Understand the formal elements and principles of design

Understand the formal elements and principles of design

Give examples of how formal elements and principles of:

Balance

Balance is the arrangement of lines, colours, values, textures, forms, and space. their are three types of balance: formal or symmetrical or informal or asymmetrical and radial balance. 

Formal or symmetrical balance has equal weight on both sides.

Informal or asymmetrical balance has a different weight on on each side to maintain balance. 

Radial balance is a circular balance moving out from a central object to maintain balance.

Balance is created in a work of art when textures, colours, forms, or shapes are combined harmoniously. In this image, notice how the photographer achieves a sense of balance by dividing the image into two sections: one half occupied by trees, and the other half by the water.

Proportion

The size of one part of artwork to its other parts is called proportion. Artists use proportion to show emphasis, distance and use of space, and balance.

Proportion is created when the sizes of elements in a work of art are combined harmoniously. In this image, all of the proportions appear exactly as one would expect; the human figures are much smaller in scale than the natural world that surrounds them.

Rhythm

Rhythm can help control the pace of flow in a composition; it’s patterned movement. Rhythmic patterns are built from elements and the intervals between them, and just as your ear will follow along with the rhythm of a song, your eye will follow rhythm created visually.

A pattern and a rhythm will exist as soon as you add multiple elements to the page. Two of anything implies a structure. It’s going to be there no matter what you do so, again, you should learn to control it.

Repetition creates flow and rhythm through the repeated elements. When the eye sees a red circle it notices other red circles in the composition and seeks to establish a pattern. In addition to repetition you can use alternation and gradation to create rhythm.

Repetition: creates patterns through predictability.

Alternation: creates patterns through contrasting pairs.
Gradation: creates patterns through a progression of regular steps.
Rhythm is created both through the elements the eye follows and the intervals between them. 

Changes to either alter the pattern. Variations in the pattern add interest. Emphasis of something in the pattern can break the rhythm and pause the flow momentarily.

There are three primary types of rhythm:

Regular rhythm: occurs when the intervals between elements are predictable, or the elements themselves are similar in size and length. Placing repeating elements at regular intervals would be an example.
Flowing rhythm: occurs when the elements or intervals are organic. This creates natural patterns that evoke a feeling of organic movement. Stripes on a tiger or zebra are good examples.
Progressive rhythm: occurs when the sequence of forms or shapes is shown through progressive steps. Some characteristics of elements might have stepped changes, or the interval might have stepped changes. This gradual increase or decrease in sequence creates movement. A colour gradient is a good example.
Any of the above types of rhythm can be used to create movement and compositional flow. 

Which you would choose depends on the specifics of your design: if the design is trying to communicate consistency, a regular rhythm is probably best; if the design is trying to communicate something more natural and organic, a flowing rhythm would likely be preferred. 

Emphasis

Emphasis is created in a work of art when the artist contrasts colours, textures, or shapes to direct your viewing towards a particular part of the image. In this image, the colours of the paddlers' jackets contrasts with the muted tones of the background. Our attention is immediately drawn to the paddlers, even though they are relatively small in scale.
Unity are applied in the design of products.

Emphasis is way of bring a dominance and subordination into a design or painting. Major objects, shapes, or colours may dominate a picture by taking up more space or by being heavier in volume or by being darker in colour than the subordinate objects, shapes and colours. There must be balance between the dominant and subordinate elements.

Describe how formal elements and principles of design are visible in the work of two major designers.

Karim Rashid

You may not recognize Karim Rashid immediately, but odds are you have at least one of his designs in your home. A staunch believer that everyone deserves access to great design no matter what their budget (it’s what he calls “designocrasy”), Karim has become one of the world’s most celebrated designers having brought thousands of new ideas and innovations to the widest-possible audience. As such, Karim has won hundreds of international awards, including the prestigious Red Dot, and his work can be found in more than 20 permanent collections including those of the MoMA, Centre Pompidou, and SFMOMA. Karim also calls everyone from Umbra to Giorgio Armani, Kenzo, Alessi, Artemide and Veuve Clicquot as his clients, and Time magazine once described him as the “most famous industrial designer in all the Americas”.

Clearly having conquered the industrial design realm, Karim recently turned his creative eye to architecture. We recently caught up with the designer cum architect to talk about the evolution of his career and the three eye-popping HAP condos he’s now got under construction for New York City. Hear what he has to say about his grand new endeavors—color, controversy and all.

What made you want to become a designer?

Karim: I don’t think I became a designer, I think I’ve always been a designer. I realized my life’s mission at the age of five in London. I went sketching with my father in England drawing churches. He taught me to see—he taught me perspective at that age and he taught me that I could design anything and touch all aspects of our physical landscape. I remember drawing a cathedral facade and deciding I didn’t like the shape of the gothic windows so I redesigned them. I drew them as ovals. I also remember winning a drawing competition for children—I drew luggage (my own ideas of how to travel). I read books from artists all over the world. I was obsessed with drawing eyeglasses, shoes, radios, luggage, throughout my childhood. Design, art, architecture, fashion, film—it was all the same to me: creation, beauty, and communication.

How would you describe your style?

Karim: First, I don’t have a ‘style’ and I don’t believe in style. My work tries to answer and speak about our technological age, and address the present subject matter at hand. I feel strong and confident in all parts of our physical and virtual creative disciplines from micro to macro. As Manfredi said—from spoon to city.

We often see architects dabbling interiors and industrial design, but it’s less common to see things go the other way. What prompted your decision to move into the design of buildings?

Karim: I always saw myself as a pluralist, even when I was a student. I don’t like the idea of specialization and admired creative people who touched many different aspects of visual culture. Like the whole idea of the Warholian factory; where you could move around in all the disciplines of the applied major arts. I promised myself that if I ever had my own practice, I would keep it broad and touch all aspects of our physical landscape—a cultural shaping.

