Task: The ongoing monthly costs of upkeep etc...

I am now going to look at broadband & phone line costs as this will be a monthly expense.

A lot of them are not doing phone line & broadband together and this is what will be more effective for the cost. As they are tending to be around the £30-£40 for just internet. Below I have found a good deal in which you get infinity internet which is high speed with calls included for £45.00 per month with a £105 pound installation fee. And free delivery on the router for the internet.

Then we would have...



Fixed
Electric
Water
Gas
Insurance
Rent
Accountant
Legal fees

Variable
Tax
Stock
Recruitment
Wages


The electricity, gas & water rates are all at one fixed price. As this is a fixed price when rent the office in the building we are currently looking at.

Accountant
When looking for accountants I came across this programme which is an online book which you can access with all medias. I think this is very reasonable and has very good reviews from simular business sizes and industry. The only problem with this is that there is no one-on-one contact, but there is a help line you can ask people questions. 

When I was researching it was very hard to find one that will enhance our business, because they would have to know elements of a design studio.

Group Business Plan Meeting Development

We met up a every week to make sure we was on the right track, and doing our tasks. Because of everyones busy schedules not everyone had done work very week but we understood this and just made sure that the tasks set was done by a certain date so they could work it within there diaries.


So then we decided that the next stage would be create a name. We like the idea of our studio been a playful & creative environment. So I thought that lime would portray this very well, so the studio had a lively atmosphere. So our colour scheme is lime, white & natural wood.

So this is what we decided to base our name on. As we was struggling to thing of one to start with.

Our names was:

Lime Tree
Limed
Sublime.
& many more...

We decided to go with sublime due to connotation of the word itself as well are the representation to ourselfs too.

We have decided that everyone should create logo ideas and then we will show each other over facebook as this is the only way we can all communicate due to the Easter holidays and people going back home. 

Here are my logo designs...

I thought these were quite boring but looked professional.

Task: How much it will cost to set up the business?

Things we will need in the studio...

Stationary
Pens 
Pencils
Rubbers
Markers
Files
Paper
Post-it notes
Paper Trimmer
Stapler/Staples
Diaries
Notebooks
Bluetac
Craft Mount
Highlighters
Ink

Equipment
External Hard Drives
Binding Machine
Calculator
Voice Recorder
Projector
Printer
Faxer
Scanner
Binding Comb Machine
Projector Screen
Whiteboard
Whiteboard Eraser
Noteboard


Extras
Coffee & Tea
Clock
Wastebaskets
Cleaning Products
Fridge
Kettle
Microwave
First Aid
Fire Protection
Health & Safety Law Poster


Furniture
Chairs Waiting Area
Computer Chairs
Computer Desks
Bins
Desk Organisation
Filing Cabinates
Clock
Storage Boxes


This is the shopping list, I have chose to use staples as my main shop due to the vast range of products you can get there that are appropriate for a new office. The prices are also quite reasonable also...
These are screenshot of the baskets on the staples website they go from the bottom of the page to the top...

Then we will have to think of the installation price for the broadband & phoneline as this will be added extra on the start-up cost. This will be a variant price which depends on who we go with...

Task: Competition for our branding agency in Leeds?

This is a list of Graphic Design Studios that deal with branding in Leeds.

Not all of them have a innovative website & make you want to know more about the company therefore you wouldn't chose them to create your branding material. Although, some of them is very strong competition..

A lot of these are just design studios in which they do all aspects of design therefore doesn't give them the edge up of the specialty when it comes to branding.


When you type into Google the first design studio to come up is Elmwood. These are going to be our biggest competitors do to their well known reputation.

Another studio in which we would be in competition of is Catalogue, these also focus on branding and therefore would be a strong competitor. This is an important factor due to the main way clients would find our studio is through googling, as businesses will not tend to know where to look so Google will be their main point of contact.

Uber Critique

This crit was the major crit that was the final major decider although, I was pretty down hearted as this was after the D&AD deadline therefore, if any feedback was received I couldn't change them.

We created design boards for the crit but these where never the ones we was going to use for submission as we wasn't fully satisfied with the design as of yet anyway.

We had to go round everyones boards and final works, in which seeing everyones work was very scary, we noticed how much we had left to do and how much we actually wasn't happy with our design. I think this made us panic more and we knew we needed to add something to our design. 

We was pondering for a while and then Sam came up with the idea of making a pattern to place as a background on the boards. I thought this was a great idea and felt a great sense of relief! We still need ot do a great deal of work before the deadline, but we knew how to fix the issue we have been stuck behind for a while.

Below is the feedback that were left on our boards after the crit, we was pretty dissapointed because they wasn't much about the design which is the major point we wanted recifying:

This is all the feedback, most of them was just saying strong concept, and things about the boards. But this wasn't a massive issue as these weren't the boards we was submitting. I think that me and Sam didn't expect great feedback to start with anyway so we wasn't surprised when we read the feedback.



Then we did the second part of the crit, we had to go round the table in partners and crit others work using the sheets provided, answering each section...



I didn't find anything important from this crit, to take on board. I do think that this crit was pretty pointless as we did it on tables rather than around the room or swapping tables therefore most people on my table had seen my designs before...

Final Group Crit

For the final crit I took my actual final, but told them that they could write on it for mistakes in the bodycopy and if they had any other comments.

My feedback I got:

Strengths
-Your information is clear and understandable with all of what you tried to say.
-Images were strong, had a sense of what it would be like to actually go.
-Packaging is great and fits well with theme.
-Good choice of stock, not too think but good quality.

Areas For Improvement
-The images in the background in are weak.
-Keep fonts consistent.
-Change layout of last spread so it is consistent with rest.
-1&6 have the same image on them.

Considerations
-Try a different font for the bodycopy? Maybe an older looking one to fit with the headline font.
-For the numbers on each page you could have the lines moving round like its going round.

Action Plan
-Try without images in the background 
-Change the last page
-Page numbers & contents page for ease.


I found taking my final to this crit very beneficial to me, they gave me feedback on my stock & the overall look which gave me great confidence. I got some good constructive feedback. And feedback I probably wouldn't have noticed myself for instance the images and the lines lining up on each page.

Design Board Critique

Today we had a crit on design boards for our collaborative brief, we looked at Harrisons & Sams, then Jamie & Lizzys. 

Harrisons & Sam's where very good quality design boards, I thought the red bleed was a very good decision and made the boards very strong & distinctive. Although, when we moved on to Jamie & Lizzy's this was hard to crit as they didn't have any boards to crit and the only thing they had was their blogs which didn't have much up either, was very hard to clearly define what they was doing for their project.

This is our feedback we received on ours:

We both felt this information was very informative and fair. I think that they pointed out some main points. The main point that I thought was the most important was that the concept board needed more as it wasn't impactful enough and the concept was therefore lacking. 

Another issue was the layout and to use a grid, this is probably because we thought it would be a good idea to do 3 boards each, this is not the correct way to do this as we worked out as although we set up a vague document on indesign that we shared, there was still a few flaws. Therefore from this we have decided that one person or we will both do the final boards for submission.