Unit 24: Part II - Be able to manage own contracts

I have been tasked with submitting a quote to a client using DesignCrowd. This is a live project that i am currently undergoing to see if i can be accepted to create this website. Here is the brief:

Here is my application form:

This is the whole quote that i have submitted. It includes my previous work to show the client what i am capable of, my pitch, which is basically selling myself to the client, and finally my conditions for things such as travelling/accomodation costs and to be given a good amount of time to finish the project. Things such as phone bills there should be no problem, although with the client being in a foreign country i might need to require to use a program such as Skype to keep the costs down. And also i have lowered the price of the quote to $750 

Unit 39 - Undertake Image Asset Management

When you are using images, you first need to check if that particular image has any copyright attached to it. If it does have copyright attached to it, it cannot be used unless you contact the owner of the image.
Colour management is used to simplify the reproduction and exchange and reproduction of images for all variations of industries. Some methods for storing the original copies of work include

• producing uncompressed copies of the original work
• make the work read only when it is finally done so it is protected from any one editing the material
• back up the master copies into another more secure location. 

Other examples of a business that use image asset management would be the advertising industry, as the adverts that they create normally require multiple images for it to function correctly as an advertisement.
To keep control of your physical printed images and keep the protected from any unwanted damage, you could do a number of things such as

• putting protective material over the image such as wallets or if there are lots of them use a box etc
• if they are being carried around by employees/couriers etc, you should require that they could wear gloves or advise them to handle the documents carefully.

To keep the quality of the image intact when carrying out adjustments etc you should make sure to separate the copies from the originals and try not to destroy any important parts of the work that are needed.  In order to make sure that the colour management is in line with the particular requirements you should regularly check the images every now and again throughout the whole process to ensure that the quality is still as good as it can be. Before you assign colour profiles to images you need to make sure that you know all of the procedures that your organisation takes out with the colour profiles as if you dont there could be consequences.
If you want to organise your images correctly to ensure the most quality, you should:

• use labels to identify the best images to store so that you know the unlabelled images can be used for general use or cast aside
• use keywords/captions on images so that you can identify each image with the date/colour used/copyright/contact info etc if needed

To control the use of images you should

• Use a company logo to claim the image 
• Use copyright on the image
• Hold records of anyone using the image
• Archive the image to show it is in the right hands

To ensure protection of the images from things like the environment etc you should

• Have multiple copies of the images
• Back the images up on another directory, if on the internet, make sure it is secured (firewall etc)
• Have the original data in a secure place that only a select amount of people know where it is
• Record where you put everything so you can cover your tracks if you happen to lose anything or just need evidence that the image is yours.

The main aspect of legislation of image asset management is copyright infringement.
The main aspect of health and safety are the policies in the particular company that identify the hazards in your place of work.
If you use any particular image, you need to make sure that the image you are going to use abides by all of the guidelines and laws such as copyright infringement or personal/classified information and also the use of children/different races.

Unit 27 - 2D Animation for Interactive Media Products

2D animation is most commonly created using Adobe Flash but other programs can be used swell. Flash animation are saved in .swf format. Flash animation is a certain type of movement and visual style using circles. Flash animation can be used for almost anything, from websites to television programs. One website that uses flash animation for websites is a site called wix.com, which creates a variety of pages of your choosing that inserts in flash animation automatically with your certain preferences. The only problem with flash animation is the file format, being a very complex format, makes whatever it is being used in much slower to load as it takes longer to process everything in a .swf file.
I have used wix.com to create a small promotional page for my Facebook home page, this is situated at www.facebook.com/danielmackenziedesigns.
Flash is quite easy to use, but to master it you need to take a lot of time figuring all of the parts of flash out as there are so many things to do on it. For instance you have to first sort out the FPS (frames per second) of the design, the higher the value of FPS the smoother it will be (and also the file size will start to get higher as there are more frames to process) then you can put the images/text in and start creating your design using the tweens and key frames (there are 2 tweens, shape and motion. Motion controls movement, shape controls the structure of the object and the motion of the object at the same time.)
When you save a flash animation, it has to be in the .swf format otherwise it is not going to work and save the file appropriately to what the design is for.

