Master of Trade

Background Research

Sunga Park is an illustrator / graphic designer from South Korea. She states in her own bio that she doesn't really know where she stands in the art world but she just wants to create something different for her audience. She designs wallpapers but her most famous style of work is her watercolours.

Career

Sunga Park has worked in animation, web design, editorial design, graphic design and illustration. She has worked for clients such as The Independent, Liberty Magazine, Intouch Solutions, Mojeh Magazine and Garmin.


Why are they master of trade?

Sunga Park is a master of trade because she creates her work to please the audience who follow her and her art work as well as pleasing herself. Her work is created to a high standard and is presented professionally. 

Delivery and Contracts

Contracts are a massive part of the illustration community. Contracts can be simple and straight to a point whilst others can be majorly in depth and full of the smallest details. The 2 sample contracts I will be looking at are very different. The simple contract is 2 pages long whilst the more complex contract is 16 pages. This is a clear indication that contracts can come in various sizes. 

The simple contract includes: 

- The work required and a brief description of what they are asking for.
- Deadlines 
- Payment 
- Copyright and credits

The complex contract includes:

- Detailed description of work required
- Payment details
- Various deadlines 
- Copyright and credits
- Other information including languages of the product, publication date etc.
- Terms and conditions of the development of work
- Artists rights
- Warranties and Indemnities
- Termination rights (client and artist)
- Defined terms 

As you can clearly conclude, a more complex contract contains so much more in depth information than the simpler contract. My personal opinion is that the larger contracts are better for people who are comfortable and experienced in working with contracts whilst the simpler contracts fit well with those who are new to the system and are comfortable with confronting the client with any questions they may have about it.    

Briefs / Commissions

What is a brief / commission?

A brief / commission is a set of instructions given someone to guide them through a particular task. For an illustration brief or commission you would receive a list of requirements for the task they are asking you to carry out. The brief / commission would usually include information such as what they actually want you to create, whether it be one illustration, a series or a full book, any influences they may want the images to portray, the sizes of the image, whether it will be digitally or traditionally created, how they would like it submitting, what format they want it in, the deadline and more which I will talk about later.

How can a brief help you?

A brief is a very helpful form of information. If the brief has been written correctly and includes everything needed then you are sure to know everything you are supposed to be doing and what they want from you. A brief can be in depth or just a few bullet points and I think depending on the requirements either form of brief would be acceptable. 

How can a brief hinder you?

A brief can be difficult to work with or understand if the person providing it has not gave you much information. There have been many cases where illustrators have had to have a lot of back and forth conversations because their client hasn't provided them with the correct information or not enough of it. There is not problem with asking questions and emailing but it would be a bit more convenient if the brief has everything in it which was needed to carry out the task.  

What do I need from a brief?

Here is a list of things that are expected to be included in a brief -

- A summary of the idea / concept. I would need to know what the story or idea around the illustrations is because then I would feel more involved with the project and my illustrations would relate better.

- What am I doing? I would need to know what they wanted from me. Do they want one illustration? A series? Or a full book maybe? This information is really important.

- I need to know if they want the illustrations in full colour or just specific colours or black and white. A colour pallet would be a nice thing to have but it is not necessary.

- I will need some brief descriptions of the images they want. 

- If there are characters / animals in the drawings then I would need to know what their characteristics are such as what they looks like, their hair / skin colour, what clothes they are wearing etc. 

- I will need to know what size the images have to be and if they require a bleed.

- I need to know what format they would like the image whether it be a jpeg or tiff etc.

- Another important one is how would they like it submitting? Do they want it digitally sent or do they want the original illustrations?

- The most important requirement on a brief is the deadline, this is important because i will need to plan my time correctly to fit in what I need to do for the client. 

What do I do once I have read the brief?

Once I have read the brief I will make notes on what I am being asked to do and write down any ideas which I have had whilst reading it. I will then proceed to do some research on any topics they have mentioned. 

How would I communicate with the client and when?

If I ever ran into any problems with the brief or needed some extra information I would either email the client, ring them or have a face to face meeting with them. If I had a phone call or meeting I would need to make thorough notes on what they tell me just to avoid confusion or misunderstanding. As for when I would communicate with them, I would make set intervals every few weeks of the brief for check ins with the client to make sure the work I am doing is going well for them and that they like the work I'm doing and if I had any questions for them I would just drop them an email when necessary. 

Write a brief / commission.

As a group task we had to write a brief or commission to a fellow student.

- A book cover for The Wizard of Oz.
- The cover must have a detailed border and a Wizard of Oz related image with emerald green shades.
- The cover must have room for the title, author name and illustrator name. 
- It must be A5 in size with a 5mm bleed.
- It must be submitted as a jpeg in cmyk at 72dpi.
- Digitally submitted via dropbox or email and a physical copy.
- Deadline 15/1/15 with check ins November 1st and December 10th.
- A poster which advertises the book. 
- Poster will be A2 in size.
-Digitally submitted as a jpeg in cmyk at 600dpi.
- Includes colour pallet from the poster and the border.
- Imagery related to the story.
- Information on the sale of the book, including release date which is 15/4/15.
- Author, Illustrator and book title.
- An A4 folded flier - open to creative suggestions.
- Information on the front of the flier.
- Full spread illustration on the inside and credits on the back.
- Same imagery relations to the book cover and poster.
- Digitally submitted as a jpeg and photoshop file in cmyk at 300dpi
- An editorial for an article.
- 400px x 400px at 72dpi
- jpeg in cmyk 
- Submitted digitally 

