Week 4: Outcome and Ambition | Project Story, Evaluation and Conclusion
By the end of this week you should be able to:
Make a presentation to evaluate the success of your self initiated project and its relationship to your own personal practice, interests and creative identity.
Design the final outcome for your self initiated project.
Communicate an evaluation of your final outcome, to determine its success at reaching your designated audience.
Week 4: Lecture – Outcome and Ambition
Lecture Introduction
In this fourth lecture we continue to present our creative practitioner interview series.
This week the creative practitioners answer the following questions:
- On reflection, how have self initiated projects helped shape your studio identity?
- What are the main differences between self initiated work and collaborative, client led projects?
On reflection, how have self initiated projects helped shape your studio identity?
Offshore:
Self Initiated Projects find their own interests like a filter:
“A fictional paradise”
Any boundaries are not that important, it’s your own vision that counts. Find out what that is and define it, then redefine it.
They’re also a way to show what you’re capable of – what your interests are. Then, if people have a project to suit, they might ask you to collaborate and do something similar.
Hey:
A lot of their commercial projects come in via their side projects, potential clients see the projects and find that they’re looking for something similar for themselves.
The side projects help to break boundaries and keep developing. Commercial projects tend to have deadlines which don’t allow for exploring an idea fully. Usually it’s the first or second idea that ends up being the one to run with. A side project gives freedom, they’re the only way to identify yourself, they’re just you. You don’t need to consider the needs from anywhere else.
Frost:
Frost aren’t sure that the self initiated projects actually helped to define the studio, the client work tends to be a great form of expression which created their visibility.
Solving problems for others is what shaped their own identity.
Bompass & Parr:
Self initiated projects are crucial to Bompass & Parr, when they started out nobody wanted to commission them so it was their self initiated work which “put them on the map”.
They also found, after working with clients, the right self initiated project can be far more profitable. In the industry it’s the client who makes the money, they’re only being commissioned with a tiny bit of it. They say you should be your own ultimate client, that way you get all if it. However, you’re the one taking all the risk…
Self initiated projects give you the freedom and the fame – they help “define your voice”. If your projects are strong you become more desirable to clients, but:
“Always put your name on everything”
Werkflow:
Their identity was shaped in their early days by self initiated projects. Through that they met a lot of other artists using new tools which helped feed their studio work – things like music videos, web-based projects and VR. This built up their skills for working with clients which also influenced the way they worked on their game and the level of skill it shows.
Even though they have been going for five years, self initiated projects are still important, when running them alongside client work each feeds into the other.
Reflection
Side projects have yet to make any difference to my studio because, even though there are a few, either they’re rarely seen outside or I see them as not quite finished and they sit there waiting for me. Their main purpose for me is to keep things interesting, to keep the work different in terms of design rather than learning new skills.
At my previous studio everything was corporate work and there was nothing different to show, a couple of side projects there gave us something different to show however they caused a little friction. They were assumed to be paid freelance work because ‘nobody does things for free’.
My new plan is to promote the side projects more effectively to try and generate client work to enjoy. Procrastination resulting from nerves tends to get in the way…
What are the main differences between self initiated work and collaborative, client led projects?
Offshore:
The most obvious is that clients pay, self initiated projects don’t and their outcome isn’t clear. They involve investment and risk, your own time, your own energy and you don’t know exactly what you will get at the end. However, they say there are still advantages to be had: learning and no boundaries, you’re free to choose and to organise yourself.
A big difference with client work is that there is a hierarchy, at least one other person is in charge and makes the final decisions, not yourself. And although self initiated projects aren’t paid, they can be an investment into the future through learning, and you also get to show your own vision as the author.
Hey:
They find that the pressure for deadlines and styles is easier to deal with and professional jobs mostly come with a pre-conceived idea from the client.
It’s good to work with self initiated projects running alongside client work because you can pass the energy and knowledge between them. If self initiated projects go well and people like them, it brings more rewards.
“To get the same freedom from clients is very rare.”
Frost:
Clients: Clear timeframes, brief and budget. These keep things on-track.
Self initiated: These are very wandering, without a beginning or end and are hard to control.
Bompass & Parr:
Their thoughts are that you don’t get people chasing from outside, but doing self initiated projects with others encourages you to move on and keep going, and that’s when the work becomes fun.
Their best advice: work out how to monetise self initiated projects, then, any client work is a bonus.
Treat self initiated projects the same way as clients in terms of process and evaluation but this work needs to be seen, otherwise it won’t bring in another piece of work.
Creativity | Finance | Fame
Each piece of work should bring at least one of these things, otherwise don’t go near it…
(Maybe that’s something I could work towards)
Werkflow:
Their main difference is freedom -vs- suiting a brand or consumer.
Reflection:
Similar in a way to Frost, the main difference between self initiated -vs- client work is clients pay, self initiated cost. It’s a catch-22, more clients (especially interesting ones) are needed, but I feel that it’s the self initiated projects that will attract them.
