Life's a Pitch - Continued Research

We have still not been able to decide on a name for our business so its really hard to start thinking about logos and branding when this isn't in place. I personally think it would be best to design the logo as a very simple, shape based idea which can be altered and adapted with the changing monthly themes. 

I sent my name ideas to the rest of the group and Alice and Tyler responded with some more ideas. 

IllustrationBoard, Printville, DrawVille, ThePrintBoard, Printsy, Boardsy, TheSketchBoard, Printy Polly, PrintSize, IllustrationMonthly, PiggyPrints, TheArtPrinters, TheArtPrints, The Art Folk, IllustrationFolk, Illustratesy - You Illustustrate, we recreate, (from your Print Partners idea) PrintAlly, Printpal, Printchums, Print-Off (your lift off), but like it's a competition, so a print-off. But you can also print off stuff. The Print Pad, PrintFolk, Printerest, Print village, Print quest, Arteasy.

I think we are on the same page when it comes to names because most of them are based around the same theme. I think our task now is to start narrowing these ideas down rather than thinking of any more.

Forum/Social Media Account/Newsletter.

I think the idea of a social media account is good because it is a good way to gain publicity and to keep people connected and updated. I think there does need to be a way for the business to stay in contact with its users (both creators and buyers). It could be used to update people when a new theme is released or when items become available for sale. I think a social media account and a newsletter in the form of an email is the best way to do this.

Products Available

I read an article recently about ‘the choice paradox’ which I found really interesting. It basically explained that too much choice can overwhelm and confuse people and put them off making any purchases at all. When you select one item out of a large range, there are so many that you haven't selected that you start to doubt that the choice you have made is the correct one. The more choice there is, the easier it is to imagine that you could have made a better decision. Professor Iyengar conducted an experiment with two displays of jam. One display had 24 types of jam and the other only had six. The conclusion of the experiment was that the larger display attracted 60% of shoppers and the smaller stand attracted 40%. However only 3% of people made a purchase from the large display and one third of the visitors to the smaller display purchased a jar of jam. This goes to show that although we are attracted to large ranges of options, we are actually more comfortable with fewer options. 

I think for our business we would be best to stick to three products which can all be printed by the same manufacturer. We have discussed this in previous conversations with my group and I think that having postcards, prints and posters available would mean that customers would not be overwhelmed with choice and would be more likely to make a purchase. 

Handmade Notebooks - Christmas Gifts

I have been making notebooks with my designs on to give as Christmas presents this year. I only planned to make a few but then I got a really positive response from people who I had shown them to so I continued to make more. 

The first books I made were a set of three, I had made the plain notebooks and then just started to doodle on them. This set was themed around feathers. The exercise was quite mindless and I did it to relax but I thought the outcome was quite neat and I felt that I would be happy to buy them or receive them as a gift so other people might do as well. Since making this set, I have moved away from drawing directly onto the cover and I am not digitally printing onto the covers to make multiples. 

I have been using some thick handmade paper that I was given ages ago as my covers which I am printing onto with my home printer. Because of the size of the sheets of paper, I am restricted to only producing little notebooks. I like them and they are perfect as a little gift but I think once I run out of this paper I will buy some larger sheets and make some books in more formal sizes like A6 or A5. 

The designs I have produced or selected from old work have been based on what my individual family members and friends would like. Thats why it might seem like the designs don't really connect. 

• Original hand drawn feather designs - set of three. 
• Beach hut and seaside pattern - set of two. 
• Pug drawing - individual. 
• Ram skulls - set of three. 

I have been using a range of coloured threads to bind my books with the saddle stitching technique. I have been tying the books together with plain string, even if there is just one on its own I will tie it with string to keep it flat and make it look presentable when it is opened. On the back I have the words ' Handmade by Naomi Smith' and I chose only to include these words because I am giving them to people who already know me. 

My intentions with this are to make more and potentially set up an Etsy shop to start selling them. For this I would need to change what I have on the back of the book and include some sort of contact detail, maybe my Instagram name, email address or link to Etsy shop, just so there is a clear point of contact. I enjoy making these books and find the process of making them relaxing and satisfying. It would be really handy to make a bit of money through this as well. I would need to look into pricing, I don't want to rip people off but I feel like so far when I have sold things I have often undercharged which is not how I want my work to be sold. 

