MOTIVATION- Doing things for the right reasons.
WHAT IS BUSINESS PLANNING ?
Today Richard went through exactly what was to be expected from this module. First of all we looked at a problem/quote. Richard had changed this quote to tailor it to suit us. The quote was :-
" Kids that start school this September will retire in the year 2070! How can education prepare them for a world we know nothing about ".It was taken from a talk given by Sir Ken Robinson in 2006 in a Ted Talks seminar.
We looked at a couple of these seminars by people like, Daniel Pink, Harlan Ellison, Richard St John and of course the a fore mentioned Sir Ken Robinson. These monologs proved to be very informative, funny and also very relevant to our "Business Planning" module.
The Harlen Ellison clip was very funny and i have linked it below, though it does contain some choice language, so be warned.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mj5IV23g-fE
The clip was taken from Youtube and was shown to just go over the point that we shouldn't be expected to do anything for free.
We then looked at three words that were given in one of the seminars.
AUTONOMY
MASTERY
PURPOSE
Richard then went over these words and what they meant in relevance to our module, he then translated then to:-
INDEPENDENCE- Problem solving.
PRACTISE SKILLS- Learning through doing.
After reading through the module together, he then pointed out and highlighted what was important to get from this module.
- Doing a job.
- Starting a business.
- Working in a team.
He wants our future presentations to be fun but informative and a team effort.
- Network and build contacts.
This was important.
- Problem solving.
This was very important.
- Creative idea that people want.
- Learning about business basics.
Then we went on to pick our groups out of a hat so that it would be fair. He reiterated how important this module would be as a team effort.
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| The Groups. |
THE FIRST MEETING BETWEEN THE GROUP
Today was the first meeting for our business brief as a group of four. In my group is Simon, Julia, Liv and myself. We discussed what kind of business we would like to develop and what would the business be called. We also decided on the roles that each one of us will play over the brief and what each of these roles will bring to the business.
It was decided that Julia would be our overall manager and then we went through the other roles and possibilities.The outcome of this is shown below:-
Simon - Advertising.
Julia - Equipment And Resources.
Liv - Business Start Up.
Myself - Accounting.
The concept of the business was an educational business that would cater for up to a maximum of 10 people in a group. The business would be based on an Art therapy kind of idea. We could be aiming this business at a wide range of clients and these could include:- Prisoner's, Old People In Care, Colleges, Schools and people with any form of Disability.
The company name will be:-
Ambient light Photography (Therapy).
Or something along those lines.
Then we just looked at various ideas, possibilities and questions we might need to ask and answer for ourselves. This was all just a general overview and things might change further down the line but it is good to try and find out as much information as possible.
1. How many people should we cater for in a group ?
We decided that this should definably be no more than ten people.
2. What equipment would we need and what costs would this amount to?
We would need at least 10 cheap cameras and ten cheap DSLRs. We would need to look online for prices in next weeks session. A quick look threw up a couple of options most cheap point and clicks can now be bought for around £30 and we could pick up cheap DSLRs for around £150. We would need to use our own laptops to cut down on costs and there is a possibility that we could claim for these. There is plenty of free software out there instead of expensive professional programs. We could look into this and find also some child friendly programs.
3. What transport would we need?
We looked at the possibilities of hiring a car or mini bus or maybe look at buying one.
4. What insurance would we need?
Do we need public liability, transport and equipment insurance? We need to look into exactly what we would need.
5. Would we all need a CRB check?
Again this needs looking into and after a quick look online we found for the full CRB check it costs £44 each.
6. Is there any professional bodies that are out there to help in the setting up of new businesses.
The Natwest and other services are out there and have advisers that give help in the setting up of a new business.
7. How could we advertise our business?
There are just too many places we could advertise either free or paid for. Below is just a quick list of what came to mind in our discussion.
Times Educational Supplement.
The Internet.
National and local newspapers.
A Facebook page.
Beebo.
Twitter.
Live Journal.
My Space.
Flickr.
