Week 10 Blog Entry: w/c 23rd November 2020 - Creative Enterprise

I started this week off by looking in to various ways I could package my cards, whether they would be sold singularly or as a pack. Based on my questionnaire on Instagram, people would prefer to buy cards in a pack. I need to be careful at this point, because of how late I'll be selling these cards. Usually, Christmas cards are rolled out at the end of August and by the time I come to sell mine, it'll be the beginning of December when most people have already bought their cards. This is exactly why I never wanted to do a huge range of cards. I did say in my proposal that I wanted to make 75 cards in total using three designs. I knew at the start of October that when I actually start selling them, theorectically, it was going to be way too late. I didn't want to make lots of cards and then not be able to sell them, because that would be a huge detriment to me financially, especially when I spent most of my money on things to do some experiments with, like stamps and gilding flakes.

After doing some research into my packaging as part of my proposal, I decided that boxing my cards would be wasting too much cardboard and there is no need for that amount of packaging, even if I sell these cards as a pack of three. The boxes I saw were quite large and thick and I don't think it's very environmentally friendly. Instead, I've looked into packaging my products in envelopes. I think this way, I'm not wasting card and I'll be able to send the cards quite cheaply in the post. I'll find it easier to give each envelope a more personal touch as well, so that the customer feels as though I've really taken the time to make their order special. I asked my friends which stickers they would prefer to stick the envelope down with and I showed them the options I had found on Etsy. I personally liked the black 'Thank You' stickers, but they preferred the brown 'Thank You For Your Order' ones. They said that if I was writing 'Merry Christmas' on the inside of the cards, I wouldn't need to include it on the outside as well. As it's for the packaging of my cards, I don't really mind the text on the outside so much and it might be best that I, as the seller, wished my customers a 'Merry Christmas'. As for packaging envelopes, I showed them the ones from Amazon and they thought that the silver spotted effect matched the image of my bokeh quite well.

I did a shoot for my marketing material. I decided that to market my products, I want to create an image that's been styled with props which will include all of the cards together and then three individual images of each card on a white background. Shooting against a white background seemed to work really well, as the card was visible and you could see exactly how the card was going to look on the mantelpiece. I tried doing some styling for the card, so I set a scene above the fireplace, using fake candles. Unfortunatly, this didn't seem to work as well, but I think it was the contrast of the white wall and the dark mantelpiece. When I come to shoot properly next week, I will try moving the lights further away from the subject to see if that makes a difference. I also tried lying the cards down on a white surface and styled very simply around the cards. This was my favourite image, but when I showed it to a family member, she said the image look too uniformed and needed something a bit more 'haphazard' rather than symmetrical. I wasn't overly happy with the shoot that I did this week, but once I have my cards printed, I'll do some more research into how I could style them properly.

At the weekend, I did another shoot using some props that I haven't in my other shoots. All of my final outcomes so far have been based around using light for the effect, such as bokeh and light trails. As I've been advised to continue experimenting, I decided to use some objects (baubles) where the lighting wasn't a big part of what made the image, but the subject itself was. I thought that if I had something like this included in my final three designs, anyone who isn't keen on the abstract effect can opt for something simple and traditional. I used all of the same techniques as I did last week and I decided to photograph some baubles as well, as I has intended to do some macro shooting to add to the collection. This shoot went really well, although at first I struggled because I attempted to use the lights in the living room, rather than studio lights. This was because I wanted a warmer tone to the image to reflect the festive season, however this didn't go as planned. When I used the studio lights, the images came out a lot better and I was able to control the lights a lot more. All I did then was put all of the baubles in a small pile and take some close-ups of them. This will be added to the collection as the more simplistic image for those who don't really want an abstract image, but more of a traditional one.

The images above are me trying out some edits on certain abstract effects to see which I would prefer. I really liked the image on the far left. I had some trouble with these images, as some of the parts of the tree looked as though they were missing, so to fix this, I copied some of the abstract lines and pasted them over to where the tree needed filling in. This made the image look more symmetrical.

I ordered a stamp from Etsy for £4.50 so that I had another way to use my foil flakes that might have made my text look a lot neater. It was a very small stamp as I didn't want to spend too much on something that might not work for me. I placed glue on the rubber of the stamp where the text was and pressed the stamp down onto some paper. I then placed the foil flakes on the glue and let it dry. I brushed away any excess foil and was left with the outline of the letter. Unfortunately, the stamp was too small but you could just about make the letters out, even though they were very close together. I think if I had more time to practise this technique, I would like to try it using a bigger stamp.

I looked into fonts for the text on the front of my cards this week. I've decided that I should go for a font that fits the theme of the abstract - a more contemporary take on the festive season. I asked my two friends what sort of font they would like to see on the front of a Christmas card, as I was struggling to come up with a font that may look good with the abstract. One of my friends said that she thought that I should go for a more traditional font, as it fit with the theme of Christmas. She also really likes traditional things when it comes to Christmas. My other friend said she thought that I should go with a compromise of a traditional font with a modern twist and then showed me some of the fonts she'd downloaded from Dafont (the font website I use). The fonts were all cursive, but the text was a lot thinner than a typical, traditional font. I noticed this when I was browsing through a lot of the fonts in the Cursive section - the more modern ones were a lot thinner and looked more like handwriting, whilst the traditional looked thicker and more generic.

The fonts above are the ones I liked best (click on the arrows to scroll through the different ones). I asked a number of people which font they liked best and I had varying opinions of which looked good with the abstract. They all agreed that going with a font that looked traditional with a contemporary twist was the way to go. I also asked my Mum that if she was buying a pack of Christmas cards, would she expect to see the same font on the front of the card with the image or different fonts? She said that for the outside of the card, she would expect the same font but different text, like "Merry Christmas" on one and "Noel" on the other. I think this would make sense, otherwise the cards will all look the same with barely any difference. I asked a number of people which font they liked best and I had varying opinions of which looked good with the abstract. I thought this was a good idea, especially as last week, I had created a poll on Instragram and whilst the responses were helpful and insightful, I would like some opinions face-to-face (who can see the actual mock-up) and from people who are more likely to give critique. As it stands at the moment, there seems to be a tie between the use of a neon colour scheme and the primary colours scheme. Either way, I think by the looks of it if I sell either variation, there will be people who will buy them. I asked my family what they thought worked best and they all said that they liked the neon colours because it was something a little bit different that what's already out there. I personally really like the neon effect and I think is deviates from the norm and adds a contemporary feel to a very traditional season.

Next week, I will do another marketing shoot, but this time it'll be for the real cards. It's been helpful to see what techniques are going to work for me and whether or not I should go for a simple or complex set-up for my advertising. I want to focus more on the marketing next week, as I've had a lot on this week with coming up with the final designs, choosing text and trying to think of marketing techniques. Once my cards have been ordered and I have the real thing, it'll make it easier to see what will work best for marketing my product. I intend to then use these photos on Instagram, Facebook and my website. I was originally going to sell these on Etsy, but I was told by one of my peers that the fees Etsy charge wouldn't cover the cost of making a sale, so I've decided this isn't feasible for me at the moment.