Unit 24 - Manage and market own freelance services

To get your own freelance services out in to the public eye, you need to make some sort of effort to get the best opportunity. There are 7 qualities you need to take note of, these are:

• Use business cards to their full potential
• Create an online portfolio
• Market yourself with mailer postcards
• Think about who you're target audience is
• Follow a rigid marketing strategy
• While pitching, show that you are focussed on thinking of the client more than yourself
• Be persistent

Business Cards

Business cards are essentially the most important item to get your work into the public eye. They are good because if done well, they can give all of the details needed for someone to contact you (e-mail,number, website, mailing address etc) but do not rely on just an e-mail address on to the business card as your clients will wipe off the emails and you would lose out on a potential job offer. To get the most out of your business card, you should:

• Make sure that it is clean and easy to read (not full of words and pictures as this will definitely put a client off working with you) as the best presented cards will most likely take a better priority over others that aren't as well presented.
• Print lots of cards (thousands if necessary as they are really cheap to make) as you do not want to find that you have ran out as you could easily lose a job offer from forgetting a card as the client has no details to contact you with and might see you as a forgetful person or unreliable. 
• Don't be afraid to just hand out cards to people who are not particularly in the business, as they could refer you to a friend or family member that might want something done. Everyone is a potential client. 
• Add cards into invoices,reception areas, sports clubs, just basically anywhere you find a lot of people either walking past or looking through where potential clients might set up meetings etc. And don't be afraid to hand them to people.

Online Portfolio

If you are a web designer, this type of portfolio is almost essential to sell yourself, as it shows that you can create a website as well as showing some of your other work, and shows how good you are. A website can also help to communicate via e-mail as attachments on e-mails from unrecognised senders are normally not opened so you can just send them a link to your portfolio.

Mailer Postcards

Mailer postcards work well with your business cards as a direct mail postcard is a great way to show off what you can do and also to get you out there. Postcards are becoming increasingly more acknowledged as at the moment it is becoming standard for freelancers to advertise through e-mail, so a postcard that has been hand delivered shows initiative and will put you in the top of the list.

To create a decent mailer postcard you should put all of your best visual work on the front, then put all of the details on the back such as your fees/contact details etc. Treat the postcard as a pitch, showing how your client will benefit exclusively from employing you.

Target Audience

Before you even start trying to look for work, you need to make a decision on what companies you want to work for, if you want to aim high or low. You are best off targeting large businesses that have more than just one department as they will prove to be a more lucrative move and will most probably keep you in work as they will have lots of clients. If you play your cards right that large company could be your client for a long time if they are happy with your services.

To look for the specific companies that you want, google will be the best answer, searching for the most ideal company for you (distance,pay,experience etc) and build a database of contacts that you would be interested in.

Marketing strategy

Using the details that you have gathered from researching companies, send out the post cards to all the addresses that you have accumulated along the course of the search and send them a personalised email with your website and contact details included and ask if they use freelancers, then in the next email ask to discuss a meeting later if they reply and say they are willing to take on. But only send one email at a time.  If by any reason you haven't got a website, be sure to attach some images of your best work (make sure that it is under 2MB as anything over will automatically deleted most of the time.) To effectively and efficiently submit your contact details in your emails, set up an email signature so your clients can access your contact details. Follow up your email with a phone call the next day to get the contacts feedback to your samples.  If your contact says they don't use freelancers, ask for another contact within the organization who does.

Client Priority

To pitch successfully you should focus your work solely on the client and what they want as you will be doing it for them. 

