Dream Studio.
Sasha Mitchell.
Dream Studio.
Executive Summary. 4 The Duo. 5 Ethos. 6 Products & Services. 6 Target Market. 8 Market Research. 10 Marketing Stratergy. 10 Competitor Analysis. 10 Operations & Logistics. 12
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Dream Studio.
Running Costs. 13 Personal Survival Budget. 14 Financial Forecast. 14 Legal & IP Frameworks. 16 Back-Up Plan. 17
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Dream Studio.
Executive Summary.
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Dream studio is a collective duo of an illustrator and graphic design artist. Using joy and child-like play to bring attention to serious topics that need it, such as mental health and other invisible and physical illnesses.
Dream Studio.
The Duo.
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Dream Studio is founded by two creatives who studied together during their BA Visual Communication course. Working side-by-side during the course they could see their creative energy and hard working ethic mirrored. Understanding each others skills and abilities, they could drive each other forward and allow projects to reach their optimum potential. Believing it is key for a freelance designer to have a structured creative support system in place to nurture the growth of a project.
Sasha. Katie.
Both having or knowing someone with mental health and invisible illnesses, this has been a focus for most of their project. Using therapeutic colours and design to raise awareness for the topic whilst being light hearted as opposed to serious or dark. Sasha Mitchell, a Graphic Design Artist. Her work is inspired by colour and shape. She was inspired by architecture and art as a child, which morphed into an interest in design. “Studying BA Graphic Design opened my eyes into seeing what design could be. Studying MA Graphic Design opened my eyes into seeing how design functions and the reality of being a designer. I see design as a tool to bring attention to serious topics that need it; by using joy and childlike play”. Katie Hardcastle, Illustrator and Designer. Inspired by art therapy, her neutral colours and detailed line drawings all compliment this anxiety calming ideology. “I have a big love for continuous lines and colour! I predominantly work with ink, watercolour and fine liners in both physical and digital art forms”.
Dream Studio.
Ethos.
Products & Services.
Our purpose is to inspire. We are on a mission to bring attention to undervalued meaningful topics using bright, appealing visuals that make you think deeply about the subject.
We base our quotes on a rough price list. These prices vary depending on the scale and ideology of the project and client.
Our vision is to change people’s perspectives and make them more aware of the world around them with simplistic and beautiful design. Our values are: to be honest, to truly see each other, to have empathy for one another, and be happy. We provide one-to-one conversations to completely understand and empathise with the needs of clients, we then analyse what we can do to help this project succeed, if we feel our values match your we apply the most necessary skills/creatives to the project to make the dream a reality. We track progress by measuring the impact the project has made on the targeted audience as well as the growth of the company, organisation, or campaign.
Our services can change from project to project, but this guide allows us to have a baseline. We provide a number of brand concept and brand identity services that may only be ideas or moodboarding. We can even offer the client a strategising session to find out what is best for the client, whether that is us or if we suggest a more fitting studio or creative to help fulfil their needs. Most of our outputs are publication based. We also provide photography and filming which can come into the social media branding. We can turn these into GIFs or short adverts. Illustrations and designed assets are other services we provide that can also fit into the branding of a company or campaign. We have listed all of these out in an understandable guide which we can then select from to compile a project quote from. Laid out are the services we provide and we have explained what is included in each. We have a cost at hand if the customer needs it and for the studios monthly budget. Alongside this is the maximum timescale for each task. This will come in useful when a project has a tight timeframe. These times may vary, as I provided a maximum time so we have a ‘worst case scenario’. If the work I provide is finished sooner, it does not lessen the charge of the project.
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Dream Studio.
Products & Services.
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Dream Studio.
Target Marget.
