Actual Pain

http://www.actualpain.org/

This company do a similar thing to what we do, but their t-shirts aren't handmade or uniquely designed like the ones Daisy produces, they're sold at £25 so I think thats a fair price to go with.

Other designer alternative t-shirts range from £20-£30, so this is a good median price to take:

Obey retail at a similar price

http://www.urbanindustry.co.uk/products/search.asp?key=obey

reel 8 are a bit more pricey, but you know a strong design at £25 isn't going to make them seem less classy than rebel 8 at all:

http://www.urbanindustry.co.uk/products/product.asp?func=show&id=15620

Aborted visit studio one nine four

So today I was supposed to go to one nine four, and I did, but they forgot and were out to a client meeting.

Colin rang me full fo apologies and was really lovely and we're going to do it in 2 weeks when I return to Newcastle again, so it should all be ok!

Visit to RAW

I visited raw yesterday in Manchester. They're a pretty big design agency with a still smallish staff (7). I spent about an hour and a half there with Tom who does most of the liaising with the students.

I got some really useful advice from him in terms of my own practice. I said that I was having trouble getting responses from studios and he told me the best thing you can do is send emails that show some character, rather than really formal emails, because they get thousands of those a month. I think this is something I need to bare in mind, because whilst my emails are individually tailored, they are quite formal and standardised to a point.

In terms of breaking into the industry, Tom said it was mostly luck. Raw's big break came when they were found using a google search by someone in the NHS. I think this is insane and really lucky. It really puts a human character to a huge organisation.

Anyway, it was a really useful visit with some stuff for my design practice too.

Letterhead an compliment slips

Compliments slip and letterheads.

Open publication - Free publishing

Open publication - Free publishing

Stationery

I decided to simplify my CV, still using the green lines to tie it in together with my brand, the content is also similarly to the point and character-filled, but it's just toned down a bit:

Open publication - Free publishing

I think this works much better as a CV. It's still functional and is nicely laid out but it still gets across the character that I want it to.

Costing to make t-shirts

OK, so this is costing to make t-shirts, it's going to be helpful for when myself and Daisy leave and have a lot more time to devote to properly setting up the business.

Manufacture of t-shirts: £6

Prints £50 set up and £2 a t-shirt (from factory 4)

labels 50p a t-shirt when ordering 100.

Costing roughly £9 a tee in batches of 100. Meaning a £900 fee to set up a small amount of base stock. We can use the money from selling the tees to buy more batches.

Design strategy presentation

Here are the slides for my design strategy presentation.

I basically focused on what I was going to do next and why. At the moment my plan is to freelance and to set up the clothing company 'les morts' over summer. I need to return to Newcastle in order to take on more reposnsibility as a father, which has essentially been put on hold as this course runs through.

So I've basically presented all of the things I'd done in terms of research for it.

Open publication - Free publishing - More design

I think it went alright, but the problems I found were, that I hadn't really analysed what I'd learned so far, or rather I didn't mention it and I think I lost a lot of marks for that. Another problem was that I ran under time, so I lost some marks for that too.