Persistance

To make yourself known you need to be persistent. When you meet people from companies, you should remember to take your portfolio and business cards every time however informal it may seem as you could find that there is one day where you forget a business card for example and you could have potentially missed out on an offer.
If you meet clients and they say things such as "i have no projects but will keep you in mind" theres no need to get frustrated as if you nag them and beg for a place, you will just push them further away from you and you'll definitely not get an offer, you are best off biding your time, sending them occasional e-mails to keep them interested (like every month) and also give them a call every month as they are bound to give you work at some point if you are persistent.

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This next part is how to boost your job opportunities and also increase your fee for projects.

This part is to help you get that little bit more of a boost once you have completed the first part.
There are 5 qualities that you need to grasp, these are:

• Stand out from the crowd
• Communicate the aspects of your service online
• Find a profitable niche
• How to offer a copywriting design service
• Creating your own marketing agency creative service.

Stand out from the crowd

Freelancing is a very competitive business depending on where you are working at. In order to get on top, you need to take a look at all of the other services like their fees and try and offer a better price while still making a good enough profit, as most of the time it doesn't matter if you are better than certain competition, it normally roots down to the price of the service and what they can offer with that pricing.

To get the most out of your fee pricing, you need to give the client specific skills that other competition don't have or just don't give, such as:

• Quick and efficient designs (advertisement design drafts created and sent in a day)
• Wide variety of skills, not just specifically dealing with logos for example, try branching out in to brochures, leaflet designs, animation, web etc.
• Promise a quick response as this will be a big factor because the client wants an active designer that cares about the client.
• Try and make sure that you can tell the client where you specialise in and what you are best at, but don't come across as narrow minded just doing one part such as logos.

Communicate the aspects of your service online

once you have made up your mind on your fees and services, put it up on your website and make it out as a special and unique offer that entices the client. Also you should research search engine marketing to market yourself on the web efficiently, what this is is creating certain key words to your website so that if people put in those certain keywords, your website will come up on the page. A useful tool to help you do this is www.wordtracker.com as it shows what keywords people type into search engines and shows how many people are using the same keywords so that you have a better idea on how to market your website.

Finding a profitable niche

To make the most amount of money, you need to find a profitable niche, this is basically your own specialised service, that doesn't particularly have a large competition for which covers a broad range.

to get your niche, you need to find the market which gives the highest rewards, such as the marketing communications sector (adverts brochures websites etc). Research that market, get to know all about that sector and see if it works well for you so that you have a good understanding, and maybe more than others which could potentially get you above the others and help you get that job offer. Respond to the needs of the market, the weak spots of the market where there are less designers, as this is where you can flourish as a designer as there is a gap for someone to at least start off.

How to offer a copywriting design service

It is best if you team up with a copywriter as this service will offer clients a cheaper service to specific agencies and the copywriting partner also keeps you in check to design assignments they find for other clients so it could give you more of a business than going solo. 

Creating your own marketing agency creative service.

You could also be a copywriter as well as a designer. You could learn techniques in a similar time frame to learning a new piece of design software. This is a good way to go if you are a freelancer as it makes life easier for clients dealing with just you, it is much quicker to contact one person and you'll offer the exact same service as an agency but at a much smaller cost.

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How to deal with feedback

There are 5 different types of feedback, these are:

• Collaborative feedback, which is basically when the person is genuinely interested in making your product better, and they allow you to do what you do best.
• Informative feedback, this is someone who isn't experienced in your field, but respects your work and creates constructive feedback from their limited experience and what they think would be better for the end product.
• Egocentric feedback, this is where the person believes themselves to be better than you and more experienced so they will take credit for ideas until someone doesn't like it, then leaves all the credit to you when things go wrong.
• Uninformed feedback, this is where the person feels they know enough to make a detailed decision, but really they don't and don't really give you anything constructive.
• Influenced feedback, this is where the person has unoriginal ideas and don't have anything that is different, basically copying off other people.

