Planning and Figuring: Working my Way Through this Week’s Workshop Challenge
This week’s challenge was quite straight forward in comparison to the others so far. Long story short, we had to come up with a project – it could be anything – and calculate its cost. Since these four weeks are a build-up to a business plan, I thought it is sensible to link this week’s project with the “business idea” that I have and talked about last week.
The final outcomes for this week were:
- The writing of a project brief
- Calculate the total costings
- Draft an estimate – for yourself or ‘a client’
- If applicable, write down how the work is disturbed between your staff members.
So far, my business idea is to work as a sole trader, so I linked the last point with the outsourcing service that I would require.
The Project Idea
To put myself into ‘character’, I decided to give the project a bit of a backstory.
I am approached by a well-known talent management and events agency – BLOC 45*. Part of their business is talent scouting, so they are host an ‘open call’ for aspiring artists to send in demos, to which after a shortlisting, the selected artists will form the lineup of one of the events hosted by BLOC 45* in the upcoming season. So, they need someone to design the promotional material and some merchandise. Following a couple of meetings, we have decided on what they require and a list of specific merchandise items that they would like.
** BLOC45 is a fictitious company name
The whole point of this backstory was to give the project a context. It will also serve a bit like a starting point of how I can build my response to this week’s challenge.
Writing the Brief
The brief itself was not as challenging as it was time consuming. The longest part of this week’s challenge was the balance sheet, but that will come later. The tricky part for drafting the brief was to create a feasible timeline for such a project. I had to keep reminding myself that this was a hypothetical project, so I do not need to cater for the fact that I already work eight hours a day.
Whilst writing the timeline, I thought that I should take into consideration the turnover from the suppliers’ end – printing, deliveries and possible shipping if ordering from abroad. Of course, such information would not have been shared by the client. IN my limited experience working with clients, they would want that week to be deducted from the total price. They to do not realise that during that week or so, designers are with the phone to their cheeks, often chasing suppliers.
Putting Together an Estimate and the Dreaded Balance Sheet
This part was the trickiest for me. Pricing design is not that easy for it cannot be quantified. This topic is discussed a lot in the design community, including the University’s Ideas Wall. There are articles and books out there to guide you through this process, but ultimately one needs to find his or her way of how to do things. Unfortunately, it means that there can be a lot of trial and error.
First, I started scribbling everything on a notebook. I find it easier to concentrate when writing rather than typing and worked out a rough estimate for the whole project. Then came Microsoft Excel… Being a designer, I could not help it to format and edit some of the padding and spacing and stuff like that. I wasted a bit of time on that I admit… mowing things around, and unlike Indesign, it is not a question of drag-and-drop. However, following that hurdle, I eventually figured out the best way to lay out a balance sheet.
In Conclusion
I will be putting together all the work required for this week in one document where it would be “for internal use only”. Might as well stick with the theme now. The idea behind this document is to be a record of the process from start to end of any given project. It would probably be a system that I would use should I decide to go solo. By that time I would have figured balance sheets too… now where can I find a good accountant?
