Paper and Frock stall

I held a stall on February 1st as a promotion strategy for Paper and Frock. I sold second hand and vintage clothing and accessories. It was to promote the companies website which will be going live in May and to create awareness of the name.

I put up 10 posters around college and handed out 50+ flyers, which detailed what the website was about and what we were going to sell.


I went quite well, we sold about 20% of what was on offer and made £41.
Morris, 6th form centre manager said there were lots of way to promote the stall in college if we ever wanted to do it again. You can put advertising on the computers as you sign in, send texts out to pupils or get tutors to inform classes about the stall, these seem like good strategies for the next one.

Spring Fair International 6-10 Feb 2011

Visiting Spring Fair was a lot more informative to me than the previous year as I think I'm more aware of my market.

When I first arrived I was drawn straight away by Deva Designs Ltd, they had a bright stand and contemporary cards, gift wrap and bags. I chatted to Managing Director Andrew Maddock, who gave me his business card because he was looking to recruit graduated students. They are based in Chester and while this is an exciting opportunity I feel it is too far away at the moment to commute as well as juggle my Major Project with, but I will hold on to his card and contact him at a later date if they are still recruiting.

As Spring Fair is huge I looked around Greetings and Stationary and Gift and Home.
In terms of getting your stall noticed I think less it more, I found some of the stalls cluttered and in terms of a trading I think this may put people off, the larger stalls with good placement were seemed more appealing.

I noticed their were quite a lot of stalls in Greetings and Stationary that had hand painted imagery of dogs, horses and scenery on their cards. I was surprised by this as I didn't think there was a wide market for this type of design.
There was also quite a lot of cards designed for children, I understand why this is popular because it is more popular in society to buy for children. While cards for adults is still huge, the demand for cards for children is higher.

Bright colours were quite popular in the designs and there were a lot of humorous ranges.

Among the company Penny Kennedy were cards by designer Orla Kiely and Iconic cartoon Miffy. Orla Kielys designs are almost becoming as Iconic as Kath Kidsons design, as neither two designs look that different from another, it generates a repetitive design.

Other companies I liked the style of were Box Clever Ltd, Firebrand Art Ltd, Lime Cards Ltd, The London Studio, Loveday, Pink Pineapple, Roger La Borde, Roisin Cafferty, Rosehip, Sarah Warren Art Ltd, Stuck 4 Words, Turnowsky Ltd and YCUK. I will show their work in separate blog posts.
I've made a note of these companies and will contact them at a later date to see if any of them are recruiting.

Major Project

My major project draws on the influences of retro games and iconic figures and cartoons.
People usually associate old games and icon imagery with happy memories as they represent something from their childhood, so I'm hoping my designs with appeal to a commercial market again.
My designs are going to bare a humorous quality to synthesise with the happy conatations represented in the imagery.

Products I will produce are 24 cards, 4 gift bags, 4 gift wraps, 4 gift tags, 2 tshirts and 2 jumpers.

In between the design process I will make attempts to go on portfolio visits with the cards I designed in the last project to see if I have any success in selling them to independent retailers and to get feedback. It will be interesting to compare it to the feedback I received on this cards some months back.

Portfolio Visit with Thunder Egg

I first booked a portfolio Visit weeks ago, I'd gone in to try catch the owner after ringing the outlet but being unable to get through and luckily she was there. I explained who I was and if she was available for a portfolio visit within the next few weeks. She said it was a really business month as it was the run up to Christmas but booked me in for 11am Dec 10th. We swapped contact details, but she later emailed me a few days later to say she couldn't do the Portfolio Visit because it was her sons nativity play and would we like to re-schedule, so I emailed her back and said I was available up until the 21st Dec but she never replied!

Really disappointed I missed the opportunity to have a Portfolio Visit with Thunder Egg, but I'll try again at a later date.

Portfolio Visit with Junk

Junk was the first drop in Portfolio Visit I went on on Friday and they were really positive. The owner wasn't in but I showed the sales assistant Alisha, who was really impressed with the designs and said they were the types of designs they sell in Junk. She called up the manager who was also enthusiastic about the designs and they both agreed to book me in for a formal Portfolio Visit with the owner Charlotte.
It was written in the diary for a Portfolio Visit to be booked before the 10th Jan, but this hasn't happened. I'm a bit disappointed, but the oppotunity to sell was only really an added bonus and it was the feedback which was the most important thing.

Both Alisha and the management went through my portfolio and they had some interesting opinions. They said they could visualise the Winged Creature cards as wall art or printed on t-shirts or jumpers. They found the majority of the Victorian Era cards humorous, particularly the Disney cards, and said the Symbolic Cards were cool and modern.
I had added a few other bits of work, from previous projects which they said would make good notebooks and magnets which is something to consider.
Overall they said they were cool cards and thought they would sell well in the area.

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!

Lymm Park

I went to Lymm park in October to gather primary and secondary research for my Negioated project Dark Nouveau. One of the card collections titled Victorian Era, focuses n Victorian artefacts, history, imagery, games, sayings, songs, fashions, furniture etc, so I went to Lymm Park in Disley. I found the architecture really interesting. The buildings front is symmetrical, with limited detail on the outer sides of the building, then heavily detailed towards the centre of the building. It reminded me of a butterfly pattern, which is something I've been focusing on in my sketchbook.
I found just being in Lymm Park sparked loads of ideas for my card designs. I thought that by adding captions to single Victorian artefacts would create modern designs. The moose head, grandfather clock and chandelier are all cards sparked from this. The children's toy room in the house sparked ways I could be clever with the designs which is where the playing cards came into it and I found it really inspiring just being in there because of the colours and games.




I only wanted to take imagery away with me from this visit as I wanted the rest of the design to be influenced by who my market are, such as colour, wording, font and style.