My aim is to somehow get the the position where I can apply the Creativity, finance or fame model from Bompass & Parr…
The Wayback
This is such an amazing project and fully deserves to be successful. My mum died last year due to dementia, a particularly vile strain called Lewy Bodies. Towards the end she only reacted to photographs from when she was younger, she would say the names of the people in them. To see her experience one of the Wayback films would have been indescribable.
Dan Cole deserves way more than the coveted fat pencil.
Week 4: Workshop Challenge
- Record a five minute presentation to analyse and evaluate the development of your self initiated project and reflect on the different steps and evolution over the last four weeks.
- You can record your presentation in the format or media of your choice (for example, a Keynote slide presentation, video recording, podcast or website).
- Ensure you articulate the project’s relationship to your own personal practice, interests and creative identity.
Notes/Processes
Plans for the report content include statistics from the survey along with any planned or possible follow-ups to the project going forward from Week 4.
Q&A
– What was the question you were looking to respond too?
Why isn’t there a clear design community in Shrewsbury?
To categorise things, there are artists communities in a lot of the different areas in and around the town centre but no design community. Perhaps there’s a feeling of community because of shared workspaces and permanent places to exhibit, some of these areas have an open studios event or arts-week events and the larger venues offer spaces to host workshops, life drawing classes and craft fairs. Nothing aimed to bring web, film or graphic designers together.
– What was the methodology you employed to answer it?
Some of the research gained in ‘Week 10: Type and Page’ in the Contemporary Practice Module put a design festival in the back of my mind, likely to be one of those things you don’t actually do, until this module.
One of the first steps was to find out if there would be an interest in the festival, to do this I set up a Surveymonkey questionnaire asking asking what would be expected at a design festival in Shrewsbury rather than the direct question above. I figured that question was just for me, it might split the responses into the artist -vs- designer categories and reduce the numbers taking the survey.
Another step was to contact other successful festivals: Birmingham, Glasgow, Cheltenham, London, etc., to ask for a basic list of do’s and dont’s at this stage.
Then to outline a theme for the festival by producing a curatorial statement or manifesto. What would the festival address and what relevance would there be to the area? Looking at existing festivals they where mostly being held in cities, why was that? Was the location a factor? That became part of the theme: City-vs-Town-vs-Village-vs-Rural, do designers have to be more resilient to survive when they’re location is in the outer reaches of a city?
– What was the end result
The submission for the brief is a document giving a proposal or overview of the festival rather than a piece of design work: a poster, an identity, etc..
The document gives the curatorial statement along with insights, theme outlines and a plan of action for going forwards. To show the event as a genuine proposal to those taking part in the surveys, I’ve registered the domain name shrewsburydesignfestival.co.uk so that the surveys can be sent out from an event email address and any curious visitors can see a landing page if they browse the URL.
Once the curatorial statement is complete it will be the main page of the website alongside a form to sign up to a mailing list which will be used to email news and updates to subscribers.
– What learnings were there on reflection?
First; there’s a lot of work to do to see a festival through… Take a step back and work things out in stages, first get the theme right and the message across. The need to cover details will reveal itself as we go along, red-tape, finding venues and content will come up in much later stages.
Second; people are sometimes more helpful than you expect. The email sent to Luke Tonge from the Birmingham brought a really helpful and enthusiastic reply, some great advice to take in, especially at this initial stage. Also talking to the organisers of the comic festival held in Shrewsbury gave an insight into holding events in the town.
On a selfish note:
I want the event to raise the profile of my own studio and lead to more satisfying projects.
Survey Outcomes
We posed six questions, three were multiple choice:
- To give their minimum details
- To describe their type of practice
- Their location
- Please name any design/arts focussed event/s you have attended in the last 12 months
- What attracted you to the event?
- What type of content would encourage you to attend a local design festival?
The Initial Interest Survey was sent to a list of 74 practitioners which, if my maths is right, gave a return of 23%.
The full set of results is available on the survey dashboard.
Proposal Content
The main part of the proposal is the curatorial statement, outlining what the festival would be all about. Last week’s research showed some examples of statements from other events and festivals which helped establish the type of information and the tone of voice needed to describe ours.
The main criteria is to make a succinct statement which keeps the reader engaged.
Curatorial Statement: Draft 5
The Shrewsbury Design Festival: Resilience – Bringing Together.
The Shrewsbury Design Festival is about resilience: the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties.
We are a county of artists, designers, illustrators, animators, film-makers and cartoonists; Shrewsbury serves as a hub for the county and beyond, it is a place where we can bring people together.
The peripheries are wide, does location affect creativity? Geography can create barriers, both physical and cognitional, so resilience is paramount. Location and interaction can be the key to progress so as we retract from city to town to village, do we lose a connection. Are the cities where everything happens or does wellbeing and a better life/work balance draw people away to a more tranquil setting.
Through discussions and lectures, we want people to share stories, however light or serious, on how they deal with barriers and what keeps them motivated, and relevant. Our workshops and exhibitions will help the wider public understand the role of a designer, encourage new generations and foster new ideas.
Curatorial Statement: Draft 6
Does resilience play a part in working away from cities? Share your experience of barriers and benefits.
The Shrewsbury Design Festival is about resilience.
