End of Year Report

This project has been inspired by Iconic imagery and Retro games. I'd researched into what sells in and around the Northern Quarter and it seemed a popular subject. I wanted to really push myself in terms of the number of designs so I went for 46 designs in total. 24 cards, 6 gift wraps, 6 gift bags, 6 gift tags and 4 t-shirts. I originally intended to produce 2 t-shirts and 2 sweatshirts but after sampling on the sweatshirts I found the designs didn't take to the fabric well aswell as the designs not sitting right on the bulk of the jumper. The designs concept worked much better on a smaller garment and on a stark white cotton as it made the design stand out more.

I enjoyed putting together the greeting cards as I did in the last project and feel I have kept a flow in the range of cards, something backed up in portfolio visits. I also enjoyed the gift wraps, I developed a concept for the gift wraps that they would be inspired by the patterned fashion garments worn by women in the alternative market. In a questionnaire I'd sent out to 30+ people the majority of guys said they prefer a gift bag to a gift wrap, while the girls preferred to gift wrap.
The gift bags hold a much more masculine style than the wraps but I think I've designed the gift bags to suit both genders, while the gift wrap does look more predominately feminine.

I found the gift bags a struggle to design, despite again liking the concept. The concept for the gift bags were that they had enough purpose other than to just carry presents. They could be dismantled and play with, while two of them had geometric shapes within the designs, inspired by kaleidoscopes and board games. A problem I didn't oversee was how the design would look once made into a gift bag and so I'm not entirely happy with the finished product. I also had to work out the maths in producing a gift bag net, not necessarily my strong put and it was very time consuming and frustrating, but I managed to come up with a net I felt happy with that had a a front as wide as I could get it so that I could get as much design on show as possible. I chose black ribbon because I felt that the colour black brought the designs together coherently, while breaking up the masculine qualities making it hopefully more broader the market.

The gift tags were an assortment of all the motifs I'd used in all of my designs. This was because a gift tag is never bought alone, it is to compliment either a gift bag or gift wrap. I layered all the motifs on an A2 sheet and cut into selected areas to create the tags, the colours and pattern hopefully have an obvious link between the bags and wraps.

For market research for this project as I mentioned before I conducted a public survey, I wanted to see if there was any surprising data I hadn't realised before and there actually was. One of the questions asked was 'What is the most amount of money you'd spend on a card' surprisingly to me the average amount of money the public would spend was 4 pound if the style and design of the card was strong enough. I thought this amount would of been much lower and with an average buy of 1 card a month per person this have been pleasing figures.

For this project I'd devised a day-to-day time plan, but I found it really hard to stick to and some of the days would get mixed up, I found myself getting behind in the schedule and it became a worry, but I got back on track until the last week. Each job I'd planned to do in the last week took much longer than anticipated, despite allocating time for any mishaps. Printing contact sheets and visualisations took a whole day longer because of the enormous queues and it stalled 3 times for various reasons such as ink changes. I didn't have time to print out one of my visualisations because of this, but I have put it on my digital portfolio. I also regrettably ran out of time to print out the questionnaire results, though I do have them on my computer so I can always refer to them in new projects.

For this project I feel I have strong concepts in my designs and feel I have done well with creativity and technicalities as I've done a lot of research and been to my portfolio visits, but I'm disappointed in the professionalism in my work, particularly the gift bags and secondary research sheets. Though I do like the professional finish on the cards, wraps and tags. I'm considering having the gift bags re-made by a professional printers as I don't like the alinement on the ones I created.

I have learnt so much from my time on the Surface Design pathway, my creative ability and enjoyment of concepts have soared and I see a direction in career I wish to take. I've enjoyed learning about the industry and making contacts and I feel excited and ready to take on new challenges. I plan to attend a workshop in business advice, I'm hoping this will give me answers to issues I have with trading and copyright and then I plan to fully go into trading.
I'm currently talking to Ceri-Ann Brown, co-owner of Livid Thorn, in collaborating with her in a new business and I plan to work with her as well as pushing Paperandfrock.
I also have the project with The Peoples History Museum to look forward to and I'm excited about the year ahead.

End of project Report

I started this project with a market already in mind, that being the Alternative market as it has influenced me for years already and I feel I'm part of it and understand how it shifts. After researching what established outlets were out there already I discovered Thunder Egg, they sell work of other companies so this created a good network of research for me to look into, sourcing out which cards were part of a publishing company or as independent outlets. This enabled to gather information on their styles and identify and analysis what is was that companies were doing in their card production and website design to get a successful company. One outlet I felt were relatable were Lazy Oaf. Lazy Oaf sell there work on their online shop as well as in other retailers, they have done very well in getting their work in Thunder Egg as this create mass promotion. Its a strategy I had already thought of doing, but it was reasurring to see other business taking the same approach.
I wanted to see just how popular this market was so I conducted a public survey and 70% were interested in Alternative music, while 60% said they felt how they dressed fitted into the alternative bracket.