Life's a Pitch - Pricing and Payment

How much will people be willing to pay?

Redbubble 300mm x 400mm Art Print - Base Rate £9.35.

I looked at Etsy to look at the pricing of art prints but there is such a range of prices that it is hard to define what is the most popular range. Most prices on the first page of 'highest relevance' prints are priced between £5 and £30. Personally, I think £20 should be our upper limit so people think they are paying a reasonable price but not too little that it is exploiting the artist. Obviously this will take more research and discussion with the rest of the team before decisions are made.

Art.co.uk are also selling prints mainly between £5 and £35 on their bestselling page. Some of these are famous paintings though which have been reproduced a lot already so this is a bit different to what our business will be selling which are new designs. 

How do people prefer to pay?

The options for paying online are by card or Paypal. I think people have more trust in Paypal as a payment method and the majority of people who shop online have an account. Even if they don't it is easy to set up. I am not sure how it works exactly but it might also be a way of paying the artists when we make a profit on their work. 

The options for Paypal are to have a free business account which means you can accept payments from people via Paypal. The upgrade would probably be more appropriate for this business because we would want a checkout directly on the website to make it appear safer and professional. 

Life's a Pitch - Packaging Research

This parcel sticker is by Qwertee. The actual parcel is packaged very plainly but the sticker makes it recognisable as something a bit more interesting. I don't know if this image is directly linked to the company or whether it is just there for design but either way, it makes the parcel different to other plain parcels that arrive in the mail. This would be cheap to produce because it is just a printed 2D label. I think that we could do more than this for our packaging design especially as it would be an envelope which is easier to print onto than the plastic on this parcel. 

This is the poster tube design by 'Imposters' who sell prints, posters and photos which is very similar to the products our business will be selling. I like the idea of having a plain tube with what looks like a sticker on the outside. The sticker looks like it has been used to seal the two ends of the tube together and then this would be destroyed when the package is opened. I think this is a really good idea and it highlights how it is straight from producer to consumer because there has been no tampering in-between. When it comes to design, it might be good for us to change the sticker design each month depending on the theme. Having the logo on the outside of the packaging is also good for promotion because people will see it in the mailing process and if the buyer decides to keep the tube then it will be seen here too. These stickers could be printed in the same place where the rest of our products are being printed. 

These are the envelopes and puffy bags used by 'Sass & Peril' who sell their work through The Paper Cub Co. I think these are the most personal and crafted packaging designs out of all the ones I have looked at today. The designs are screen printed onto existing envelopes which I think makes the product feel handmade and made with care. Obviously screen printing these designs would be time consuming so as the business grows, it might not be feasible to do this, however, when starting up this is a possibility. Another option would be making an ink stamp with the company logo on which can be printed onto envelopes. The only issue is whether this would print well on a poster tube. 

Life's A Pitch - Name Ideas and Company Research

Name ideas

I watched a couple of videos online giving advice about naming a business. I didn't properly realise how important the name is before watching these but it is actually the first thing the audience will see/hear about the business so it needs to be good. Things to consider included what we are trying to communicate, the key elements of the business, the business aims, and appealing to customer base. They also suggested that depending on the business concept, you need to think whether it would be more appropriate to create a new and exciting name or something more familiar and trustworthy. It also brought up issues of checking for names already in use so there are no legal breaches made or confusion caused. 

Platform, Art Platform, Lift Off, Print Platform, Launch pad, Springboard, Print Base, Arty People, Print Lab, Print Partners, Print Pig, Print Pug, Printable, Print-a-bull, Propel-a-Print, Propeller Print, Principle...

Some of these are bad names but I think a few have potential. I will put these forward to the rest of my group. 

Structures of Similar Companies - ETSY

Etsy's mission is 'to enable people to make living making things, and to reconnect makers with buyers' which makes it relevant to our own business. 

This information is from a corporate strategy presentation from the company in 2012.

