OUGD502 - Atelier Martino&Jaña

I came across a branding project for the city of Porto which instantly caught my attention, not only due to the design itself but also as Porto is a city that I intend to visit over summer. The use of geometric shape and colour to differentiate between various areas of the city identity and to create a multi-faceted identities has been done really well, they have managed to avoid cliches whilst creating a project that is still clear and that has impact.

As the studio is based in Porto I will look at getting in touch with them and hopefully visiting their studio.

OUGD502- Goat Collective Presentation

OUGD502 - Goat Collective Logo

We all agreed that we wanted a traditional style logo with a modern feel. We wanted it to make us look friendly and approachable and this is conveyed in the illustration style and the typeface. Below I have documented a few steps of the development.

OUGD502 - Taking Care of Business - Goat Collective

A large majority of my friends are creatives and a lot of them are very good at what they do. We came up with an idea to combine all our skills under one collective. We wanted to use our skills to promote social causes that we feel strongly about, as well as working commercially. 

The 'Taking care of business' project was an excellent opportunity to develop this idea further.

 Along with two other members of the collective I attended a week long enterprise course where I learnt invaluable information about the business side of the creative industry. We had visiting speakers from various different places come and spend time with us.
Keith Evans from CIDA talked to us about how viable our idea was and what it means to be a creative entrepreneur. We also looked into various business models such as: sole traders, partnerships, LTD companies, Not for Profit's and various others. With his help we determined that an LLP would be the most suitable for our business. With an LLP there is no rigid hierarchy and it eliminates any risk of bankruptcy. 
We also looked at cashflow with Keith Evans and did some exercises to help us understand this in more depth. 
Nick Scott spoke to us about the importance of writing a solid business plan and how to go about doing this.
Russell Smith, who owns his own accounting firm, came and talked to us about some basic accounting that we would need to know when setting up a business. 
Anna Franks, a marketing a PR consultant spoke to us about effective marketing, some of the notes from this session are shown below.
A lawyer named Keith Arrowsmith spoke to us about intellectual property and copyright laws. This session was probably the one which I found most valuable; protecting Goat Collective's work is hugely important.
We had a session with Rick Ferguson about pitching our ideas, another vital part of any creative business. We then pitched our ideas to the Senior Management Team of Leeds College of Art. This was great practise and we got some really good feedback from it.
Shown below are some of the notes we made during the sessions alongside our partnership agreement.

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Love Neon

A friend of mine put me in touch with a client who owns a number of businesses. I have been doing lots of work for him, most of which is not yet completed. One of his companies is a neon lighting provider. He has been commissioning me to come up with designs and mock ups for his clients and been paying me for this service. It's exciting to actually be working in industry.

Behance Portfolio

I have been working on some Freelance work and to ensure that this is displayed properly I set up a Behance page. Some of the projects I have been working on are displayed and some will be going up soon.

www.behance.net/dgeedesign

OUGD502 - Contacting The Royal Studio

I decided to contact The Royal Studio and see whether they'd allow me to come and spend some time with them over summer. I emailed the studio but unfortunately haven't yet received a reply.  If I don't get a reply soon I will try again but maybe using a post rather than email.