The Creative Industries

In this session we were taught all about the creative industries and industry sectors that are available. We were given a brief that we have to work in groups to produce a business proposal, so this information is definitely very important for us to know.

Industry Sectors

• Goods producing segment of economy
• An area where businesses share the same product
• An industry sharing common characteristics
• 4 key sectors

Primary Sector

Primary sectors harvest goods that are natural

Secondary Sector

The secondary sector of economy manufactured goods

Tertiary Sector

Service industry, retail and wholesalers, transportation

Quaternary Sector

Government, culture, education, research - intellectual activities

Sectors are there to look, plan, predict where opportunities are in the industry.

The Service Industries

An industry made up of companies/organisations which make money by providing intangible things or services.

Public Sector

Police, military, public roads, transport, primary/secondary education.

• Free on the point of delivery
• Don't pay directly, you pay via taxes etc.
• Benefit to society
• support social structures
• Equal opportunity etc.

Private Sector

Run by companies for profit

• Money is privately generated and stays private
• Not state controlled
• It's delivered for profit

Third Sector

Voluntary or not-for-profit sectors

• exist between business and government
• there to generate money but not for profit

Service Industries

• Creatibe
• Education
• Hotels and Restaurants
• Financial and Business
• Public admin and Defence
• Real Estate
• Tourism
• Transport and Storage

• 213,500 designers are generating £13.8 billion in annual turnover
• 67% designers are under 40
• 31% of design businesses are in London
• 59% of design companies employ fewer than 5 people
• Over 58% of UK design businesses work in communication, digital and multimedia design.

There are 3 main types of companies working in the creative industries

• Design studios
• In house creative teams
• Freelance practitioners

Creative Industries

• The Design Council
• The Arts Council
• The British Council
• Creative England
• Creative & Cultural Skills
• Creative Coalition
• Campaign
• Young Creative Networks
• The AOI
• D&AD

What Is Illustration?

In this session, we spoke about 'What is illustration?', 'What can illustration be?'. As a class we debated about what it could be, where it is etc. We wrote lists of these and it is quite surprising how it can be so many different things. 

Illustration - Communication/problem solving

The context of illustration in the creative industries:

• Publishing and Book Design
• Editorial and Reportage
• Character and Narrative
• Product and Packaging
• Retail and Merchandise
• Object and Environment

Training - focuses on finding the right answer.

Education - focuses on asking the right question.

Brief Box

I have been researching more short briefs that i can do for this brief and i have come across Brief Box. This website has a lot of short briefs that look really fun to do. I have put a few examples of the ones i like here.

Threadless

I am still on the hunt for different briefs for this module and i have come across threadless, we you send in a design for a T-shirt and if they like it, they sell the t-shirt's online.

This will be  a really good short brief for me to use in this module as it could be something i could fit in around all my other work.

Twilight Lecture - Story and Archetypes

In this lecture that we had, we were taught about the seven different archetypes in stories. We learnt how important stories are and how they have been used for hundreds and thousands of years, all the way back to cave paintings. 

We started by watching the John Lewis advert for 2015, readings critic reviews and seeing how each year, they create a different advert, basically telling exactly the same story.

• Cover song of a classic
• Using tear jerker stories to create emotion and pull on people's heart strings.
• Dont advertise loads of products, they will include one, insignificant product i.e. alarm clock 

Mistakes are good,, if someone hates your work, someone love it

Tom Gauld

We were then shown the seven basic archetypes in stories, each with an example.

• Rags to riches
• Tragedy
• Overcoming the monster
• The Quest
• Comedy
• Voyage & return
• Comedy

I really enjoyed this lecture, i think i learnt quite a lot about the different archetypes and this would also help a lot if i decide to do the Shutterstock brief as part of this module.

Illustrating A Children's Book

I have recently been talking to someone i know who has now written and published a few books. He has asked me to illustrate things for him in the past but up until now, i have not been able too. After speaking recently on the phone, he is now going to write a children's book with the intention of possibly publishing it in the near future.

I have asked him to send me a brief including what he is writing, what illustrations he would like, how many, what format and a deadline etc. 

Hopefully, i can start on this and potentially it could be my substantial brief for this module, which is really exciting.

Possible Small Briefs

With our brief stating that we need to include one significant brief or competition and two smaller ones, i have been trying to look for good smaller briefs or competitions i could possibly do.

I came across the site called illustrationfriday.com, where each week there is a different topic for people to illustrate and submit for that friday as a competition.

I think this will be a great competition/challenge to do, as you have only a space of a week to create something, which will test how good you can perform under pressure and plus, it is really light hearted and fun.

Briefs

As this module is asking us to partake in 3 different live briefs and/or competitions, i have started researching some briefs that are currently out there.

I found one competition brief on DandAD from a company called Shutterstock. 

I really like this brief as it asks us to pick 3 out of the 7 archetypes for stories and either create moving or still images to go with them, telling the story, working as both a set and individually. There is no target audience, which leaves a lot of room to work with. Plus, i think this is a great brief for an Illustration student as the brief is full of narrative, which we have to show in our outcomes.

Responsive - Analysing A Brief

In this session we looked at two competition briefs from last year, we were in groups and were asked to highlight what we thought was important and analyse each brief.

the majority of the class said that they would refer to choose this brief as it is for a good cause etc. except there was still a few problems that we found with the brief, the brief was very open, there wasn't much direction, so it could literally be anything.

A lot of people said they wouldn't have chosen the BBC brief for a few different reasons. The brief is very open and not very specific, this leads us to thinking, do they know what they want? what about BBC3? isn't that the channel for 'younger' people?

Zine

I have now redefined my drawings for my zine and have scanned them into Photoshop and cleaned them up.

I have found a few tips on doing it easily.

First i imported the scans and i duplicated the layer so whatever i did i could revert to the original at any point, i did this by double clicking on the layer name and renaming it to unlock the layer. I then held Shift and dragged the layer to duplicate it.

These are the values i used in the end, they are what worked best for my scans.

I then adjusted the levels, making the black, blacker and the white, whiter. This cleaned up a lot of the image making the paper grain and colour anomalies disappear.

I then changed the threshold to make it even clearer

After I changed the levels and the threshold, i just had to clean up the last bits of dirt/pen that was left on the images, and i decided to use a few different tools, the rubber tool ended up working the best as i could go right up to then lines without distorting the colour.