Feedback

Questions about the name.
We disagree that the name is misleading because if someone was looking for graphic design, we would come up as a graphic design company.
If someone was to hear about us from 'word of mouth', people would get told we are a design company and would not question if we was or not when hearing the name.

An example of this is Johnny Cupcakes. When hearing about Johnny Cupcakes, no one disagrees and claims he sells cupcakes.

If we did have this problem however, we could always use... for example 'Barbered Graphic design'.

Female market?
The company ideally wants to target company without a 'Gender' for example, 'Sherlybox', a 'cloud' company, these companies do not have a gender behind them so it would not clash with our company.

The concept itself has the potential to be quite masculine, which was why the logo and branding was designed to specifically not be masculine, and more concentrate on a mix between traditional and modern design.

Confusion about pricing
I think it came across that we were only anticipating a total income of £28.50 an hour. I didn't make clear that we were expecting to have between 3 and 5 clients at a time, and the income would be £28.50 an hour per client.

The business comb idea is very creative and effective
We as a group are very proud of our business comb idea.

Things We Didn't Include

We're a limited liability company 
Because the numbers in the finances the company could be potentially involved with are quite high, we're not particularly comfortable with them having had no business experience. Picking this sort of company protects us against mistakes financially.

Having a barber working in the studio
One of the benefits behind having a larger, more expensive studio is that we could employ a barber to cut peoples hair in the shop window, with us taking the money made from this as company profit too. This would be very viable because of it being a student area, and having a cheap barber is an attractive proposition. This would also work as a gimmick to create awareness of the company.

Conclusion

I personally really enjoyed this project and feel as if it was a big success. I like the ideas and contribution I had within the team.

I believe I had a good strong group to begin with as we all get along and I also believe this paid off in our work.

Doing something like that would be a big possibility for me after leaving uni as I like the idea of starting from the bottom.

Overall I really enjoyed this task and feel our group gave a lot of effort to make it happen.

Barbered conclusion

The Barbered project (Jamie, Alex, Matthew, Ryan and Liam) was one of the highlights of this year for me. Our group worked really well together and took the task very seriously with an enjoyable attitude towards the task. I felt each of the members of the group was given the correct opportunity to play on their skills and we ending up teaching each other new skills along the module.

Barbered - Website by Jamie Smith

This is the decisions made for the Barbered website.

The Barbered website had to have a professional feel to it & clearly who the Barber / Graphic design concept.

To show the concept behind the way we worked, the website presents the designers in the same way a website will present barbers.

These are discarded designs to show this concept.

1)

2)

3)

To give our customers the 'Get to know your designer' experience, we all wrote a short paragraph which will be presented on the Barbered website.

This is a good example from Alex...

Before designing the website, I made a working online wireframe so the group could have an online feel of how the website works before actually being made.

This is the final Barbed website design made by me ( Jamie Smith ).
The website is a single scrolling site that has a barbers look to it, however when scrolling down, the look changes into a graphic design website.

These are the website mockups.

1) Home page mockup.
This show off our logo, navigation and 'who we are', as we feel its important to personally engage with our clients.

2) The team.
This shows the designers working for Barbered.
We also added some personal information about us to engage with client on a friendly / personal level as well as a professional level.

4) Work.
Our best work / most recent will be on the front page, with links to additional work.

5) Contact.
It is very important that our contact details are clear so clients / potential clients can get in touch.

6) Blog.
Our company will have a blog so clients can get up to date with our company and work. This will also show off our work to potential clients.

7) Where we are.
A 'clickable' map will be at the bottom of our site for clients to see where we are located.

Social Media mockups

Ryan was given the task to photograph us for the website and also to mock up our company on possible social medias.

Twitter

Twitter is one of the many platforms our company will use.
This social media allows clients to interact well with the clients.

Facebook

Facebook also allows clients to interact well with the clients.
The platform is used by all ages and almost everyone in the working age.

