Melbounreid Podcast 2

The second, highly anticipated, Melbourneid Podcast is now online. The topic is Design Strategy. Next weeks episode topic will be sex and design.

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Link Sharing 2

A few useful links to browse through.

Sproutwire – An Aggregate site of small business information and articles.

Designer Gas Masks – What the?!?!?! Cool, But a bit creepy.

Engadget – For all your gadget & tech information needs!

Carl Jones Interview – Check out the interview with Carl Jones on thedesignfiles – he is definately one of Melbourne’s up and coming Designers.

Smart Company – An Australian Web Magazine for Entrepreneurs & SME’s (thats Small & Medium enterprises)

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Tags: design,

Melbounreid Podcast

The first Melbounreid Podcast is finally up! The topic is design identity.

check it out

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Keeping It Simple

KISS or Keep It Simple Stupid is one thing that all designers, especially students (including myself from time to time) struggle with. Especially when dealing with new technologies. More often than not designers get so caught up integrating new technologies and features that they forget about the user and the fact that, in reality, every design needs to be straight forward and simple so that people can use it easily. The below image is one that I think demonstrates the need for simplicity in design and how successful it can make that design.

– A WordPress I/O Problem means I can’t upload the image so here is a link to it –

Via Uniquely the Epitome

Book of the Post: Designers Are Wankers – Lee McCormack

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Business Planning: Just after the Spark.

When you have a great idea and want to start your own business the first question is of course – Where do I begin?

This is the question when I first started looking into starting my own business and I’m currently about half way through getting my business off the ground.

So I guess you’re thinking ,ok thats great for you that you’re half way through setting something up, but where should I start?

The beginning of any business is of course an idea. Once you have this spark of inspiration you want to make sure its something that you think you can pursue. So its research time! At this stage it doesn’t have to be hardcore documented research. Its more like putting your feelers out there and evaluating, post the spark of inspiration (at which point you are probably thinking you are definitely going to make a million out of this one), whether you think this idea is initially worth pursuing. Things like talking to a close friend or family member and doing a quick Google search are pretty helpful at this stage to figure out whats going on in the industry your idea is related to. For example if you are thinking of doing an online flower pot business then get on Google and look up flower pots. Then chat to a friend or family member about your idea and they will probably say “oh so and so does something like that, have a look at what they are doing”. If you have got your idea past this stage the next stage is sounding out draft of a business plan.

Why do a business plan you say my idea is so great that I can just start selling my flower pots (or doing whatever it is your great idea is)….

the truth here is that by doing a quick and dirty draft of a business plan you get a much better idea of whether your idea is actually robust and how viable it really is. A business plan, even a quick and dirty(Q&D) one, is going to tell you straight away how robust your “spark of inspiration” really is. If done properly & honestly it is going to force you into having a good hard think about your business idea and help you make it a success

The basic areas that I cover in a Q&D Biz plan are:

Company purpose – make this a single sentence that says, clearly & plainly – no technical jargon, what your business is all about.

Problem – what is the problem of the customer? how does the customer addresses this issue today?

Solution – what is your company’s value proposition to make the customer’s life better? I often use “customer case studie” to demonstrate this.

Why Now – What is the historical evolution of your category? Are there any recent trends that make your solution possible?

Market size – identify your customer, what is the total available market? What Share of market will you hold?

Competition – Who are your competition? How will they react to you entering the market? Figure out & list your competitive advantage

Product – Describe your product line (form factor, functionality, features, architecture, intellectual property), outline a product development roadmap.

Business Model – The revenue model you will use, the avenues of revenue for your business, account size, sales & distribution model, Customer list

Team – Who makes up your management team? What expertise/experience do they have?

Financials – Profit & Loss statement, balance sheet, cash flow statement

By using the above areas to do a Q&D Biz plan you will gain a much better grounding for further development of it & your business. It will also help you break down many of your assumptions as you will have to start to do more research into the industry your idea sits within.

Some good resources for furthering your Q&D Biz plan are:

Business Victoria

Plan to Succeed (PDF) – Buisness Plan writing Tool

How do I write a Business Plan

Business Plan Definition Wikipedia

Starting a Business

Book of the Post: Rich Dad, Poor Dad

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slackness

I have been pretty slack with this blog again, despite what I said a few posts ago about trying to put more effort into it. But everyone knows how it gets, you get caught up with work, study & socialising and the peripheral things get pushed to the side. I have been particularly busy with a reasonable amount of business development work and a bit of uni stuff on the side.

Ah, whats that I hear people say…”that doesn’t sound busy”…. however the business dev takes up a huge amount of time & I have also been putting working with an industrial design friend of mine to put together Melbounre id podcasts – which was conceived deep down an alleyway, as an online resource and networking site of the Industrial Design community. Although there is currently nothing on the site, the first Podcast will be out later on this week as there have been a few hiccups along the way and there should be new content and podcasts on a weekly basis.