In general, don't take feedback too seriously if it is troubling you too much or is annoying you, as it is just someone else's idea. If someone starts to get on your back telling you it is terrible then ask others if they think the same, if they do then take the necessary changes that they suggested, if not, don't change it at all as it clearly works for everyone else. maybe that one person is just an egocentric person that doesn't want your work to take its full form. Do not take any feedback personally as that could damage you in the future, for example if a client says they don't like a certain part of the project and suggest another alternative way to create it and you don't agree, you have to go with what the client wants, or try and find another way that appeals to the client more that they might prefer. In the end of the day, the client is the one paying you so you should create what they want even if it isn't to what you want, if it puts a stain on your portfolio leave it out and put other work in there or put in the other drafts that you thought were better with the outcome of the design.

How to manage your contracts

To manage your contracts efficiently, you need to organise yourself accordingly as certain contracts can be more complex than others. You should start to develop your contract as soon as it is needed (when you have selected a vendor that you want). You should also send letters of agreement etc to guide the exchange of goods and services so that they know exactly what is happening. A director of risk management can assist you with the contracts. If a contract cannot be signed prior to its effective date, terms should be agreed upon by both parties to ensure there is a mutual agreement on what you want happening.


All contracts should be assigned to a contract admin, they are responsible for tracking the performance of the contract and addressing any issues that might emerge under the contract.


Contracts must include:

• A final copy of the contract
• all other documents related to the contract
• all changes should be declared as long as they are in the terms of the contract and attached to the agreement.
• all certificates should be kept with the contract.
• A compliance file should be made to keep all documents including certificates and insurance up to date.

at the end of the contract the admin responsible should close the agreement and ensure it is properly stored.

Unit 35 - Undertake Technical Adjustment of Images

This unit is about describing the process of adjusting images with programs such as Photoshop and InkScape. This includes the sizing of images, using layers and filters, re-colouring, cutting and masking.

Colour Modes
The first part of this unit is about colour theory, colour mode and colour management. The most widely used colour model is RGB (which stands for Red Green Blue), this is used by combining the primary colours red, green and blue light together in various ways to create an almost endless amount of colour. The RGB model is for sensing, representation and display of images in electronic systems, such as TV and computers, though it has been used in photography also. Before RGB was used in electronic systems, there was already a solid theory behind the whole model as it was originated in how humans see colours. RGB is a colour model that is "device dependant" which means different electronic devices detect different values of RGB as their responses to the individual levels of Red Green and Blue are all different depending on manufacturer (also the device can detect more or less values over time with the age of the device). So RGB does not define a specific level and value of colour in every device without colour management.
The most well known devices that use RGB as input for colour are colour TV's, video cameras, image scanners and digital cameras. Devices most well known for output of RGB are LCD and Plasma TV's, computers, mobile phone display screens, video projectors, LED displays. Despite what you may think though, colour printers do not use the RGB mode, they tend to use the CMYK colour model which is most commonly used within the printing process, which i will explain next.

The CMYK colour model uses the RGB model which is typically in computer screens for example and combines the three primary colours to create its own, as RGB can only be created using natural or produced light (like in computer screens) so there had to be a different colour model to replace RGB for the printers. The CMYK stands for Cyan (green and blue creates it), Magenta (red and blue creates it), and Yellow (red and green creates it) as you can see CMYK is basically all of the RGB colours mixed to make slightly different colours that are not the primary colours created from natural/produced light (Cyan, Magenta and Yellow are all subtractive primaries). Black is the K in CMYK which stands for 'Key' as black cannot be made by RGB as it just created a dark brown, which is not required.When CMYK is used in the printing process, the four colours are combined on paper using small dots which combine the different colours together until the final image is created.

Graphic designers have a problem with this process with the colour models RGB and CMYK as they see their work on the computer screen in RGB, and once their final image is used and is printed, they will see the image on the paper in CMYK colour which gives the image an almost total different look. Programs such as Adobe Photoshop can convert files into RGB/CMYK however you see fit. To give your clients and yourself a good idea of what your images will look like in different colour modes, you should make good practice in creating different swatches to provide yourself and your clients with a good idea of what everything looks like. Printers also give you the choice of creating a proof print, which is an example of a printed piece before the print is actually done which will be in the CMYK colour mode.