Cinema Booklets.
These were just a few ideas based on our first meeting and we got to discuss lots of options. Over the next couple of weeks we will be outlining the business and all aspects of it, this is just the start.
CASH FLOW SEMINAR
In Richards session today we looked at cash flow charts and how to use them. He reiterated how important these can be and how to find them on the Internet, that is were to look for them and why we should be using them. We all got involved with the filling out of one and it was a hands on session involving all of the class. Below are copy's of the blank template and of the class filled in template.
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| Blank Cash Flow Template. |
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| Example Of Filled In Chart. |
As you can see by the above chart, if filled in properly it is really easy to keep organised and aware of all of your finances. Lots of businesses fail because of the simple fact that they don't do their accounting properly.
We then went on to talk about insurance and speciality insurance companies that deal with photographers and photography businesses. What would our business need? This could be different for different types of business, as some would need public liability and others wouldn't. There are plenty of companies online to choose from but we looked at one specific company that deal in this kind of insurance. Below is the website of the company we looked at, as has a wide range of policies to choose from in our area of business.
http://www.infocusinsurance.co.uk/
When setting up a photography business it is very good practise to become a member of or an affiliate of certain photographic societies as these can help us in various ways. We looked at a few of the main ones and a couple of smaller ones which could be useful for our businesses. These were in no order :-
1. The Royal Photographic Society. (RPS)
This society is good for amateur photographers and is very educationalist, It also has a high brow reputation.
http://www.rps.org/
2. British Institute Of Professional Photography. (BIPP)
This institute is like a union for photographers, they help support you and is very traditional in its approach.
http://www.bipp.com/
3. The Association Of Photographers. (AOP)
This institute is very good at marketing photographers work and is an excellent resource for things like model release forms and legal material.
http://home.the-aop.org/
4. Red Eye
Based in Manchester and very arty.
http://redeye.org.uk/
5. World Photography Organisation.
Very good for helping you sell your work and getting your work seen.
http://www.worldphoto.org/profile/57445/
It was recommended by Richard, for us as students, to be joining these kind of institutes.
To end the session Richard then went on to give us our start up budget figure for our businesses and this was £5,000.
BUSINESS NAMES AND LOGO'S
Today we had a session based on designing our logos for our businesses. We looked at good logos and bad logos and what it is that make a really good logo.
Bad logo examples.
Good logo examples.
After looking over many successful logos we can see that the ones that work the best are the ones that remain simple in design.
Below are 10 points that all designers should always bear in mind when designing anything:-
1. Good design is innovative
2. Good design makes a product useful
3. Good design is aesthetic
4. Good design makes a product easy to understand
5. Good design is unobtrusive
6. Good design is honest
7. Good design is long-lasting
8. Good design is thorough
9. Good design is environmentally friendly
10. Good design is as little design as possible
The above points were taken from the following website :-
http://www.netmagazine.com/features/dieter-rams-10-principles-good-web-design
TASK 1 BUSINESS START UP
1. A COMPANY OR SOLE TRADER NAME
This was pretty easy to be honest coming up with the name for our business. As soon as we decided what were were going to be doing the name just fell into place. We Google searched the name and only found one other business with the same name, plus our business was totally different in nature to the one that we found.
below is a link to their website so you can see what they do.
http://www.ambientlight.co.uk/main/
MY ATTEMPTS AT A NEW LOGO FOR OUR BUSINESS
I have been messing around looking at different types of logo for our business and I have narrowed it down to three designs. The last one in the image is the one that we are going for unless Simon comes up with the goods and shows us what he's been up to. Its now getting late on into the day and we have not seen anything that he has done yet, so i have come up with a back up plan just in case. If we get an e-mail this week with a suitable logo then we will go with he's design instead, these are just a back up in case nothing comes from it.
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| Logo Designs |
As you can see i wanted to keep it simple so decided to just use text only, with a slight colour change to highlight the word light. I tried it in yellow and orange but it looked too cheap so this is the final colour that looked good whilst it still being clear to see. I have put it here below larger so that it is clearer to see.
