Week 9 - What can you do with your degree?

Graduates may have 2/3 jobs when they leave university to make sure they have a steady income in case they don't get any work for a long time, they have something to fall back on.

Transferrable skills we have gained

• Communication skills
• Using machines, technology
• Work to a brief
• Drawing skills
• Computer skills, photoshop, quarkxpress
• Creativity/Imagination
• Printing skills, printing press, digital printing
• People skills
• Collaborative working skills (working as a group)
• Time management to meet deadlines
• Punctuality
• How to be professional
• An eye for detail and design
• Self promotional skills
• Self motivation
• Wide interest in visual arts 
• Problem solving
• Visual culture
• Planning
• Organisation
• Trends

Career Opportunities - CCAD Website.

• Freelance illustrator or studio illustrator
• Book illustrator, including children’s books
• Fashion illustrator
• Greetings card illustrator/designer
• Illustration for magazines, editorials and advertising
• Illustration for products, eg. homeware, fashion accessories, stationery
• Working in publishing
• Printmaker
• Styling
• Project management and community arts
• Postgraduate study, eg. MA Illustration
• Postgraduate teaching qualifications
• Teaching and lecturing

I started researching post graduate courses 

• Communication design: Illustration MA
• PGCE- one year full time, two years part time. 
• School direct training programme 
• School centred initial teacher training (SCITT)
• Teach First
• MA Education following PGCE

After looking at these courses I decided to research teacher salaries as it would be helpful to try and become a teacher to make sure you have some regular income coming in. 

Teacher Salaries
Minimum of £21,804 (or £27,270 in inner London) The starting salary is higher compared to other graduate starting salaries. Leading practitioners can earn up to £64,677 in London and £57,520 outside London, Head teachers can earn between £42,803 and £113,303.

Week 8

We had a talk from Pat, The head of enterprise and employability at the university. He talked about goals, personal development, knowing yourself, knowing where you want to go and creating a path for yourself. He told us how blogging is important because you are documenting your journey as a creative. He talked about professionalism, time, image, intellectual property, product, character, passion, enthusiasm and charisma. He explained that we should have a good portfolio, hygiene, communication skills, dealing with customers, working as a team and showing respect. This talk was very useful.

Week 6/7 - Pitch

We were asked to pitch a product and try to sell it to a few people on the same table. We had electrical products to choose from on a list. I decided to choose an Iphone 5.

I made notes on what I was going to say, these included things like it has a thin, light design, loads of apps to choose from, ultra fast system, perfect for business or personal use, 4 inch retina display, thousands of apps for business, thousands for personal use, games etc... Powerful yet simple ios system. High security, strong encryption methods for protecting business critical information. Easy to use

We were also asked to make notes on things that other people said about their chosen product.
Imac Notes

• Industry Standard
• Expected to use it in this industry, colour collaborated  
• New Imac has a thinner and better screen
• Icloud
• Faster than a PC
• Software

Week 5 - The Consumer

The Consumer is the one who pays to consume the goods or services produced. The publisher is meant to know the consumer/market. Money only comes from the consumer.

Consumer Marktets
General, Children's, Journals, Educational, Professional, Medical, Newspapers, Magazines, Editorial.

Understand your consumer as well as your agency.

For a book to be completed and published there must be a writer, illustrator, agent, publisher and consumer. The writer gets the most money.

Task - Research consumer markets from your chosen field. Looking at target markets. How old are they? Where do they get their money? Are they working? Demographics.

Children's books. They must be colourful and attractive for the children but it's not them who buy the books. It is also not really the parents that buy the books. The main buyer of children's books are friends of the parents and family of the child, they are mostly bought by grandparents.