Possible headers 

Barbed finance by Matthew

Conversation

I'm looking at the finances atm, would people rather me budget in a £25,000 a year salary per person, or would we rather split the profit at the end? Personally I think it'll be better for a salary because then we'll be able to see how much cash the company will have left after a year, and it gives us a figure to use to work our growth and stuff like that.

My reply

Yes salary. Probably like 22k though. Numiko only pay 21 for juniors.


Barbed location by Matthew

We discussed yesterday that we think we'd like the company to be based somewhere around the edge of Leeds, with Headingley being a favourite because of how it's a student area and has a lively atmosphere about it because of this.

Given that the concept of the company is based around a barbers shop, a regular office in a big corporate tower block wouldn't be suitable, we'd need a shop style space on a main road so we can show of the decorating, and this is going to cost more. We don't see this as a problem though, as the concept of the company will attract business and make the extra money worth spending

We'd be based at Granby House on Otley Road

The rent is £12.50 per square foot per annum. Based on there being 5 of us that will be working predominantly on computers at desks which doesn't require too much room, and a fairly large meeting area to talk to clients in, based on this guide I found on the internet, 1000 square feet should be plenty.

This means the yearly cost would be £12,500. Whilst this is more than is necessary for a regular office, we think that it would be worth paying the extra money for a perfect office. I set up this spreadsheet for working out costs.

We decided to budget it a £21,000 salary each, which is based on Numiko's salaries. We'd only need one Mac as 4 out of the 5 of us already own one. We decided not to factor in travel and food costs as we feel that's something that we should pay for individually rather than out of the company, especially given that we've allocated a salary each.

Given that we've got about £10,500 costs per month and that income isn't going to be consistent, I based the hourly rate on trying to earn £20,000 a month, as this gives us plenty of room to turn a profit even if we're not working at full capacity. This correlates to an hourly charge of £28.50. Charging this relates to a yearly income of about £230,000 based on 46 working weeks, as according to the governments website:

Going back to the problem that business and cashflow is unlikely to be constant, assuming that we're working at least two thirds capacity all the time (which is very achievable), our income will be about £153,000 leaving a minimum profit of roughly £27,500.

The company would be a limited company as this protects us personality more from any issues that would arise if the company were to fail.

Business combs idea

As a group we thought it would be a very unique idea to have 'Business combs', instead of business cards.

This image shows our initial mockup of how thew will look.

The initial idea for our business combs is that they will be double sided, one with the name / information of the designer. The other side will show the name / information about the company.

This is the mockup of my business comb.

We changed the text alignment of the combs so they was on a line, this is because we will be laser cutting our designs onto wood, so we didn't want any thing to go wrong as we was on a short timescale to get them made.

This is the first business comb we had made. Everything went right apart from the name was not that readable.

Photography our business combs in concept.

We reprinted our business combs out again with a deeper text engrave to increase readability. 

Final design so far... 

One side, not printed on the back.

Closer shot.

I (Jamie) tested is the combs stand.
As the stand, this is a plus as it increase the ways in which it can be viewed.

I (Jamie) tested is the combs stand.
As the stand, this is a plus as it increase the ways in which it can be viewed.

Change

As we did not know how to print both sides on the laser cutter, we had to change the design so it is a one sided design.

This is a shot of the combs before the design was removed out of the wood. 

More photos of the combs.

One lot of everyones combs.

Macro shot of our logo in the wood.

Macro shot of our logo in the wood.

Samples for my product

Illustrations by Liam Bailey

As we knew we was presenting our business concept.
We gave our main illustrator 'Liam', the job to illustrate how we want our shop front.

This is the first shop front design.

This is a basic idea of how it will look, however its a bit 'too' simple.

This is our logo as a shop sign however its too simple.

Shop front development.

Final shop front design.

Based on tradition barbers and mixing them with graphic designers, Liam created each of use a personal illustrated character which could be used to digitally present us.

Final character illustrations.

My job to Liam

As I (Jamie) was in charge of making the Barbered website and Liam was in charge of illustration, I gave Liam a little job to design some icons for the website. (Iconography).

He created the icons using the logo as influence.

Shape guide made from the logo.

Icons being made.

Initial icons.

Final icons.