I liked the finished logo but we will see whether we use it or not.
Update on logo.
Simon has now sent us our logo and letterhead so i will put them below.
This is the finished logo that Simon designed. The original designs were more complicated that he first came up with and did not look suitable for our type of business. They looked more complicated and had a Gothic style to them. We had a talk to Richard and he helped us a little with our design, he helped to simplify the typeface for us and guided us on different colours that we could use.
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| Final Design |
As you can see by the design, we have now simplified everything and it seems to work a lot better. Simon also came up with a letterhead for us to use and that is also posted below.
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| Letterhead |
So that's the logo and letterhead all sorted out now we need to look at a rationale for our business.
2. A WRITTEN RATIONALE FOR YOUR BUSINESS.
Liv has been hard at work on the rationale and i have posted that below.
This was sent as a dpf file so i have had to print it out and then rescan it into my PC to post it on here.
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| Rationale |
3. A MONTHLY FINANCIAL FORECAST FOR THE FIRST 6MONTHS OF TRADING.
This i worked out and have then scanned into my PC so its easier to place the figures onto this blog.
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| 6 Month Forecast |
The original amount for the setting up of the business was £5000. Out of this money we bought the initial items and insurance that we would need before we could start trading as a company. Below is a list of the items and a breakdown of the costs.
1. car deposit ( for hiring it on a monthly basis) £1000
2. petrol to get us started. £50
3. two card readers £14
4. laptop £320
5. Digital SLR'S £1800
6. compact cameras £400
7. memory cards £160
8. kit bags £350
9. business insurance for the year £212
10. pay as you go mobile £99
11. initial top up £20
12 CRB checks £44 each but i rounded this up to £200
13 printer £112
This leaves £263 pound left in the start up fund and was the opening balance for the business forecast.
Below are images that i have taken from Julia's website with her permission as she was getting all the equipment and prices for us. Some of these we haven't used but are a guide really to the kind of things that we wanted for our business.
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| Possible Car Hire (From Julia's Blog) |
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| Looking At Different Cases For Transporting Equipment (From Julia's Blog) |
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| Insurance (From Julia's Blog) |
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| Laptop (From Julia's Blog) |
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| Cameras 1 (From Julia's Blog) |
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| Cameras 2 (From Julia's Blog) |
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| Cameras 3 (From Julia's Blog) |
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| Cameras 4 (From Julia's Blog) |
4. A LIST OF PROFESSIONAL BODIES THAT WILL BE ABLE TO SUPPORT YOU DURING YOUR TIME IN BUSINESS.
1. The Royal Photographic Society
2. British Institute Of Professional Photography
3. Redeye
4. The Association Of Photographers
5. World Photography Organisation
The above mentioned organisations have their websites listed under them in the text earlier above.
6. DirectGov (official government website)
7. Prince's Trust
8. Small Business.co.uk
9. HM Revenue And Customs.
10. Bytestart
TASK 2
1. LIST OF EQUIPMENT THAT WE WOULD NEED.
1. car deposit ( for hiring it on a monthly basis) £1000
2. petrol to get us started. £50
3. two card readers £14
4. laptop £320
5. Digital SLR'S £1800
6. compact cameras £400
7. memory cards £160
8. kit bags £350
9. business insurance for the year £212
10. pay as you go mobile £99
11. initial top up £20
12 CRB checks £44 each but i rounded this up to £200
13 printer £112This list was mentioned earlier but not on this list is things that we would buy as we went along. They would include :-
2. petrol to get us started. £50
3. two card readers £14
4. laptop £320
5. Digital SLR'S £1800
6. compact cameras £400
7. memory cards £160
8. kit bags £350
9. business insurance for the year £212
10. pay as you go mobile £99
11. initial top up £20
12 CRB checks £44 each but i rounded this up to £200
13 printer £112This list was mentioned earlier but not on this list is things that we would buy as we went along. They would include :-
Stationary
Pens
Pencils
Card
Various types of glue or fixative to fix images to the card.