Halloween Party

On the 9th of September we were set the task of hosting a Halloween party in the Art Cafe of the Hartlepool campus. We all got designated areas of work ranging from poster design to security etc. and it started out really well. We managed to get bands booked, security, venue, tickets and posters printed but when it came to selling tickets it all went down hill. I feel that the plan failed because parts of the organisation that should have happened first, did not. For example, the posters should have been made within the first few days / first week of being given the task therefore there would have been more time for everyone to see the poster and not make other plans. People didn't seem interested in the party when tickets were being sold as this was a week maybe a week and a half before the actual event and by now people would have already made plans for Halloween and there was a lack of communication between everyone and there was a lot of misunderstandings. I think if we had had some help from student union to promote the party and help organise things we would have been more successful in carrying out the party. I think we all thought it would be a success as we made a connection with Skyy and organised a free entry and bomb (drink) after the Halloween party, so we thought this would make people want to come. A few people did buy tickets but as the party has been cancelled they got refunded and we have decided not to go ahead with the party, basically to avoid embarrassment and bad reputation.

When the party was cancelled a sign was put up saying "Cancelled due to lack of interest" and this was a bit of a mistake as this can be seen as damaging our reputation as illustrators. We could have bent the truth a little and said that we couldn't afford the security with the budget we have because we required more etc. this is called damage limitation. We are limiting the damage to our reputation.

I think it's a good thing that the Halloween party failed because the next time we have this opportunity we will know what not to do and we will know who to contact for help. I also think that this failure will make the Student Union a little more aware of what they can do to help courses in this situation.

Conceptual Branding

Branding is the process of creating a name / image for a product which after a lot of repetition will them embed into the consumers mind differentiating it from all other products and brands on the market. [1] Branding is a great thing and has made certain products really successful as it sucks the consumer in once they become attached to the brand. For example Adidas, they have a constant logo throughout their products and Adidas consumers know the brand from a simple 3 stripe design. The same can be said for bands that have logos, for example when Nirvana fans see the yellow smiley face they immediately know it's Nirvana and when people see the red lips and tongue they know it's The Rolling Stones. Branding is all about having a unique name and image which consumers become familiar with. 

This is a very effective professional thing to do with a product as it helps with sales and gaining consumers and a following of people that are interested in your product. Branding is a rather successful practice as it sucks people in and subconsciously forces people to buy a new product, someone could have 10 pairs of Nike Air Max trainers but as soon as another design comes out they want to buy it, because they have been sucked in by the brand. 

''We call what we do Conceptual Branding. We believe in unique differentiated brands and that a brand is more than just a logo, a set of typography and colour palette. We believe in brands that tell a story and convey a message, brands that appeal just as much to the heart as they do to the intellect.'' [2]

[3]

[1] UNKNOWN. What is Branding? http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/branding.html (09.10.2014)

[2] UNKNOWN. Kind Conceptual Branding https://www.linkedin.com/company/kind-conceptual-branding-as (09.10.2014)

[3] http://blog.hrpartners.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/brandIdentity2.jpg

Target Market and Consumer Needs

We (illustration and graphics) have been set the task for hosting a Halloween party for ourselves and other students. I need to carry out research into our target marker and consumer needs in order for this event to run as well as we possibly can.

A target market is a group of people or 'consumers' which a particular product is aimed at. In this case our target market is uni students, aged 18+ (due to sales of alcohol). I looked into whether uni students would be able to afford to buy a ticket etc. by researching the amount of money the average student spends. I found that the average student (in a month) spends most of their money on rent, followed by food. The amount of money on average spent on social activities is £64 a month [1]. Therefore I think students would be able to afford  couple of pounds for a Halloween party presuming that we met their consumer needs which I will now go into further. 

Consumer needs are basically preferences in which your target market will have when thinking about spending their money on the product you are selling. In our case the consumer needs will be cheap entry, cheap drinks and food, exciting atmosphere, awesome decorations as it's a Halloween party and a range of music and the venue being close to the campus / student accommodation.

http://www.savethestudent.org/money/student-money-survey-results.html#2

The venue we have for the Halloween party is the Art Cafe on the campus which is free for us to use. We had the option to host the party at the Theatrical Town Hall but it was a bit too expensive for us to hire. I think if the word gets around and the advertising posters work well we will get a large amount of people wanting to attend. Also, with the venue being free the ticket price won't be expensive therefore more people will think about coming. The students will be happy that the venue is close to home / uni as well, so there is more of a chance they will buy tickets.

We have all be assigned roles for the event. The roles are as follows; Ticket designer, poster designer, security organisation, music organisation, decoration, authentication of tickets and event organiser. 

My role, along with another student is the authentication of the tickets. We need to come up with something that can make the ticket authentic so that people cannot photocopy the ticket and get in for free. We had some idea such as gold leaf (because it's shiny), shiny paper to print on, embossing and UV ink / paint. We will need to sort something before the tickets are sold so preferably the final idea shouldn't cost money. We are going to look further into this and discuss with fellow students. 

CV

http://community.ucreative.ac.uk/article/12315/CV---Artist

The website above show what an artist CV is.

An artist CV is a little different to a regular CV in the way that it is more creative and portrays an artistic style rather than 'a few pages of words'. It also only consists of artists related things therefore there is hardly ever 'GCSE results' or previous employment that is not in the art industry. 

Below are a few example of artist CV's.

afkra.blogspot.com

ntuyoufirstad.wordpress.com

natashaprice612.blogspot.com