OUGD502 - Studio Brief 03 - Life's A Pitch - Brief & Response

Brief - For this brief, I have been asked to consider the following points:

• What skills and services do you have to offer individually and as a group?
• Who is your target market?
• What form will your showcase take?
• What are your costs, charges and financial considerations?
• How will you structure your collective?
• Who will be responsible for what?
• How will you promote your showcase? To who? Using what media?
• Is it set in a physical location? Then where?
• How will you manage communication through the group?

Response - As a starting point, I wanted to consider who I want to work with the most through Summer and next year. Whilst I have worked with Harrison on quite a few projects this year, I feel that we share very similar interests in terms of our practice style and goals. As we have been running Designbytwo for a few months now and have gained quite a following on Instagram through creating almost 100 posters, we would like to push the project even further to physically make something substantial come from the project. Producing the Deuce report for PPP was one example of how the poster project has had an impact in the real world. Therefore, it'd be great to use the posters in some way to expand our exposure/make a potential profit.

Before approaching the presentation, I chose to answer the questions set. These will help when considering an idea for Designbytwo.

What skills and services do you have to offer individually and as a group?

Personally, my skills lie in editorial design and branding, whereas Harrison is stronger at 3D rendering and illustrations. As a collective, we are very confident at producing posters, publications, 3D work, completing branding jobs and other graphic-design related areas. Whilst we are not so interested in becoming a duo studio, it is a potential possibility that could work. As Designbytwo, we essentially produce regular posters for people to like. We have had quite a bit of interest in terms of people wanting to buy the posters, and have sold a few one-offs before. Therefore, as a collective, we would like to use the posters we have created and physically produce them to sell online, at a pop up store or an exhibition.

Who is your target market?

Other than those that like our Designbytwo Instagram, our potential target market is quite broad. Many people like to have posters in their rooms, therefore the market could essentially be any age range; however, we would like to mainly target young creatives, designers and artists around Leeds.

What form will your showcase take?

An online website would be great, so that anyone can potentially order our prints. A lot of our followers are from various countries outside the UK, therefore it would definitely be worth doing to ensure that all our followers have the opportunity to buy prints. Alongside this, we would like to either exhibit our work at a stall in Leeds or in a public space. This would be to exhibit the posters made this year, increase exposure and sell some prints.

What are your costs, charges and financial considerations?

With the online website, we already own a domain and have hosting. We may have to pay for an eCommerce service; however, we will not need to pay a web designer, as we can make a simple site in Adobe Muse Responsive. As for producing the prints, we would use the printing facilities at Uni, which are fairly cheap to produce in relation to what we would charge to buy prints. If we put on an exhibition we may have to do a fundraiser/invest quite a bit of our own money into getting a lot of prints made. This could be risky if the posters do not sell; however, we would have to ensure that the prints are sold at a reasonable price to shift the posters printed.

How will you structure your collective?

We would both take even roles in the project and contribute equally. As we have been doing the poster projects for months and various other briefs, we have a good understanding of working together.

Who will be responsible for what?

Once again, both take equal roles. As there is only two of us, it is much easier to keep an even workload and ensure we are both doing enough individually.

How will you promote your showcase? To who? Using what media?

1) Instagram - We will put up various Instagram stories and Instagram posts to appeal to the audience we have on the platform.

2) Behance - As Harrison's Behance project of his Designbytwo posters gained a very significant amount of exposure, we will put up a joint project with images of the online store/pop-up store/exhibition and dates (this will be ahead of the launch). My Behance has some exposure too, therefore we will try to pull both our audiences.

3) Leaflets - Once we have a date confirmed for an exhibition/pop-up stall and a live site, we will be able to promote the event in person throughout Leeds, LCA and to various friends through printed leaflets. This will aim to aware people of the project and bring more exposure to the launch.

4) Social Media - Both myself and Harrison use Facebook and Twitter a lot. Animated GIFs and other methods to catch people's attention will be used. As well as this, we will invite everyone we know to a Facebook event for the launch of the set-up-stall/exhibition, and will use online forums such as Reddit, which helped get a large amount of interest in Harrison's Designbytwo Behance project.

Is it set in a physical location? When? Where?

For the set-up store we would like the location to be in Leeds. The print fair next year would be a great opportunity to showcase our posters. Amber works heavily with this, therefore we could see if there is a chance to display our work. Other than this, we could set up a store in Leeds city centre and in LCA. Both would definitely require some financial consideration. As for an exhibition, we could contact various spaces in Leeds, such as Colours May Vary, The Old Red Bus Station, The Art Gallery and many more. We could even ask LCA if we could exhibit in the Uni gallery, as this would save a ton of money. The timing of the exhibition would have to be determined on when spaces are free; however, we would roughly like to do this in 2018 so that we can get everything fully organised, working and promoted as well as possible.

How will you manage communication through the group?

As there are only two of us, and we live together this year and next, we can easily communicate in person and on social media.