Plastic Wallets
Maybe frames of some kind (these would be cheap)
We would also need software editing programs and to start with we would use Gimp.
I own copy's of Lightroom and Photoshop Elements so we could if needed just install this onto the laptop so that we could use that when mobile.
2. A BREAKDOWN OF YOUR COMPANY'S WORK FLOW
1. Preparation
This would happen before we got to the event and would entail us making sure the equipment works and making sure we have all the equipment packed for what we need for the job to be smooth and successful.
Including :-
a. Looking at how to get to the venue
b. Checking batteries and memory cards
c. Information gathering about the place, centre or group that we would be working with.
d. Checking the weather forecast (if going to be working outside)
e. Making sure we have all legal requirements with us.IE CRB check information etc.
f. Telephoning the company before we get there to sort out any last minute details.
2. Introduction
For this we would talk about what we wanted to achieve within the session and who we are and what we do. This could end with a question and answer session with the clients, enabling us to accern what the client wanted to gain from the session.
3. Show and tell.
During this phase we would go through previous work and and talk about it and ask questions on what the imagery meant to the clients. We could also show any videos we have gathered on our subject to highlight what we wanted to achieve.
4. Rundown of Equipment and how to use the cameras.
Depending on numbers we would split the group up and go through how to use the equipment getting them to take pictures of each other or various objects. These could be things we bring in or items around in the venue. Prior to all this we could also ask the client or organisation to get the clients to bring their own objects in, that had a meaning that's personal to them. After this when people start to become more confident we would then start to focus on mini project that the client would then be able to focus on, with the outcome of a final image that we could present to them at the end, (framed or other).
5. The final project.
This is where we would get our clients to take the final images for this mini project. We could have various types of work depending on the venue and the age of the clients. As an example if we were working with children we could make the project a group effort. A calender project would work for this where we get the children to take photographs of different numbers. This would be a good way of helping them with numbers and months.
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| Example 1 taken from Google images. |
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| Example 2 taken from Google images |
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| Example 3 Taken from Google images |
As you can see these images could then be put together to form a calender that we could print out or make as a group project that the children could then use.
Another idea for a project that could be aimed at the older market would be for them to bring in an object that had special meaning for them and for us then to help them photograph it and then go through with them what emotions or memories this brought up. We could use words within the image to highlight this and then set up mock still life scenarios. This would be a good way of looking at memory jogging or learning to remember things.
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| Image taken from Google images |
Or we could just take a photograph of an object (lets say for example a flag), and then overlay a text meaning or description of emotions ever the image. Below again is an example of what i mean but imaging that the text was in English.
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| Image taken from Google images. |
6. Wrap up and discussion.
In this last phase we would tidy up and and present the final projects to our clients. We could then have a quick discussion on how it went and find out what was achieved throughout the day.
3. AN INSURANCE QUOTE FOR YOUR STATED PHOTOGRAPHY EQUIPMENT.
The image for this was mentioned above but i will re post a screen shot of the quote here to go with the answering of the task questions.
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| Insurance Quote From Julia's Blog |
Other places we could go for quotes are :-
http://www.camerainsurance.co.uk/?0-6&gclid=CJChzPK9j7ACFUxlfAodzVEntA
http://www.eandl.co.uk/camera-insurance
http://www.policybee.co.uk/insurance/professional-indemnity-for-photographers.html?Source=Google-Adwords&med=PPC&loc=Search&ad=10995267499&cam=03-PI-Photographers&adg=01-Photographers&kw=photography%20insurance&gclid=COO64oi-j7ACFUdlfAodswwbrw
http://www.ephotozine.com/article/camera-insurance-for-photographers-9
TASK 3
ADVERTISING AND DESIGN
1. LOGO OR FONT FOR BUSINESS.
The logo that we settled on for the business is pasted below. Simon came up with this logo after we talked to Richard. I also had a go at designing the log and my examples are early on in the above text.