Etsy's CEO, Robert Kalin, said that it was more important to them at this time 'to build engagements than build profits' which I can understand as a strategy for a long term, sustainable business. It needs to gain trust and a base of customers who will stay loyal as the company progresses to making more and more money. This is shown in their figures between 2008 and 2010. 

Customer experience goals: the most important thing to them was differentiating themselves from other competitors in the industry.

Etsy is similar to our business in the way that it needs to cater for buyers and sellers and both need to stay interested in using the business for it to survive. 

Their executive structure consisted of five people on the board of directors, then on the rank below was the C-Suite of three people, and then below that was a management team of ten people. 

Work environment: the Etsy office space was described as having an 'ambience', it had the essentials of desks and computers but didn't spend loads of money on furnishings. They have plants inside, recycled curtains and other furnishings and energy saving lights. 

Customer Service - human to human interaction has helped them to keep customers happy. Not everything can be solved by a computer. They also have pop up shops and markets where sales are made on a face to face basis which brings in a different group of customers. 

Structures of Similar Companies - REDBUBBLE

I have an account with RedBubble so I feel some of this information may be biased based on my experience. The structure is simple, anyone can create an account and upload images onto Redbubble so that they are available to buy in the form of T-shirts, mugs, prints, bags, cushions, etc. This might make it seem like it is a company inclusive of everyone, which it is, but it means there are endless designs to trawl through that give the impression that the company cares very little for the actual artwork. 

As a seller on Redbubble, the prices of each item is fixed and you have to add your own margin on top of that. This means you are torn between making a good profit but an offputting price, or a reasonable price with very little profit. For example, I made a sale the other day and these were the figures. Also, due to other terms and conditions, no money will come into my bank before I have earned a total of £13. 

I understand that Redouble is a big company and it has a lot of people contributing artwork, I just feel like it is not a good experience for the artist or the buyer, it isn't made particularly personal in any way and the products still seem to be churned out of a factory instead of having time and care taken over them. 

Song of the Sea

I watched the animated film 'Song of the Sea' (2014) and was taken aback by the beauty of the artwork and animation in it. The textures made the images really atmospheric and the colours were subtle and comforting for most of it. It felt like whenever I paused the film, the image on the screen could be used as a piece of artwork because of the level of craft and consideration gone into every detail. 

Watching this film made me think about my animated sting for OUIL504 which is only going to be 15 seconds long. Judging by the content of a 15 second snippet of this film, I think it would be better for me to focus more on making good pictures and animating them rather than trying to cram too many animated elements in and making the whole thing look rushed.  

Ram Skulls

I produced this drawing of three ram skulls as a Christmas present. 

I like drawing natural forms which is why I often choose animals or plant life as subjects for my personal work. I think skulls are really interesting to draw because the shapes are unlike anything else and I like the fact that they are so close to being symmetrical but not quite. I think it highlights the imperfections and unique qualities of nature. I usually choose line work as my method of drawing but I decided to try something different with this and opted for pointillism. I used a 0.1mm fineliner for this and I am really happy with the level of detail I managed to achieve with this technique. I found the process very repetitive but quite therapeutic until I realised how long I was spending on it and that I needed to speed up. I like doing personal work to relax because I still feel like I am achieving something and making good use of my time - much more productive than a Netflix binge. 

Final framed image

I am really proud of these drawings and the original piece is being given away as a gift. However, I want to maximise the use of it so I took some high quality scans and am hopefully going to produce some prints of the individual skulls. I want to make some postcard sized prints first and maybe combine them into sets of three, one of each skull. Judging on the demand and success of these I might make some larger scale prints, depending on how well the images enlarge because the originals are actually quite small. 

I find myself having a lot of ideas of ways I could make prints and start to sell my work but I just need to find the time to get going with this. I think the next step for me is making an Etsy account but I don't want to rush this and people to be put off by a badly thought out page. I would prefer to spend time getting my products ready for sale and make sure everything is as I would like it to be seen. 

