Asssk: The Presentation (29/01/12)

An interactive PDF of the presentation.

Open publication - Free publishing - More asssk

Overall I'm quite happy with our presentation, we've really tried to challenge ourselves and have an identity of being concise and professional and I think this came across. Often with individual presentations in the past and group presentations in the past, it's easy to giggle and start smiling and overall be a bit informal, we were focused on being professional but also not too serious here and I think we were largely successful in this area.

We had a few hiccups, with slides being changed a little too quick, so we ended up talking about a previous slide with the current slide up and I forgot to mention our self-initiated project at the correct time, so there's still a bit of fine-tuning needed. Overall, we actually quite enjoyed it and the overall reaction from our peers seems positive.

Asssk: Forms of businesses

Limited company

liabilities of the members or subscribers of the company is limited to what they have invested into the company through shares. These can be public or private limited companies, anyone can buy shares in public limited companies. Private limited companies are different. 

Private Limited Shared Company

Company does not have share capital. but guaranteed by it's members who guarantee to pay a fixed amount in the event of it's liquidation. Often the set-up of a charity.

Public Limited company

Has shares with limited liability and it's shares may not be offered to the general public. Shareholders of private companies limited by shares are often bound to offer the shares to their fellow shareholders prior to selling them to a third party.

Partnership

An arrangement between individuals where parties agree to cooperate to advance their mutual interests. 

Advantages of Partnership

• Capital – Due to the nature of the business, the partners will fund the business with start up capital. This means that the more partners there are, the more money they can put into the business, which will allow better flexibility and more potential for growth. It also means more potential profit, which will be equally shared between the partners.
• Flexibility – A partnership is generally easier to form, manage and run. They are less strictly regulated than companies, in terms of the laws governing the formation and because the partners have the only say in the way the business is run (without interference by shareholders) they are far more flexible in terms of management, as long as all the partners can agree.
• Shared Responsibility – Partners can share the responsibility of the running of the business. This will allow them to make the most of their abilities. Rather than splitting the management and taking an equal share of each business task, they might well split the work according to their skills. So if one partner is good with figures, they might deal with the book keeping and accounts, while the other partner might have a flare for sales and therefore be the main sales person for the business.
• Decision Making – Partners share the decision making and can help each other out when they need to. More partners means more brains that can be picked for business ideas and for the solving of problems that the business encounters.

Disadvantages of Partnership

• Disagreements – One of the most obvious disadvantages of partnership is the danger of disagreements between the partners. Obviously people are likely to have different ideas on how the business should be run, who should be doing what and what the best interests of the business are. This can lead to disagreements and disputes which might not only harm the business, but also the relationship of those involved. This is why it is always advisable to draft a deed of partnership during the formation period to ensure that everyone is aware of what procedures will be in place in case of disagreement and what will happen if the partnership is dissolved.
• Agreement – Because the partnership is jointly run, it is necessary that all the partners agree with things that are being done. This means that in some circumstances there are less freedoms with regards to the management of the business. Especially compared to sole traders. However, there is still more flexibility than with limited companies where the directors must bow to the will of the members (shareholders).
• Liability – Ordinary Partnerships are subject to unlimited liability, which means that each of the partners shares the liability and financial risks of the business. Which can be off putting for some people. This can be countered by the formation of a limited liability partnership, which benefits from the advantages of limited liability granted to limited companies, while still taking advantage of the flexibility of the partnership model.
• Taxation – One of the major disadvantages of partnership, taxation laws mean that partners must pay tax in the same way as sole traders, each submitting a Self Assessment tax return each year. They are also required to register as self employed with HM Revenue & Customs. The current laws mean that if the partnership (and the partners) bring in more than a certain level, then they are subject to greater levels of personal taxation than they would be in a limited company. This means that in most cases setting up a limited company would be more beneficial as the taxation laws are more favourable (see our article on the Advantages and Disadvantages of a Limited Company).
• Profit Sharing – Partners share the profits equally. This can lead to inconsistency where one or more partners aren’t putting a fair share of effort into the running or management of the business, but still reaping the rewards.

We've had a group discussion and we've decided partnership is much more suited to us as a fresh new start-up straight out of uni, everything is shared, shared liabilities and shared profits. We all share the risks and rewards, we plan on working as one unit but in four bodies, in a way. In terms of responsiblities we plan on sharing the responsibilities and switching them up on a yearly basis, so we all have a taste of each role, along with artworking which is a given for all of us.

Lifes A Pitch: E-Flyer / Branding / Online Presence

For next monday's PPP session we all need to have settled with our groups, decided on our name and created an e-flyer posted to the noticeboard. Our group was pretty ahead with this as we'd already got in our group, decided a name and agreed on what direction we wanted to take this.