We aim to find the problems within undervalued groups. We can then figure out how to solve them. We will be focusing our side projects on three groups; mental health, invisible illnesses and chronic pain. We have selected these as we have connections within these sectors somehow and feel there are important issues that need highlighting and even solving if possible. Within mental health we find that people lack the confidence to talk to somebody. Finding someone to talk to, such as a counsellor, friend, support group. Finding away to make them not feel alone, there are many people suffering the same problems and we want to find a way playful design can make people realise it isn’t a dark, scary topic to talk about. We need to find a light hearted language, then more people will be more comfortable to speak up. We are finding more of the population have invisible illnesses of one form or another. There are many people suffering in silence. Being able to explain their illness to someone who doesn’t understand can be difficult. To feel validated and understood, you feel there is a need to explain yourself and prove you aren’t making it up. This can become tiresome and feel very isolating. Finding a way of explaining these illnesses so those who do not have to suffer with them could give relief to many chronic sufferers. To let them (and let others) understand that you can be young, successful, beautiful on the outside, and still have a life-altering disability that the world cannot always see. On the back of this, many invisible and chronic illnesses come with invisible pain. This chronic pain can be mentally grinding, as it is impossible to explain agonising
physical pain so someone that has been lucky enough not to have ever felt anything close. There is not a current pain scale where you can compare your personal pain to somebody else’s, as everyone tolerates pain differently. Designing a pain scale, where those with chronic pain can explain their current levels to a physician may give more validation and support, which could lead to better treatment. We can go onto sharing and designing coping mechanisms that can possibly help. Even distracting animations or fun GIFs that can give relief. Through the focused side projects we will be working on, whether they are self driven or briefs collaborated with campaigns, charities and companies, we aim to build a portfolio that will illustrate our beliefs. This will then draw in more projects which involve these, similar group, or projects which involve similar problems. We can begin by joining ongoing campaigns such as the recent ‘not every disability is visible’ campaign. To support the charity, campaign, and sufferers, we can design our own set of GIFs inspired by those affected. Make a set of poster zines and reach out to the charity and see if there is anything else we can design to help. Volunteering our design skills and time will hopefully allow us to grow the portfolio with issues we want to focus on.
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Dream Studio.
Target Marget.
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Dream Studio.
Market Research.
Marketing Stratergy.
There are hundreds of studios that we get inspiration from. Today, we can get inspiration from almost anything, however we feel there are a few creatives out there that we look up to. Hey Studio’s playful ethic, Josie Blue Molloy’s hands on approach to mark making, Camilla Engstrom creative process, and the Knot Collective’s inspiringly unique take on what design can be.
We have a specific ethos that we believe will be filling a gap in the design market. There are many designers, studios, and collectives that have aimed to touch on these ideologies; we aim to focus on them. To ensure we receive the client work with the same ideology as ours. We will initially start by working on side projects that follow our ethos. By making our own live briefs, finding design competitions, and volunteering for charities and organisations that fit, we can begin growing a portfolio. With this content to hand, we can begin reaching out to companies, clients, and campaigns.
We see our fellow creatives as colleagues not competition. We take notes from what they do and how they do it, and see how we can bring in some of that creativity into our work. We would love to collaborate on projects with other creatives, whether they are designers, ceramic artists, photographers, videographers. The creative industry link together in their ethos not their output. Competitor Analysis.
Our ethos may be very wide in the sense that we want to inspire, but we focus our projects into those that really do need our help and the awareness. This allows us to give back to work with these groups to find a creative way of helping or aiding them. We will be opening our own eyes to groups that need us and in turn showing them to the world, in a less terrifying way. We would like to work on projects and campaigns for large but unseen organisations such as Crohn’s and Colitis UK, Pain UK, or websites such as The Mighty. We stand out from most other studios, as nobody else has the aim to target these groups in the way we plan to.
Using social media as a main advertisement tool we will begin showing the creative industry what we believe and what we are doing to support it. Having a backbone in the creative network is vital, as today it is a matter of knowing people. Getting our name out there will be our largest hurdle that we can only successfully achieve with ethos, structure and content.
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Dream Studio.
Market Research.
Marketing Stratergy.
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Dream Studio.
Opperations & Logistiscs.
We will initially start from home, working long distance with the use of web tools, such as Appear In and Team View. At this phase we will still be setting up our portfolio. This will mostly consist of our side projects to create content. However, after we have gained at least 3 significant clients that share our ideologies, we would like to move into a space that we can physically collaborate in. Following our belief that “it is key for a freelance designer to have a structured creative support system in place to nurture the growth of a project”. For the location of the studio, we needed a convenient setup for both Sasha and Katie. We want to base ourselves between Portsmouth and Central London, with somewhere with easy access to the two locations. This will allow for a wider client base. Research has told us that it is not necessary to have a successful business within a city. However, it does help to make a stronger client to designer relationship if there is easy access to meet up face-to-face. Whilst in our ‘working from home’ phase we won’t be able to invite the client to meet us, we can always travel to the client. The professionalism of having a creative space where a client can see your working environment and you can invite them to join this space can make a large difference to the success of a project. With this in mind, we have begun looking a costs of studio and industrial spaces we can use in the Guildford and Godalming area. These ranged from £250 per month, to £600 for the size we would need.