We are a county of creatives – artists, designers, illustrators, animators, film-makers, photographers and more; Shrewsbury serves as a hub for the county and beyond, it is a place where we can bring people together.
Does location affect creativity? Geography can create barriers, both physical and cognitional, resilience is paramount. Location and interaction is a key to progress so as we retract from city to town to village do we lose connection? Are the cities where everything happens or does a better life/work balance draw people away?
Through discussions and lectures we want people to share stories on how they deal with barriers, what keeps them motivated and relevant. Workshops and exhibitions will help the wider public understand the role of a designer, encourage new generations and foster new ideas.
Outcomes and Ambitions
The domain was registered to give the event a base and a legitimate sounding point of contact so there needed to be something in place for anyone who browsed it. The site was set up just to show the final curatorial statement along with an option to sign up to receive updates and information about the event.
I also set up an account on Twitter to have an expected social media presence: @TheSYDF
Homepage with draft 7…
I haven’t established a visual style for the festival, that would be for further development beyond the module. I have styles and formats in mind, a favourite format being a short-run newspaper. They’re economical and stand out above standard promotional flyers, etc..
Sheets can be printed whole-sided rather than paginated so they can also work as posters.
Make something memorable?
Something you need to wrestle with…
“Start small, test the water”
I recently met with Katy Cowen from Creative Boom and we spoke about the festival. She suggested a gradual approach, telling me a story of a friend of hers in a similar situation in that he had moved to Manchester as a freelance designer and found that it was hard to find a creative community when there’s doesn’t seem to be anyone around or a ‘way in’ to any existing circles.
His answer was to create his own by starting a series of meet up’s which grew into Glug-style events at various venues in the city.
It’s perhaps a way to make a start in Shrewsbury?
She also said: If nobody comes then so what, at least you’d’ve had a go…
Proposal structure:
- Insight on why we need a design festival
- A curatorial statement
- Outline the theme and a plan of action
Insight
There are artists communities in a lot of the different areas in and around the town but no specific design community; nothing to bring web, film or graphic designers together.
Perhaps there’s a feeling of community between artists due to shared workspaces and permanent places to exhibit? Some of these groups have open studios or arts-week events, the larger venues offer spaces to host workshops, life drawing classes and craft fairs. A community between designers would bring more collaboration and more knowledge to all types of practice.
A core of local, available design resources will help the town build a reputation as somewhere to learn and develop new skills. It would also encourage related businesses, from small-scale print-shops to IT outlets to base themselves here.
Curatorial Statement:
The Shrewsbury Design Festival is about resilience; what part does it play in working away from cities?
We are a county of creatives – artists, designers, illustrators, animators, film-makers, photographers and more; Shrewsbury serves as a hub for the county and beyond, it is a place where we can bring people together.
Does location affect creativity? Geography can create barriers, both physical and cognitional, resilience is paramount. Location and interaction is a key to progress so as we retract from city to town to village do we lose connection? Are the cities where everything happens or does a better life/work balance draw people away?
Through discussions and lectures we want people to share stories on how they deal with barriers, what keeps them motivated and relevant. Workshops and exhibitions will help the wider public understand the role of a designer, encourage new generations and foster new ideas.
Theme:
I discovered that simply putting on a festival for its own sake would make it just another event in the town, to follow a theme gives it a purpose.
That theme is resilience.
We’re using this to gain an insight into ways design communities can stay focussed and work towards their goals. Does being based away from a city have a negative and a positive effect? Does working away from like-minded people mean you need more determination to find and create the type of work you enjoy?
Everyone is different; some need peace and quiet to reflect and develop ideas, others need to see the crowds and hear the traffic to feel like there’s always something going on.
The festival will need its own visual identity but that would be something for the future due to the time it that need to be invested.
Meantime the proposal/manifesto would need to be produced so I based its design on the part of the statement which talks about bringing people together.
Five minute presentation
Analysing and evaluating the development of the project over the last four weeks showing the different steps and its evolution.
Plans going forward:
This four weeks could only ever serve as a base for building an event. The first feedback made no secret of the amount of work needed to make a festival successful.
As I see it, there are two options for a way forward. One would be a series of smaller events to build upon: meet-ups, one-off talks and lectures, public events or competitions to encourage interaction (ref. GDFS: https://graphicdesignfestivalscotland.com/2019/international-poster-competition/).
Another options would be to work out a long-term plan to slowly bring together all the elements to start off big. It’s how the Birmingham Festival got started but it took a large team to pull it off, something I don’t yet have. To build up a team would be a first step, look for local interest and go from there.
Originally, all I thought about was how the festival could look but without a theme to follow it was so open-ended that it would be an impossible task to start off with. The theme gives a focus on both the look of the festival and the speakers to try and attract.
I’ve met with Katy Cowen of Creative Boom, an online creative community focussed on promoting graphic design, illustration, photography, etc., she gave good advice for the ‘starting small’ option. I’ve still to meet up with Luke Tonge from the Birmingham Design Festival, though we have been in touch via text and social media, to talk about how he went about creating and launching a large event from the offset.