Image Resolution
Image resolution is basically the total amount of pixels in an image or the width and height of an image as well as the amount of pixels in the image. Every computer screen has a set resolution that it can use, usually depending on the size of the screen generally. If you have a 17" monitor, you are most likely to have the monitor set to 800x600 pixels etc. Resolutions can be changed but normally these are the optimum settings for the screen size. If a monitor is set to 1024x768 and you open up an image that is 640x480, it will not fill up your screen, but if you open up a image that is 2048x1536 you will either find that you will have to scroll to the right and also down, or the image will be decreased in size to at least fit your screen. A computer monitor has a limited amount of ppi (pixels per inch) so if you are going to display an image just on a monitor you should drop the quality to 72 ppi to save file space. If you are going to put an image on a webpage or email, then you should first adjust the image to the correct size so the image is just the right size  for what you want, and if needed compress the image to save space.

Image quality can be manipulated and compressed. certain file types such as BMP or TIF files don't compress the image, so they keep their quality. File types such as JPG reduce the file size, but also reducing the quality depending on the amount of compression you want before saving the image. JPG compression analyses images in blocks of 8x8 pixels in size and reduces the detail within each block. At higher compression rations the pattern becomes more visible and there may be a large loss of detail, this also happens when you try to make the JPG image larger than its default size, you start to see lots of blocks as the compression of the image has decreased the quality depending on how much detail is in the image, for example if there is just a picture of a blue to white gradient, the image will have to be compressed a considerable amount more than, say, a picture of a car which will lose detail in very low amount of compression and start to look increasingly pixelated.

Metadata
Metadata is data providing information about one or more aspects of data such as:

1. Means of data
2. Purpose of data
3. Time and date of creation
4. Creator of data
5. Location of data (on a network)
6. Standards
7. Titles of files such as music

metadata contains data for the size, colour depth, resolution, date of images along with other data also. A text documents metadata contains information about how long the document is, the author, date of document, and a short summary of the document. Metadata is used in photographs for digital photo files to identify who owns it and also the copyright information and contact information, what camera created the file and also the exposure information and descriptive information such as keywords about the photo, making the file searchable on the computer and/or the internet. Metadata can also be used in videos for information about contents like transcripts of conversations and descriptions of scenes. Web pages also use metadata but a different form of data called meta tags. these tags are descriptions of the pages content. most search engines use this data when adding pages to their search index. To create metadata you can manually create it or it can be automatically be done for you.

Copyright

Copyright is a legal concept which is used all around the world to give the creators of their own work the exclusive rights to claim all credit for their work so that no one can legally recreate their work legally without the original creator's permission. To fully secure your work, you should register whatever you want copyrighted so that you have solid legal evidence on whoever has allegedly stole some of your copyrighted work. Copyright also applies to photography. Generally, whoever has took a picture has the copyrighting rights, but if the photographer works for a company that has specifically wanted the employee to take those pictures, the company owns all rights to that picture. This applies to anything else that is done under a companies name, as they have told the employee to take that picture. 
If you have a image that you have copyrighted, you should mark it with copyright to tell them that they cannot use the image without permission by you, and you should also insert your e-mail, or any contact details and who you are, as there are many problems with people who have found a copyrighted image, but cannot get hold of the owner to see if they can get permission to use the image.
If you want to use someone elses work that you have seen and like, you should contact the owner if there is any way of contacting them, such as a mark on the image that has their contact details on it, if you cannot find any contact details, you cannot use the image as if you do, you will be breaking the law. If you do get through to the owner you must be prepared to pay a fee as there are very few people who would want to let their work go for free and you must also remember that the owner is not legally obliged to let you use their work so you should also be prepared for them to tell you that you cannot use it.

