thoughts on the presentation

soo we had a talk with Linnea over how the project hhas manifested itself so far. she highlighted the fact that the protfolio website/social network idea is good and it is something that the college is in the market for. this was reassuring although she did note that with the scale of the group she was expecting to see much more. it was clear that she thought the T-shirt mini business was much better as it was actually making money, but i think it all comes down to us estimating our company, the third nexus, making way more than it actually will. so the outcome was to keep rolling out the T-shirts and to continue working on the website but mainly as a consultancy position. so we would do all the groundwork in research, design and what not then we sell the layout and model to the college when they have funding. this way we make a quick earn and the project is released from our hands and will not tie us up when looking for jobs. the other suggestion was to create a small tight wespace of invite only so as to stay in contact with close professional friends, but the space can be used aswell for promotion.

i feel that the presentation was far too informal and did not give the opportunity for the group to properly present their findings and also for them to plot their progress. but the other thing is that the presentation was not marked so we can use it as simple guidance to inform the end of project report.

fahrans poster

i thought i would include this, THIS IS NOT MY WORK, this poster was produced by fahran and i think it sums up our project quite nicely. it shows the design for the T-shirt and also includes the link back to our company the third nexus.

(although the price on the shirts is going up to £10 to make the business venture a bit more viable)

onwards

so designs were chosen and Jill loved it. just to make clear it was Chris Caldows design that was chosen and he did a great job of using the penrose to make a great t-shirt.

pricing and printing is being looked into by finance, ben and hayley. all is coming on great but we do need to hurry up as there is not long now until the presentation.

presentation prep

so carlos wanted each member to collect all of their findings into 1 written document so that it would be easier for him to collate the information and produce a well informed presentation that encompasses everyone's contributions.

so after collecting all of my information it came to around 6 pages of A4, so to make things easier for Carlos i managed to condense my most important findings, then he could reference back to the other long winded document to obtain more detail.

Domain name and Copyright

we were aware of domain name copyright and as such was the deciding factor over our companies name. Company name and Domain name needed to be similar if not the same in order to avoid customer confusion.

We must be aware of copyright infringement and ensure that all work shown on the website is the property of the respective user.

Trademark infringement-

must ensure that our domain name, company name, logo and colour scheme is not too similar to other companies as this will again cause confusion to the consumer. In short customers may confuse our company as being part of another company. This is trademark infringement and can result in devastating legal battles, in which companies can face removal of their online presence and forced closure. Although it can go the other way if the defendant proves that they are not in breech of the law.

Possible disclaimers

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Becoming a sole trader

Set-up

You need to register as self-employed with HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC).

Management and raising finance

You make all the decisions on how to manage your business.

You raise money for the business out of your own assets and/or with loans from banks or other lenders.

Records and accounts

You must:

• make an annual Self Assessment tax return to HMRC

• keep records showing your business income and expenses

Profits

Any profits go to you.

Tax and National Insurance

As you are self-employed:

• your profits are taxed as income

• you pay fixed-rate Class 2 National Insurance contributions (NICs) regardless of any profits you make

• you pay Class 4 NICs on any profits

Liability

As a sole trader, you are personally responsible for any debts run up by your business. This means your home or other assets may be at risk if your business runs into trouble.

Why should we be a sole trader?

Being a sole trader is the simplest way to run a business - it does not involve paying any registration fees, keeping records and accounts is straightforward, and you get to keep all the profits. However, you are personally liable for any debts that your business runs up, which make this a risky option for businesses that need a lot of investment.

It will provide an easy exit strategy as no fees are paid to the government for registering as a company, the only issue would be dependant upon your next employment and then notifying the government of the income that you receive and how it should be taxed.

Tax and National insurance

we should not have any problems unless our income is better than expected.

design

so here is my shirt, it is not at all what i wanted to do but with the restriction of time i thought it was better to have something rather than nothing.

penrose

so i did a little bit of light reading into the penrose pattern and what it actually is in the hope of informing my design. so its extremely complex and mathematical and thats about as far as i went after discovering how complex the algorithms are for creating the pattern i decided to hunt for reference photos of ravensbourne and work with that. in doing so i found a design by the company that created the mosaic and worked with that. i tried cutting and rotating the shapes but ended up at a loss as the source image is low resolution so it pixelates with ease. so all the cutting and cropping of the pattern endede up extremely messy.

so my next step was to take the logo into maya and build a 3D logo based on the designs. this all went relatively well apart from a slight innacuracy with the model but i was able to produce an interesting piece. the problem was that the 3D image just didnt work on a T-shirt and i was back to square one.

meeting with Jill Hogan

so so so we met and once again the whole group was not present but with the number we did have we were able to compare designs and prepare for the meeting which was much later at 4:30.

i did mention that it would be helpful if we showed the designs to students to see whether the designs we were producing were actually liked. but this did not happen as we all cracked on with doing work for our final major project until the meeting.

the meeting was quick but very good in terms of information. we spoke about the website, and were pointed in the direction of Lizzie Jackson who was in the process of looking into such a tool for website and would be interested in hearing what the students wanted.

in terms of the t-shirt designs none of our designs were usable as we were hit with a brick wall of conditions surrounding the ravensbourne brand and logo. but Jill was very helpful and made sure that we understood all of the terms.

so we were unable to touch the ravensbourne logo and any text had to be in a specific font. there are rules surrounding any text near to the logo. so basically we were advised to ignore the logo and keep it on the t-shirt but to think of how we could use the penrose pattern in an imaginative way. so we went away and looked up the college terms on how to use the brand and began work.

with the intention of having more refined and usable designs by the end of the week

shirts

so after the decision to make money by selling rave shirts, we needed that official stamp so a few of us went ahead and made some quick designs to see if the college liked them.

i personally like the bottom right one that has the vertical rave text. i like the idea of the graphic fire but i havnt been able to get the result that i wanted.

as we are intending to do official rave t-shirts i began by thinking of using the current ravensbourne logo but found it too restricting.

college

so its been very very difficult this week to get the whole group together, on 2 occasions part of the group met and decisions were not made as the group leader, Carlos, was reluctant to make decisions without the entire group being there, i can understand his point of view 100% but at the same time actions such as this are slowing down the projects production.

the plan to make t-shirts was generally agreed upon when i discovered a part of the brief which states and I quote: "There has to be actual trade- money switching hands or procurement agreement (/contract) signed- before summative assessment"

It took some discussions via facebook to get a general agreement by all and then the plan was set in motion.

i have personally been urging individuals to push their work forward and feel that if i hadn't intervened with the T-shirt plan then the group would not have reached that stage.

so i have been reminding carlos every week to get in contact with Jill Hogan to discuss the prospect of having a college portfolio/social network site. time is pressing on but he must be involved in this process.

this conversation was overheard by Tara and Hayley and they arranged a meeting with jill hogan. this meeting will double up as an opportunity to discuss the ravensbourne t-shirt aswell.