The name of the group is 'ASSSK'

The name derives from our initial Abbas, Sam, Seb, Sam.


Seb got really into the logo and digitised it, we all pitched in with our own concepts for the logo and I feel the logo has had an equal amount of input from all of us. The idea behind it is for the logo to be horizontally symmetrical, an ambigram. We thought this would be pretty cool and really add some flair to our identity and open up a lot of opportunities for branding design, the logo can be flipped anyway and it still works.

Once the logo was done it allowed us to think about the e-flyer. Regarding, the e-flyer we discussed as a group it was important to take the e-flyer seriously and use the days as an opportunity to really begin to brand ourselves and our identity, it's better to do this sooner than later. For the e-flyer we decided to go down a digital route but with a twist, to have almost an animated flyer. This could really help us get out there, through design inspiration websites, blogs, social networking and any other digital medium. We were confident we could make this go viral.


## layouts ##

Sam mocked up a few layouts we were all quite happy with, you can see these below.

We felt the mixture of serif with sans-serif worked really well, as did the salmon light pink colour scheme. It felt our business model of being clean but also contemporary well. We sketched out some ideas for the animated e-flyer and I went away and worked on the e-flyer






## e-flyer ##

The idea behind our e-flyer and branding is to suit our target audience which is businesses. Asssk is a branding and communications agency for businesses. We didn't want to go too far down the 'classy' route either, we want the branding and imagery to reflect us all being fresh graduates with fresh and exciting ideas, but at the same time not too 'out there'. Which is why we felt a clean minimal looking flyer, but with a twist was suitable.

We can send this e-flyer out in emails, and possibly even print the flyer for real.

The idea behind asssk is we make everyone who comes to us look good throughout a variety of media, big company or small company, jussst asssk.







## online presence ##

Giving ourselves some sort of online presence is obviously very important, we decided to create a Behance account for Asssk along with a twitter page, email address and online domain name.

Our online domain is http://www.asssk.us and out email address is info@asssk.us

We can add work to the Behance and twitter page as we go along, we plan to treat the opportunity to brand ourselves as one of our first projects and post this to Behance when we've done this. It will help us get out there and hopefully allow people to see the foundations of an exciting studio that people begin to follow.

http://behance.net/asssk

@justasssk

## e-book ##

Sam created this issuu e-book with our brand, what we are about and our contact info on so that we can try and use it as a way of getting out name out there. 

Open publication - Free publishing

THE BUSINESS OF DESIGN

Some notes from the lecture we recently had on The Business of Design, specifically the idea of different sectors and where we would fit in as graphic designers.

I found it very interesting and eye opening, I never really learnt this side of business before in A-Levels and it was also directly relevant for the Life's A Pitch brief which I really want to have a good stab at for long-term reasons.

//

Life's a Pitch - Enterprise Pitch, Look at costing of designing a studio.
Plan/Proposal/Presentation - 10 minutes

Fully functioning business model. Interview and ask existing studios of issues when starting up and general tips?

Market analysis

Info-packs/Websites/Mail-outs/Branding and Events can take place. Basically just create a design studio and present it. Presentations take place on 29/01/2013

Reading List -
100 Habits of Succesful Graphic Designers
Be A Graphic Designer Without Losing Your Soul
The Fundamentals of Design Management



The Business of Design

TIP: Don't work with someone you're not prepared to take to court. Think seriously about the relationships and skill sets that you think would work well together for a design studio.



ECONOMY:
UK is 7th largest economy in the world

London is the largest financial centre in the world, equal with NY. One of the most globalised in the world.

Leeds isn't far from London. London is almost local.


INDUSTRY SECTOR
- Economy within industry. But sector
- Part of economy which produces goods.
- Sectors which share common characteristics
- Standard economic models identify 4 sectors/

- Primary Sector
Harvesting, agriculture, farming, fishing etc. Primal kind of activities, Society can't really exist without the primary sector. It produces the core material.

- Secondary Sector
Manufacturing and finishing goods. Metal working, engineering, construction. Productivity. Producing stuff that's sellable. Refining raw materials from the primary sector.

- Tertiary Sector
Service industry. Proving a service to make life easier, transport, retail, tourism, healthcare, law. Things that provide consumables and services to us.

- Quaternary Sector
Intellectual activities. Government libraries education. Informing and instructing people.

Also a 5th one, not as commonly focused on..

- Quinternary Sector
Futuregazing and developmental factors. Taking research and education.



The sectors have been posed by analysts who want to analyse what's going and work out the economy. Economists and analysts.

Any economy can be divided into sectors at a regional, national and international level.