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Dream Studio.
Running Costs.
Thinking ahead to the running costs of the physical studio once set up, we need some clear estimates to aim towards for us to successfully plan ahead. I have worked out the lowest and highest possibly costs. This is to indicate the cheapest we can possibly do it, compared the most we might need to pay. We have listed the monthly running costs for things we need for the physical studio. We have also analysed the items we will need to purchase for the initial setup of the studio. We can see there is a drastic difference in lowest and highest cost, but realistically we may find we will be sitting in the middle of these prices.
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Dream Studio.
Personal Survival Budget.
Financial Forecast.
Our personal survival budget is the amount of money we need each, to live off each month. From these minimum income costs we can pair together with the maximum monthly running costs to find out the minimum monthly income needed for us to survive in a worst case situation. We would need to bring in at least ÂŁ3865 per month to survive. Obviously we would want to develop the business, buy new equipment, personally save more money each, so we would need to be earning more a month than this.
With the data from our survival budget we can see what our monthly income needs to be. Before we start renting the studio space we would first have to make sure that we are making enough to make ends meet ourselves. I have put together some charts to predict the first year, compared to the second or third year, then again against our fifth year.
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Dream Studio. In our first year, we would need to work from home, whilst continuing our current jobs to bring in an income. During this time we will need to work overtime to build our portfolio. We may start doing small jobs to bring in some extra cash for the actual launch of our studio further down the line. We may launch our portfolio towards the end of the year, or wait until the second or third year depending on the extent of content.
The second or third year, when we decide we have enough clients and financial stability to rent a space, we will then dedicate all our time to this meaning a larger income. Starting a company though, we predict we will only just make ends meet. Some months will have more success than others, and some months we may dip into savings to get by.
By our fifth year, we feel we will be bringing in more clients and project, and getting a better name for ourselves. With success in our first few years, we would have been sharing lots of content over socials and collaborating with known brands, artists, and companies. We now use this opportunity to start developing further. Taking in work experience and interns to help educate and to help our company develop with fresher eyes. We would also like our collective to grow with numbers, people who feel would bring something to the team that follow our ideology and style.
Financial Forecast.
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Dream Studio.
Legal & IP Frameworks.
Copyright Is the right to a material. By being the designers, we automatically have the right to material by it being ours. However, unless made clear the the client and user of the designs, legislation may be impared. We have put together some legal documents that are to be used for every client, even for small jobs. These are to protect us and our work, as well as the client and their information. Freelance Design Contract - This is common for any freelance work to make the terms and conditions clear for all parties involved. This clarifies the work that will be produced, confidentiality on both parts, compensation, client approval, cancelation and the acceptance of terms. This document does not go into detail of the work being produced but the terms of the contract. Project quote - This document will go into detail of the client brief, what services are being offered and the time it will take to produce this work. Some clients may ask for a priced quote, this can be offered but it is made clear that costs can change as the project does through the process. The following is quoted, “As stated in the contract, “Client agrees to pay Dream Studio 50% of the total project cost before any services are provided, and the remaining 50% is to be paid before any workable files are delivered. If the parameters of the Work change, or if it involves more time than estimated, Dream Studio will inform Client and they can renegotiate the Work’s cost. Dream Studio is responsible for the payment of all federal, state, and/or local taxes with respect to the services he performs for the client as an independent contractor. The Client will not treat Dream Studio as an employee for any purpose.” To clarify all payments are non-refundable”
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Dream Studio.
Legal & IP Frameworks.
Back-Up Plan.
What if it doesn’t work? We have predicted a bright future for Dream Studio, however, some dreams change depending on fait. If things don’t seem to work out for the better, whether that is financial struggles, lack of clients, or loss of interest in any part of the set up, we feel it would be better to stick to working for ourselves freelance, and collaborating on projects when we can.
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Dream Studio.
Sasha Mitchell.