Unit 25: Produce Copy for Interactive Media

This unit covers the use of text editors. These are programs that are used to edit plain .txt files. The text editors nowadays a provided with every operating system (such as Notepad for Windows), and can be used to create ebsites with coding such as HTML and CSS in the Creative Digital Media industry.
.txt files are very different to word processor files such as Microsoft Word as with text editors, for example:

• Plain text files are represented and edited by showing all characters as they are in the file, this makes text files increasingly useful for programming for websites and configuration. All you can do on a notepad in terms of functions are things like cut, copy and paste and undo/redo. Text files also used to be used for detailed instructions and user guides, but are alot less popular now as word processor files have taken over and also the world wide web has become a big part of tuition nowadays with YouTube and Google etc
• Documents that have been created by a word processor such as Microsoft Word normally contain application specific characters that enable different functions such as bold,italic,fonts, columns,tables and the like. These functions are now a default part of a word processor, which gives them a certain edge over text files if you just want to create a document that is not needed for coding, such as HTML/CSS etc. Word processor programs can usually edit a plain text file and save it back in the text file format. However, one must take care to tell the program that this is what is wanted. Specifying the save format is especially important in cases such as source code, HTML, and configuration and control files. If left to the program's default, the file will contain those "special characters" unique to the word processor's file format, and will not be handled correctly by the utility the files were intended for. 

What word processors can not do for you is properly proof read your work. The computer can correct spelling mistakes and punctuation errors etc, but sometimes the spelling could be in American format, such as if you put in "aluminium" the computer could 'correct' it by putting it into the proper american spelling which is "aluminum" missing out the 'I'. This is something that only you can correct by proof-reading your work, scanning through and if you need to, reading out loud to make sure certain sentences or paragraphs sound correct. If you rely on the computer to handle all of your mistakes, you would end up with a document that would not look particularly polished and professional, so in order to make the document give a professional look, you are required to manually proof read your work as if a client seen a document that was poorly written with spelling and punctuation errors, they would easily be put off by you and could turn to another person and could potentially give you a bad review which is definitely not what you would want as it damages your reputation that you will have to get back at some point and could damage your business.

The next part of this unit concerns Media Ethics, which is a part of applied ethics which deals with certain standards of media concerning TV/film/theatre (the 'entertainment industry'), print media and the world wide web. First of all i will talk about the ethics of Journalism. Journalism has one of the most defined branches of media ethics, mainly because it is the most frequently taught in schools of journalism.
There are three topics of journalism ethics. These are:

• News Manipulation
• Truth
• Conflict

1. News manipulation works both ways as News can manipulate and be manipulated. Many people try to manipulate the news media, examples of these are governments. Governments are allowed censorship (they control what the news can talk about) so that nothing can be said that would damage peoples privacy, or a countries reputation (such as propaganda).
2. Truth covers four different qualities, which are public interest, privacy, fantasy and taste.
   
   Public interest concerns the news which the public are interested in, but there is a limit to what can be published, as top secret government information cannot be shown to the public.
   
   Privacy covers the details of public figures which is a large part of the media. Publication is not justified simply because the information is true.
   
   Fantasy covers entertainment, which is a goal of certain parts of the media's content. This draws in audiences by mixing truth with fantasy.
   
   Taste covers certain debateable topics such as war and disasters, which are situations that may not be of everyone's taste and desire. There needs to be a balance of how far you can go before you start to intrude on the audience's feelings and sensitivities to report the truth.
3. Conflict covers the law, certain journalistic ethics may conflict with the law concerning confidential news sources (such as witnesses) who might want to remain anonymous. There is also a question on how far you can go before you go too far just to get a news story such as trespassing, stealing etc

Unit 24 Pt. 1 - Accounts sheet

i have been tasked with creating an excel document that acts as my accounts sheet that will track all of my expenses while i have been doing a certain project. This sheet helps me maintain a decent idea of how much i have spent during a project with a client so i have a concrete idea of how much the reward will give me in gross profit.