WHY DO YOU NEED TO BE AWARE OF ECONOMIC SECTORS?

• Trends
• Relationships between sectors e.g. shortage of milk
• So you know what sectors and groups of consumers to target
• Seeing future trends
• Know of competition
• Seeing gaps in the market
• Allows you to benchmark yourself
• Make a niche for yourself 

THE SERVICE INDUSTRIES (Tertiary Sector)

Generate revenue through often intangible products of a service.

Service industries are invovled in retail, distribution, food services. Also called service sector or tertiary sector. 

Service industries can be divided into 3 more sectors. 

Public Sector

Owned by the government

Publically owned services. Local council etc. Public transit, primary/secondary education, healthcare.

General fabric of our society. Different countries have different public sectors. If you refuse to play tax, nothing still 'stops'.

Equal Opportunities - basically paid for by the public.

Government departments - Home office, Civil Services, Agriculture etc.

Free at the point of delivery.


Private Sector
Primarily money driven. Profit driven sector of our society. Idea of offering services, but wanting money for it.

Run by individuals and companies and not the government. Generating income to pass on to shareholders, company, employees etc.

e.g. China has huge economoc growth. It's state run. So every employee is owned by the state, which allows them to shift resources and professionals. For example for the 2008 Olympics, teachers were made into welders with pretty much no debt after the Olympics. Only problem is now they have problems as there's loads of unemployed welders and not many teachers.


Households are under the private sector, corporate sector too. Driven by payments.

Third Sector
Really important to know for creative industries.

Voluntarty or not-for-profit sectors. For example communities, charities, enterprise etc.

Not state/commercially run. This is kind of a middle space.

Jim Joseph, "Space between business and government where private energy can be deployed for public good."

Non-profit organisations. Not that no-one earns anything. Get money through other services - grants, public funding.

Even in the difficult economy, the world still goes round and people invest.




THE SERVICE INDUSTRIES
- The Creative Industries
- Education, Health & Social Work
- Financial and Business services
- Hotels & Restaurants
- Other social and personal services
- Public admin & defence
- Real Estate and renting
- Transport & communication
- Wholesale trade and retail
- Any of these could have public/private/third sectors within them



SERVICE INDUSTRIES ----> THE CREATIVE INDUSTRIES
Economic activities which are concerned with generation and exploitation of knowledge and information - sometimes referred to as the cultural industries. especially in Europe.

Service in relation to economy. Not hobbyist activities stuff. Serious businesses with an industry mindset. Offering skills as a money making activity.

Shift from advancing from activity to a job at a money making level.

'The Business of Design' The Design Council. 2005. PDF :
"Design is the thread that connects ideas and discovery to people and markets."


sub-domains:

• Advertising
• Architecture
• Graphic design
• Film industry
• Radio
• Television
• Fashion and textiles

DESIGN INDUSTRY

185,500 designers are generating £11.6 billion in annual turnover

62% of active designers are under 40. Becoming an increasingly graduate-fed industry.

31% of design businesses are based in london

69% of design business are not based in London. North West is about 20%, North West about 30%

59% of design companies employ fewer than 5 people. Small businesses are the backbone of the industry.

Over 50% of UK design businesses work in communication, digital and multimedia. 3 main types. Increasing reliance on being skilled in more than one specialism.


3 different types of graphic design businesses:

Design Studio/Consultancies - Deal with design and clients directly with the money-made directly in the studio's interest.

In-house design teams - A lot of big commercial businesses such as HSBC tend to have their own in-house design teams where they're part of a big design company.

Freelance designer - Self employed, move between design studios and in-house. Deal with clients personally too.


50% of designers work in communication and digital/multimedia

Which links to how we're working on design for print and web. Ticks both boxes.


The 2 areas service all sectors. Not just creative sectors.

Integrate to all sectors. e.g. Secondary sector builders have brands and logos they'll need designing. Along with branding and print work for companies such as JCB and Snickers.

Works across public and private sectors.


Significant opportunities out there for someone who enters the industry strategically.


WHO LOOKS AFTER OUR INTERESTS?
CBI
NESTA
D&AD
AOI
TIGA
BIPP
RIBA
RSBA
CSD

All give advice and resources. Services across a range of sectors.


Government ---> Treasury and Civil Service ---> How money flowes through government funding schemes through different sectors. Helps you start up.


Recognising the ability to collaborate. Graphic Design is very much about collaborating, doing it yourself without contact with anyone else can sometimes eem quite hobbyist.


Creative Coalition Campaign
A union of creative practitioners. - Intellectual property etc.

Thinking of yourself as a pro.


Next lecture: Who Are They?