that would buy our product or use that service - my customer would be children (schools + community groups) in Scotland mainly Tayside area. I then came up with some ideas that slot into the different sections, what are their needs? what are you offering them? how many are there? how many of those will you reach? how frequently? how much will they pay? potential total income. Working out how much they would pay and total income was hard for me as it is not a profitable idea/business that I have come up with.

Creating a sustainable business you have to: 

Have a clear idea of what your business will do (about your values) - you

Know there is an audience/market for what you are offering - people who will use it

Develop a business process that allows you to offer it to a customer and sell if for more than it costs to produce. - system/business 

Activity 3b 'Blueprint Modelling' - plans out the three operational stages that all businesses need/go through. 

Engagement stage - the time that it takes to plan who your prospective customer are and how to persuade them to buy from you.  

Development stage - the time that it takes to design and create your offer.

Delivery stage - the time it takes to get your product or service to your customer. 

From the images below you can see the things that i have put into each section, this helped get a clearer understanding of the process that I would have to go through to make it a real life centre. 

After this I quickly drew up a flow diagram of the structure that the things from the blueprint modelling would take along side each other. This is an image of it below. 

At the end of the workshop we quickly spoke and worked through activity 3c 'Relationship Modelling'. There are four categories in this activity, they are: 

Generator - yourself                                   - 

Realiser - maybe yourself, other people    - the first three are critical 

Distributor - retailer                                   -  

Customer 

Defining the relationships you need to ask some important questions.

Who do you need to build with for them to cover all areas?

Who is giving or receiving the money in each of these relationships?

Implications of theses - how much to charge and when?

Something you can manage? - if not what other resources are needed? 

These workshop really start to get you thinking about each aspect of your business in different ways and also in a lot of depth. 

Fake Evidence

After the workshop last Friday I started thinking about fake evidence further for the project I am currently doing. I took an image from the Woodland Trust's website and created a mock up article for them that would appear after the opening of the centre.  

NESTA Workshop 1

On Friday past (2nd March) we had our first NESTA workshop with Mike Press, we completed and explored some of the activities from the toolkit. Evidence modelling was the first exercise -  it is a way of articulating your business vision, giving both good and bad view points. It has four different sections with your business idea in the centre of the four points. In the images below you cane see my business idea and what I put into each of the four sections.  

Enhance - what does it bring a new value to

Replace - what does it make less desirable

Revive - what does it bring back that was redundant 

Backlash - what are the effects when it is pushed to the extremes

From this we went on to writing up fake evidence - this is a good way to get a business idea down visually, what the design idea might look like. This makes it easier for you to talk about your idea and show others what it will look like. It can be anything from an advertisement, film, website or a feature article. 

The fake evidence for my project idea was an article on the organisations website, it was to show case the opening of the centre. The image below shows my sketch of this idea.

The last activity of the day was to complete a SWOT analysis, we had to identify the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of our business ideas. Some of these areas were easier to cover than others as it is easier to see the positives in your business that the negatives, I felt when talking to others it helped you understand/realise some of the potential problems.

From completing these tasks I feel that when I come up with my business report idea I will use them again to help we find out as much strengths and weaknesses etc that it will have. 

Personal Brief

From my last post I had narrowed down my ideas to two concepts, it was then brought down and I picked one of those ideas. After speaking to my tutor my mind has opened up and I am looking at two ways of taking my concept further. It is mainly about the two organisations that I would like to work with that is making my idea follow two different directions. These two organisations are: Marine Conservation Society (Scotland) and The Woodland Trust (Scotland). I have started mind mapping what each organisation are about and came up with a sort of brief for each of them.  

Marine Conservation Society  

To create a center that will help educate people on the natural environment and the things we can do to help - in this space there would be an informative section and space for a workshop as a means to help educate people through doing things. This center would be located within a forest near to where I live in Dundee.

Woodland Trust 

To create a center that will help educate people on the natural sea life environment and the things we can do to help it make these natural places the best they can be- in this space there would be an informative section and space for a workshop as a means to help educate people through doing things. This center would be located near a beach front where I live in Dundee.

From doing this I went on and contacted each of the organisations to find out more if this would be beneficial to them and there work. I then went to the library in search for some book that could give me some inspiration  on wood structures/green architecture and structures built with water. 

 

I have taken a lot of inspiration from these books, and also got an email back from a woman that works for Marine Conservation Society (Scotland), she was very positive about my idea and was very willing to help me with any questions I had/have in future. I am still waiting on a response from the Woodland Trust (Scotland) - I would like to wait to hear from them before I decide which route I am going to take. So at the minute I am continuing to research into both areas further.   

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.