According to The Telegraph some of the best selling children's books include

• The Lord of the Rings
• Harry Potter
• Narnia
• The very hungry caterpillar 
• The faraway tree
• Barbar
• Treasure Island
• The Railway Children
• Winnie The Pooh
• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
• The Gruffalo
• Peter and Wendy (Peter Pan)
• Watership Down
• Tracey Beaker
• The tiger who came to tea
• The tale of peter rabbit
• Where the wild things are

Maybe older children's books are more popular because the children are able to ask for them, if they are babies they can't ask because they can't speak

Maybe books that have been around for years are still coming up as popular because people buying the book remember the book from when they were younger and they want the child to share their own childhood experiences by reading the same books

I think The Lord of the Rings is named the most popular children's book because it appeals to both older children and adults so the market is widened by the adults buying the books for their selves and the adults that are not interested in it may buy it for their children.

Week 4 - Agencies

Agencies have a House Style or market specific.
Task - Research agencies that relate to a market that interests you. Research the structure of these agencies. Decide if they have a house style and document your reasons why.

Contracts, Commission, Legal Rights

• bigarchive.com
• Debut Art
• Advocate Art Agency
• Bright
• Column Arts Agency

Column Arts Agency

Artist Representation - Focus of nurturing careers of artists by giving them help with the most boring part of their lives - business. Find artists new projects and commissions in the advertising, publishing and design industries. Win projects for artists, mediator between client and artist, negotiate the artists contract, organise the brief, market and manage the project so it runs smoothly and they make sure the artist gets payed. They usually take 30% commission from the project price. 

Book Keeping

• Logging monthly invoices and receipts
• Send updates
• Calculating tax position 
• Filing tax return 
• Advice/guidance 

Cost

• £0-£25,000 = £30 per month with an £85 joining fee
• £25,000-£35,000 = £50 per month with £150 joining fee
• £35,000+ = Negotiable 

Promoting your art

Public Relations (PR) campaigns, create collectives and exciting events.

1. Create exposure
2. Build a number of followers
3. Bring you more work
4. Make you more money

Partners

• Art grab - Fine arts agency that builds links between artists and buyers through studio tours and exhibitions.

Debut Art

The artists provide the artwork, they cooperate with agents and provide rough drafts. The client may terminate the contract at any time. Promoting the world's finest leading visual communication artists. House style, A company's preferred manner of presentation and layout of written material.

Some Illustrators on Debut Art include - Cath Riley, Oliver Jeffers, Michael Streich, Webbo, Vince Pastiche, Walter Newton, Kim McGillivray, hitandrun and Christina K.

Boss

• Andrew Coningsby - UK
• Mimi Rich - New York
• Arnaud Mayet - France

Advocate Art Agency

Managing Director, CEO, Ed Burns.

Week 3 - Types of Publishing

We were asked to look at different types of publishing and decide what type would fit best with the way we work.

Children's Book Publishing
Growing sectors since 2009 and continues to grow.
Children's books are broken down into age groups.

Journals, Educational, Academic, Reference, Scientific, Technical, Professional and Medical publishing are good for graduates because they are cheap and quick work, there is an expanding market for this.

Newspapers, Editorial, Periodicals, Magazines. In house as well as commissioned work. There is usually a high turnover of images needed along with tight deadlines. They have a solid intake of graduates but they will try to pay them less so they need to be careful when doing work for newspapers.

After thinking about it I decided to research into children's book publishing. We were asked to go and find out how we would be able to get in touch and get our work published in books as if we were doing it for real. This included finding out things such as what publishers exist and who do I need to speak to if I want to submit work, who works there and the managing director of the company.

I looked at publishers such as Random House, Penguin, Transworld, Walker and The Chicken House. I decided to research further into The Chicken House. I found out the Managing Director is Barry Cunningham, OBE. He joined Penguin Books in 1977 as Marketing Director for Puffin, He was there til 1988 until he was headhunted by Random House. He was responsible for signing up J.K Rowling's Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone. I started thinking of how I would get in touch with him if I were to want to talk to him for real, I found him on Twitter and started following him, I found that he follows books for keeps, Imogen Cooper, Rachel Ward and Phillippa Dickinson, The Managing Director of Random House. I found that he tweets regularly sort of every day, He doesn't have Facebook. He has 500+ connections on Linkedin, You can contact Barry on Linkedin for job enquires, business deals, getting back in touch, expertise requests and reference requests. He is interested in fishing, reading and live music. Viewers of his profile also viewed Imogen Cooper, the senior editor at Chicken House, Elinor Bagenal, the rights director at Chicken House and Jane Johnson, the publishing director at Harper Collins. I think to get in touch with someone like this from being a stranger it would be wise to get in touch with people below him at first and get to know them and work your way up.

