"The Apprentice" Workshop - 1/12/2016

In this workshop we had learned to see how we can make money by creating and selling a product under a strict budget. This task helps us to inform our business and marketing experience/strategy, as we are creative people who would be looking to sell original products to the market, whether they will be prints, shirts, or illustrated items.

As a group of 6, we each donate £1 to our group budget, totalling £6. To begin the task we analysed the potential products that we think we could create that will enable us to ‘profit’ from the limited resources we have. T-shirts with printed illustrations was something we all kind of agreed towards, as the market for it is quite big and relevant in the industry. We begin by splitting into 2 groups: the research team and the product team. The research team, consisting of 2 people, will look online for prices and other potential products that we could go forward with. The other team, consisting of 4 people (including me), go out into town to seek out products that we could buy within our budget that will help us forge the final product we are aiming to make.

Researching

Myself and 3 other classmates, head out to stores such as Primark, Wilko and Poundland to seek out T-shirts that are relatively cheap within our budget range. It was not that difficult as we stumble a few good deals in t-shirts, some ranging from £2 per coloured shirt, while there are packs of shirts (mostly 3 shirts) for the price of £3.50 in Primark. While we are at the store we contacted the others who are back at the studio to see if they were to agree with buying them. They agreed although they also suggested into looking for materials for another potential product we could make and that is paper lamps. This is a backup plan, which I think is a good idea, just in case if we were to fail or to unsuccessfully produce the printed shirts, as that will be time consuming for the setup and the usage of the screen printing machinery.

We headed out to other stores such as Tiger and WHS Smith, as well as revisiting Wilko to seek out paper materials and electronic items that will aid with the construction of the paper lamps. We remained in contact with the other group while on the lookout and we regroup with the others to discuss further.

Looking into Wilko and Tiger for ideas on prices.

With the knowledge of what we have discovered from each of us, we decided that we are to create paper lamps as our final product, as we came to the conclusion that T-shirts will take a lot of time to produce, especially multi-coloured illustrations for printing. Plus, T-shirts are very common when it comes to creating items for the market/industry and we all feel that creating paper origami lamps are more innovative than shirts.

Production

We then proceed with buying the items that will forge our paper lamps. We discovered LED tea lights which only costs 50p at Wilko and bought 4, totalling £2 from our budget, which is pretty good for its price, however, the light it generates wasn’t strong enough for the light to shine through the paper. We return 1 back to the store (getting the 50p back to our budget) and use the remaining amount to purchase fairy lights (costing £2.50) and coloured sugar paper (£1).

With the materials gathered, we begin with the production of the paper lamp shaped origamis. We created multiple origamis to see which ones would fit in the best with the lights, all ranging from different sizes. There were some difficulty in terms of construction, as most turn out not as great due to the lack of experience in paper crafting. Most of my attempts failed due to some of the complex step by step tutorials which were kind of hard for me to follow. We tried to avoid the easier origamis as they tend to be flat, while the more harder ones are more blocky and 3D, which would fit nicely over the lights with its shapes/design.

Our Origami paper lamps. Prototypes ranging from various sizes.

Our business plan highlighting our target audience, production/material costs and selling prices for our products.

Other groups’ final products for the workshops task. Hand printed Christmas cards and custom sketchbook covers.

In conclusion to the overall experience, I was surprised with the amount of good group work we had put in. Personally, this is perhaps the best group work I have done and to be involved in, as there was actual progression. The task does help us to understand how we could work under a budget, especially for creative people like us in the industry, as we often promote our work/craftsmanship to the market.