Life's a Pitch Meeting

We arranged to meet as a group today as the last meet up before christmas. It was myself and two other team members who came to this so we read through each other's manifestos and combined them into a single paragraph. We all had quite similar things written down, some of the same phrases were used across all three which was good because it showed that we all understood the idea of our business. We were doing this for over an hour, constantly going back and changing words that didn't sounds right or didn't have the right tone of voice. We kept tweaking sentences too to make sure we were getting the correct message across. This is what we had by the end...

We are an online creative community that hosts monthly, themed competitions for UK based aspiring artists. Each month, twelve winning designs are made available to purchase as print based products through [our website name]. The designers also have the option be promoted during that month of sale thorough links to a personal website or social media account. Our goal is to finance a sustainable and profitable business whilst supporting artists and respecting buyers through the means of reasonable commission and pricing. Above all, it is important to us to create an ethical and honest relationship between everyone involved. 

Obviously this isn't final because our business may still evolve and we haven't had feedback or input from Georgie or Rebecca on this yet but we are communicating with them through Facebook messenger and iMessage to ensure the whole group stays involved. This is also how we are all going to stay in touch over the christmas break. 

When discussing name ideas, I had very little to show but we discussed it and Tyler made a good point about having it themed around flowing to show that the competition will forever be changing. It made me thing about rotation and the seasons so maybe this could be a theme to work with which is related to the business but not in an obvious way. We have set ourselves a deadline to have the name decided by Friday 11th December so we can start the Christmas break with this issue settled. 

I brought up an idea I thought of which was to have a calendar at the end of the year which would have the top selling design from each month in it. I thought it made sense to do something like this seeing as the business is based around a monthly changeover. The other members of the group thought this idea might work but we couldn't really make any decisions about it without the rest of our group there. It was also suggested that it could be sold for charity. This would be a good way of continuing the ethical way we run the business but we would have to look into this because we wouldn't want to be losing money. 

As for work to do over christmas, we wrote a to do list of things that need researching and to be thought about. I suggested splitting this list so everyone had a different task to do to make this process more efficient but instead we are all going to do a bit of everything so everyone has knowledge on each aspect of the business and we can have a proper discussion about these things when we meet after Christmas. 

• Ideas for logos and website layout/design. 
• Make any changes to the Manifesto after receiving input from everyone. 
• Research the structures of similar companies (etsy, redbubble…)
• Research into printers and costs of materials.  
• Research into costing of postage and packaging. 
• Sizing and dimensions of prints - research and decide. 
• Research into packaging design (envelopes, tubes...)
• Research web advertising and how we could make money from this. 
• Research where you stand with selling things for charity. 
• Setting up an online payment method. 
• Research into how much people would be willing to pay. 
• Research into how people like to pay (by card, paypal...) 
• Setting up a newsletter/email/account. Some way of sending reminders for deadlines and notifications for when things come on sale or the theme has changed over. 
• Possibility of a forum or social media account. 
• Possibility of an app - or at least a mobile friendly website. 
• Splitting of wages. 
• Commission prices. 

Life's a Pitch Re-written Manifesto

From the session on Monday we all said we would go away and rewrite the manifesto so when we meet again we can combine this into a master piece of writing. This is what I came up with. 

We are an online creative community who host monthly, themed competitions where artists, illustrators and designers can have their work promoted and made available to purchase. The submitted artwork is judged anonymously so everyone sits on an even platform irrespective of previous experience. We aim to finance a sustainable and profitable business while giving our artists a fair percentage and providing quality products for our buyers. It is important to us to promote the artwork in an ethical way and build an honest, friendly relationship with our artists. 

I think this includes everything I see to be important about our business but it will be good to see what the others have written because I know that I will have missed some things out. I think the tone of voice of this sounds a bit formal and we always seem to slip into a formal style of writing when working as a group. It is hard to draw the line of how informal / formal this should be because we want to be a respected company who conducts themselves professionally but we don't want to seem too formal that it is off-putting for people with not much experience or just draw for fun. 

As for name ideas, I'm finding it really hard to think of anything good that is relevant to the theme of drawing or illustration because as soon as you try to incorporate these words, the  name suddenly doesn't sound as good. I personally think the random, unconnected names are better but this is something that could pop into our heads at any time. I need to discuss with the rest of the group the route we are going to take with thinking of our business name.