Week 2 - Introduction to Industry Structures

Introduction to Industry Structures

Design Houses

Working in a design house means that you are employed by the company to create images in the house style, the work is not questioned and you pretty much do what you are told. You also give up the rights to your work. You are payed a regular wage and it is usually a 9-5 job.

Freelance

Working for yourself, selling your work independently and securing commissioned work. This means you retain the rights to your work and you can start working for yourself from home.

Here is Stina Jones' blog, a Freelance Illustrator.

http://stinajones.co.uk/blog/

Networks

Building links and relationships with people who can help you in the creative industry. This is how you connect with people and find out what the market is looking for and how you can shape yourself to fit into the market.

linkedin.com is a good website to find people to network with 

Collaboration 

Working with other artists and putting your work together to enhance your portfolio of work, using each others skills to learn from each other.

Below is a post by Christine McMahon working alongside another illustrator on a collaborative piece

http://dribbble.com/shots/661818-first-collaborative-illustration-project-w-Aaron-Lee

Gallery

Exhibiting your work in a gallery allows you to show off and sell your work but the gallery's that you choose to exhibit your work must be relevant to the type of work that you create.

Competitions 

Some competitions can give massive exposure to your work nationally and internationally and may be seen by people high up in the industry who may like your work and who may be able to help you develop your career.

Week 1 - Plagiarism talk

This is the dictionary definition of the word plagiarism I found at http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/plagiarism

plagiarism

Line breaks: pla¦giar|ism

Pronunciation: /ˈpleɪdʒərɪz(ə)m

NOUN

[MASS NOUN]

the practice of taking someone else’s work or ideas and passing them off as one’s own:

there were accusations of plagiarism

[COUNT NOUN]: it claims there are similar plagiarisms in the software produced at the university

Derivatives

plagiarist

NOUN

Origin

EARLY 17TH CENTURY: FROM LATIN PLAGIARIUS 'KIDNAPPER' (FROM PLAGIUM 'A KIDNAPPING', FROM GREEKPLAGION) + -ISM.

We were shown two music videos, one by Adriano Celentano and another by Willy Moon. Willy Moon clearly copied the entire video that was made for Adriano and remade it as his own. Nothing could be done about this because Willy Moon claimed it as homage.

I found this interesting because I didn't know people had blatantly plagiarised publicly like that. I decided to go off and dig for more stories about plagiarism cases.


I found some cases from the websites below, one being poems copied from a poet named Madison Cawein by T.S. Elliot. Another was from Martin Luther King whilst working on his dissertation for his doctor degree he plagiarised from another author working on the a similar subject to him.

http://www.snopes.com/history/american/mlking.asp
http://www.cracked.com/article_17198_5-great-men-who-built-their-careers-plagiarism.html  

Week 1 - Module Introduction.

 Week 1

Introduction to Professional Studies

Here are a few notes I made from the first talk we had, explaining what we will be doing over the weeks.

What we will learn in Professional Studies

• How you must work within the industry.

• Where we fit

• Style

• Who can help me get to where I want to be?

          Friends

          Colleagues

• Budget

          If you get work, ask how much the budget is.

• Contracts

          Be clear on the terms of the contract before the work starts.

What we will be doing

• Blogs, Structure, Cores of this industry
• Marketing levels
• Opportunities
• How to research
• How to use your qualification
• Mini pitch presentations
• Target market
• Health and Safety/Ethical issues
• Self Publishing
• Report
• How to learn from feedback