After playing around with various designs we decided to keep it simple. After all good design is simple design.
http://www.eandl.co.uk/camera-insurance
http://www.policybee.co.uk/insurance/professional-indemnity-for-photographers.html?Source=Google-Adwords&med=PPC&loc=Search&ad=10995267499&cam=03-PI-Photographers&adg=01-Photographers&kw=photography%20insurance&gclid=COO64oi-j7ACFUdlfAodswwbrw
http://www.ephotozine.com/article/camera-insurance-for-photographers-9
TASK 3
ADVERTISING AND DESIGN
1. LOGO OR FONT FOR BUSINESS.
The logo that we settled on for the business is pasted below. Simon came up with this logo after we talked to Richard. I also had a go at designing the log and my examples are early on in the above text.
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| The Logo |
2. A LETTERHEAD THAT USES OUR LOGO.
Again with this we have kept it simple and in keeping with the above font and design. We didn't want them to look too different and we wanted a modern look to go with the image our company was trying to give out.
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| The Letterhead |
3. A LIST OF PLACES YOUR COMPANY WOULD ADVERTISE
For us advertising would be different, as this would involve networking more so than actual advertising. We would need word of mouth information about our company to be spread via different organisations and company's. 1. We would set up a Facebook page and send invitations out to different organisations. This would include images of our work and profiles of the four of us. This could also include a feedback page.
The link below is to Julias facebook photography page. I have shown it here as an example of above.
http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Tickhiller-Photographic/117172421745215
2. Twitter is also a good way to free advertise your company. Its a good way to network as you can follow other companies and piggy back them.
3. Youtube is also a good way of free marketing oneself. We could put seminars on there and demonstrations and set up our own page. Below is an example of this within the link.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmX2xu73tW0
4. The Times Educational Suppliment.
http://info.tes.co.uk/?infinity=gaw~UKGOO-BRAND-SPART-Brand~UKGOO-BRAND%2BEXACT-BRGEN%2BTimes%20Educational%20Supplement~8703372564~the%20times%20educational%20supplement~e&gclid=COaIu5rDj7ACFYt-fAodn2Ojqg
This is a credited source to advertise in.
5. Letter drops to various organisations (By hand and by post).
Delivering them by hand would be a good way to meet in person.
6. Professional letters wrote to different organisations and prisons etc explaining what we do and a price list along with contact details.
7. Local free newspapers.
8. Local radio spot.
4. A MODEL RELEASE FORM TAILORED FOR USE WITH OUR COMPANY.
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| Model Release Form |
The above model release form is taylord for our company to use. The example above would give Julia the permissions requested on the form. Other we could get printed would have either Simon's, Liv's or my name on them. or we could just insert the business name here instead.
TASK 4
ACCOUNTING.
1. A LICENSE TO USE FORM.
The form below is what we would use for this and the details filled in would be about our company.
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| Licence to use form |
Depending on whether we was all involved at the time this form was issued then the details might by slightly different as in the names of the photographer etc.
2. AN ESTIMATE TEMPLATE.
This was taken from Samplewords.com and is an example of what they do. If i was really going to open a business then i would use a site like this it is an excellent place to go to for all forms of templates.
3. AN INVOICE TEMPLATE.
I found a great site that gives you different templates for your buisness. The one i have used here is an example of an invoice template. We could use this to start as its free and then get proffesional ones made at a later date.
The website for this template is printed on the bottom of the invoice.
4. A BOOK KEEPING TEMPLATE.
This again is just a copy of the one Richard gave out in class. It is clear, simple and easy to use so we we are going to go with that one.
This book keeping template will go in a file along with a weekly breakdown of expenditure. This will include the following items :-
Wages
Rent
Electricity/Gas
Telephones
Equipment
Rentals
Materials
Car Fuel
Hospitality
Marketing
Vehicle Costs
Sundry Items
Other.
All of the above would of course have our own branding and logo on them.
THE PRESENTAION
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