With my market researched, I wanted to work out the profit and turnover figures. I researched dozens of printers across England. I have worked out that if I were to sell to a retailers, I could only sell a minimum of 25 cards per design at £1.50 per card (it is min of 25 as that is the min run for one design in most print houses) I would like to sell on average 12 card designs to each retailer, so a total of 300 cards. The total bill a retailer would pay me for the collection would be £450, resulting in a profit of around £350 - £380 depending on the Print Houses available for production. If the retailer sold all the cards at a retail price of £2.50 they would make a profit of £300. These figures seem fair.

I broke the card designs down into 3 collections, 16 cards titled Winged Creatures, 16 cards titled Victorian Era and 16 cards titled Symbolic Structure, they all were influenced by the same topic which was Gothic imagery. I wanted to source my inspiration to what I would classify as the most extreme genre that fits in the Alternative bracket and then adapt the imagery into designs that fit a more broader market to make it more commercial. Winged Creatures was a studying of primarily Magpies, though I did look into butterflies and moths and the structure of wings though I only looked at that for visuals. The saying 'one for sorrow, two for joy etc...' really struck with me on this project and I felt the concept was really contemporary and hadn't been used before in cards. After showing my work at Portfolio Visits though I later realised that birds don't sell well in the card industry the concept might be too bespoke, but in terms of visuals for a uni project I really like the composition and colour. In retrospect they would of made better wall art though.

Victorian Era collection was my most enjoyable to put together, I enjoyed thinking up the captions to go with the imagery and as a collection I think they run harmoniously together, the colours are fresh and bold and the illustration is modern and contemporary. It's this collection I've received the most positive feedback from as well.

Symbolic Structure collection has been my biggest surprise, I wasn't sure how I was going to create contemporary and variable cards when my visual imagery had been predominately gravestones, but after reflecting on my visit to Lymm Park I realised that I could use games as a visual. Playing Cards is an old game and I felt it tied in with the theme. I also found relation in gravestones with mathematical symbols such as the symbol '+' which after creating a few digitial experiments with I then likened with the historic art of cross stitch, I felt that by repeating the mathematical symbols it created a digital version of this art form.

I have really enjoyed this project and on reflection I feel I had come along very progressively. I have a clear focus on who my market is and what is achievable in the next year. I plan to progress by putting my designs on other products such as gift wrap, gift bags, tags and wall art.
At the beginning of the year my main worry was not understanding production costs but after researching into it I felt I have lifted that worry. I was also worried about how funding worked and where to go for it, but Debbie Lords presentation to us really clarified where to go. The main things were the possibility of getting a Princes Trust grant or if that wasn't successful attempting to get a loan, I was really relieved to hear that the council provide free lesson into writing a business plan, it is such a relief to hear this exists.

I have already put my future plans into setting up an online business into action by buying the domain name www.paperandfrock.com, it costs just £9.99 for the year, with an additional £11.99 for an email address and account, info@paperandfrock.com. I wanted a website that told the consumer in a quirky way what it is that I sell, cards and clothing. I originally thought of frockpaperscissors.com, but it wasn't available, so after considering more on my options I was elated to see paperandfrock was available to buy. My aim is to emphasise the word rock in frock and create a lifestyle section on the web page, to collaborate with students, to sell my own work and work of others. I already have a job lot of vintage clothing to sell on it and I'm really excited about the following year.

I've received good feedback from people I've shown my work to, with 3 people possibly interested in buying my cards, this is something I plan to chase up on after the exhibition comes down so I can take cards that were in the exhibition into any Portfolio Visits as the finish looks more professional then the print outs on A3 and I don't want to waste money on getting second copies as it was really expensive to print myself. I worked out I spent £63 in total on paper, ink, envelopes and cellophane, roughly £20 was wasted on mistakes, such as the designs being cropped when printed.
I had to print them myself as I got a printing quote of 250 cards of 10 sets = £86.
Which meant they could only do a print run for one design of min 25 cards. This is a realistic figure if I were to sell at a retailers because likelyhood is that they would only want to buy about 10 cards but as I had 48 cards designed, I couldn't afford the price.

To summerise my downfalls were wastage and cost of production and although my time management has improved, I know where it can be improved. To rectify this I plan to do day-by-day timeline plans instead of doing it weekly. If this was rectified at the beginning of this project then I could of probably discovered why I had so many technicalities when printing, but I didn't have enough time to find out why and hadn't forecasted it being a problem. Another downfall is the feedback that magpies don't sell well as cards, but I plan to transfer this design onto another type of product.
But overall I have enjoyed and learnt so much, which I have explained how above and I look forward to my final major project!