Placements
He then moved onto talking about placements and what was the best approach for us to find a placement that will be best for us. This involved Peter explaining the different areas that we may want to move into, and what websites to look at in order to find job openings. I am defiantly going to be using the Institute of Practicing Advertisers (IPA) and Free Index in order to see what is available to me.
He then went on to say that it is better to send a written letter to a specific person in a company than just sending an email. This will help you to stick out a little bit more as it is harder to get rid of a letter than an email, and you are more likely to get a reply. We should make the letter person; to that person and company, and make sure not to ask for a placement outright, but ask for a meeting with them in order to chat about the state of the industry.
It is about who you know and not what you know when looking for placements, and making yourself known to influential members in the industry can not hurt at all. If I manage to meet with someone like this, i would intend to try and keep in contact and maybe ask for advice on projects and even competition work.
Different types of placement
The university route - This involves paying the university to see over the placement in case anything goes wrong. You can also opt to have the work you do at the placement marked by the university that will go towards a grade.
Suspended degree - This would involve me leaving university for a year in order to take part in a placement that i find outside of the university guidelines. If the placement of my choice does not meet the guidelines of a university based placement, it is still ok for me to do this for experience alone.
Designing for a client
The things that you should think about when designing for a client are:
- Who does the client actually need you to talk to?
- Understand the client and the end user.
Sometimes the client is not the correct person to be designing the product/ design for, as it could be a company that has customers of their own, therefore the design should be focused on the end user. It is important however to keep both the client happy as well as handing in a design that will be successful with the end user.
When making a design, it is important to think about the product orientation. If you are designing a product, where will this be advertised, and who will it be targeted at?
Being a creative, you do not need to limit yourself to a certain area of the industry. When a client is paying you, they are paying for your knowledge and creative ability. We have assets that the client needs and we can charge for that. Therefore we can move from different areas of the industry as long as we use our assets. It can be hard for clients to wrap their head around this prospect however, especially if they are convergent thinkers.
Markets
There are different aspects to a market that allow a business to sell products, and it is important for a designer to know what is going on in the market / stocks as it will give them a better depth of knowledge of what is needed in the market at that time. e.g. If there is a disease in all of the coffee beans and Starbucks had asked you to re brand a product in their line, then you may want to check that they still wanted the design before doing it. They may cut back prices in order to survive as a company and a new brand design may be something they cut back on.
We went on to talk about the different types of economies. These included:
- Firms: Manufacturing, Sales, Management, Finance, Marketing, etc.
- Markets: Competitors, Suppliers, Customers, Clients.
- National Economy: Geographic entity - a country. Private sector - Firms, Companies, etc. Public sector - Financed by tax revenue such as schools, Government, Police, Armed service hospitals etc.
- Global economy - World trade, Economic blocks.
These can be put into micro economic and macro economic as shown in the diagram above. However there can be a knock on effect if something happens to one. For example, if we go into a recession on a global scale, then people will be less likely to spend money and you as a designer will find it harder to find clients.
There are a lot of factors that can effect these economies, and some are even out of our control.
Basic Marketing
The 4 P's:
- Price
- Product
- Promotion
- Place
These 4 aspects of marketing need to be thought about when designing. They are all as important as each other and different situations have the need to use different ones more.
When thinking about a product in general, it is set into two categories. A core product which is what the product must do. Which is the reason for the product being made in the first place. And the secondary product, which is why the consumer buys it. This is the aesthetic of the product which actually persuades the customer to make a purchase when the product is compared to others similar.
Promotion is done through advertising, pricing, offers and packaging. Sometimes loss leaders are used in order to get customers to buy other products or services.
The place is where the product is being made available. This could be on the high street or on the internet. Different age ranges may prefer to shop in different ways, therefore the place of the product is an important aspect to get correct depending on the demographic.
What is design?
Design is visual communication through problem solving and creativity.
We learned about the two different mental processes which include convergent thinkers, and divergent thinkers.
Convergent thinkers are people who see a problem and work their way through it piece by piece until they come to an solution. These would be people like accountants and engineers.
However creative people such as graphic designers and animators are divergent thinkers. We do not think as literally as other people, and come up with more radical ideas with out of the box thinking that other people may not be able to figure out how the solution came to be.
An interesting think that i learned was that people who are divergent thinkers are usually better with shape and form, therefore this is why a lot of designers suffer with dyslexia.
Attitude - Management Vs Designers
Design process
We recapped on the design process that we should go through when starting a brief. It was good to go through this again as I intend to stick to it more in my upcoming project in order to develop a deeper understanding of the subject matter.
I enjoyed the introduction lecture to intermediate theory as practice, as it took a different direction from what we have learned before, and went down the business route, and the things that we should know about the actual clients and how to understand our clients. Some of the things covered, i have actually learned before at A-level business studies, therefore i hope that i will develop a greater understanding, and will be able to excel.
The most interesting part of the lecture for me had to be the different types of thinkers (convergent/divergent), and how being in a certain category could make a person more adapt to change that others.