On the business dev. side of things here are a few links to check out until I get off my arse to write some more about putting together a business.

Biz Victoria

Biz Planning

Also a new segment that I am adding to my posts: Read of the post (I would like it to be read of the week however with my track record on posting I think “of the week” would be a bit too optimistic) which is a book that I feel is worthwhile reading.

Read of the Post: Guns, Germs & Steel – Jared Diamond

thats all for this post

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link sharing

A bunch of interesting/useful links.

Sea Slug brain Implant – science article on BBC

Questioning the Cult of the Sketch – Article on design sketching

The Perfect Portfolio – Digital Web

Etch A Sketch Clock – on engadget

How to name your Company – Vitamin article

enjoy

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How To: Create funky Target Circles in Illustrator

This is a quick How To on creating the funky circles in that appeared in my last post (I figured I would start with something simple as this is my first attempt at a tutorial/how to.)

*Note: click on the images to see them full size.

There are two methods you can use to effectively create these circles.

The first is to just create circles using Illustrator’s circle tool & place them on top of one another.

In this example I have created 3 circles of varying sizes and aligned them using Illustrators “Vertical Align Center” Tool.

I then placed them on top of one another by selecting them all & using the “Horizontal Align Center” Tool.

The Second Method, allows the background to be seen in between the rings is to create the circles using “subtract from shape area” tool.

So again create at least two circles. Align them using the “Vertical Align Center” Tool and “Horizontal Align Center” Tool, Select both circles and use the “subtract from shape area” tool. There should now be a ring and if you place another shape (of a different color) behind it you will be able to see that color in the center of the ring.

Now either create another circle with the same color ring or copy the ring and use the “paste in front” tool. Now scale the selected ring while holding the Shift & Option button on the Mac (I’m not sure what this is on a Windows machine).

Using a combination of these techniques it is easy to quickly create many different target circles of varying sizes, colours & appearance.

just something I put together

Was at a loose end last night so created this poster to fill in the time!

four months of silence ended!!!

This is the first time in months (actually 4 months) that I have actually looked at & updated my blog! I have been rather slack (surprisingly though endsig is averaging around 12 hits a day, mostly from Google searches, which is interesting _ oh why haven’t i put google ads on! myabe I might have made some mula) with it as I haven’t had a lot to write (wait I lie I have had a reasonable amount to write about but I have been slack and plus I have had sparodic net access over those four months), however with my last year of uni starting soon (I have to choose my electives this coming Tuesday) I have decided that I should start writing again.

So I suppose the question is: what has happened since my last post?

1. I finished my semster in China! The semester really opened my mind & my eyes. I discovered a lot about China, Chinese Design, Chinese Business, myself & my fellow exchange students!

2. I traveled from Foshan to Chengdu(stayed at Sims cozy Guesthouse, now Sims Cozy Garden Hostel as they have moved), Emei (stayed in the teddy bear hotel), Emei Shan (3 days on Mt Emei (Emei Shan) with one of the other exchange students and a random Chinese Engineer, stayed in a couple of monasteries), Beijing (I stayed in Leo Hostel & met up with my GF here), Hangzhou, Shanghai (Mingtown Hiker Hostel) and then back to Foshan, where we splashed out on a bit of luxury accommodation – the Foshan Hotel (soon to be re branded, however I can’t remember what the new brand will be).

3. Hong Kong for a a week (myself & my GF both ended up getting sick which of course sucked. Although acquired a nice shiny new iPhone, linked for anyone who has been living in a cave)

4. South Island, New Zealand, for a month (Check out Koromiko Homestead & Marlborough Classic Motoring. The first is B&B accommodation. Incidentally I designed their logo(below)! The second is a Classic Car Hire company, which is awesome if, like me you want to drive a 1930s to 50s classic sports car!)

5. I’m currently busy putting the finishing touches to my proposal for my final year project, creating a GANTT Chart for it & setting up my own design consultancy (more on all this in later posts).

So in the coming year I am planning on devoting a substantially more time to this blog.

I am aiming to upgrade & redesign the horrible WordPress template, tie it into my new business ventures & uni projects and then of course add a lot more useful content for you (my readers), such as:

1. A series on starting your own business in Australia

2. Articles on China & doing business & Uni in China

3. Various tutorials on Software I am using and also learning (Adobe suite products – mostly illustrator & InDesign, Solidworks, Modo, Maxwell Render Studio)

4. Anything that I think might be of interest to you (my readers, who are hopefully still kicking around after my months of silence) \

So to keep up with all this subscribe to my RSS Feed or if you have any comments, suggestions or questions you can email me at endsig [at] gmail [dot] com

heres to a successful & busy 2008.

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