How does working on such a large scale compare to working on the design of an object? Has the shift in perspective been an easy one or a challenge?

Karim: I love the larger experiential impact a condominium can have on people lives. With interior design or public space, I know that masses of people have access to my designs, and they are not just looking at it. Rather, they are physically immersing themselves inside my concepts. I feel that residents will have a great positive human experience that goes beyond just style.

An exterior rendering of HAP Four located at 653 West 187th Street, Inwood

All HAP Four (653 West 187th Street), HAP Five (329 Pleasant Ave) and HAP Six (1653-1655 Madison Avenue) take on unique aesthetics and are all very distinct from one another. What inspired the design of each of these buildings? And how does it feel to be able to make your mark on NYC?

Karim: NYC is based on the Cartesian grid that we have created for ourselves in almost all architectural components. I always believed that architecture ultimately comes down to a system of components, but what we need are industrial elements that are more free form and flexible in their configuration as not to end up in a strict Cartesian world. Working with HAP gave me a great opportunity to play with the idea of pattern, grid, and repetition. A pattern is a way of giving richness and depth to our Cartesian landscape. For this new condominium, for HAP Four, I wanted to create a building that uses pattern, geometry, light and color to provide the luxury of wellbeing to its inhabitants.

Day and night renderings of HAP Six located at 1653-1655 Madison Avenue, East Harlem

HAP Six is located on one of Manhattan’s most heavily trafficked streets. The heavy passage of pedestrians and transportation make the south facade of this building a potential global billboard. The three dimensional pattern unfolds across the East and West Facades along the balcony railing giving character and playfulness to the facades while producing beautifully faceted patterns of light that filter into the living space behind.

Color is life and for me, color is a way of dealing with and touching our emotions, our psyche, and our spiritual being. There are artists that became so acutely intensive, experimental, and investigative with colour like Yves Klein as well as Rothko and others. They spent most of their lives investigation in color. My career has unintentionally been an exploration of color. HAP Five stands out as a strong play of light, color and modular geometry. Here, we used the balcony as a design feature to generate dynamic play and variety along the facade of the building. The colored glass railing gives character and playfulness to the facade while producing beautifully colored light that penetrates into the living space behind. Each unit receives the large, yet intimate space that extends the senses beyond the interior, making the apartment feel bigger and brighter than it actually is.

Exterior rendering of HAP Five located at 329 Pleasant Avenue, East Harlem

The colour scheme of HAP Five (329 Pleasant Avenue) has received mixed reviews. What was your motivation in opting for cyan and watermelon over something more subdued?

Karim: An outside firm did the original render of that building and the colors were too saturated. If you were to see the original that my office created, you would see it’s much more subdued. However, contemporary design tends to be cold, alienating, and sometimes very inhuman. I’m interested in showing the world how a contemporary physical world can be warm, soft, human, and pleasurable and color plays a large part of the warmth of my designs. I use colors to create form, mood, feeling, and to touch the public memory. Colour is not just ‘is’ and is not intangible—it is very real, very strong, extremely emotional and has a real physical presence. I’m also thinking about using colors to create and work with the experience, or the human engagement of that certain task or function.

You often talk about the “democratization of design” driving your work. How did that manifest in these three buildings?

Karim: High design affordable to all is our human right! The HAP residences are projects in “designocrasy” and since we are building on very low budgets, the savings are passed onto the buyers so that the price pinpoints will be excellent and more ‘entry level’ apartments for younger people. Even though I also design luxury, I don’t design for wealthy people. I design for everyone. The design had to be very smart, maximize choices and use materials to have maximum impact. This was a dream project for me to realize the philosophical tenets I have been preaching for so many years. The budget constrains were challenging, but we were able to find solutions and suppliers that provided high design for little cost. Design doesn’t always have to be costly; one can design high design with little money.

Interior renderings of one of the HAP Six apartments

You are very eco-conscious. What are some of the sustainable/green measures you have taken with the HAP developments?

Karim: The ideal dwelling is one that utilizes technology seamlessly, from construction to human interaction, to create new traditions, shape new experiences, embracing family and community and be as sustainable as possible. We used biodegradable flooring throughout made by Parador flooring. All lighting in the buildings is either LED or fluorescent, which are low energy consumption. In addition, the buildings were built to the latest NYC building codes, which have continually evolved to be the most recent, and efficient energy code to date. The essence is to design spaces that meet the changing social behaviors of today; that are a mirror of the time in which we live.

Do you have any other buildings on the drawing board we should know about?

Karim: I’m presently designing hotels in Kuala Lumpur, Tel Aviv and Hannover; Kado Karim luxury condominiums in Jurmala Latvia (24 apartments); a restaurant and condominium in Tangier; condos in Tel Aviv, Miami, Montreal, South America; and a shopping mall in St. Petersburg.

It took me so long to break into architecture and now the momentum is here. I’m thrilled to design buildings where I can design every aspect of them from the door handles to the branding, to the furnishings to the other structures.

Milton Glaser

Milton Glaser is a very famous logo designer, he created many graphic designs and logos, his most well known logo is his I Love New York where nearly everyone knows or has heard of it. He is was interested in making his city well known and he has achieved this everybody has heard of New york. His career was around 1956- 2004, so this is when pop art was the most popular and I feel his Bob Dylan image represents pop art.

Milton is a digital designer all his work is done digitally which made it look so professional, he would of began by sketching his designs for his resent pieces. Milton uses quite a few formal elements such as composition, line , shape and pattern. I feel his most uses formal element is composition because this is what makes his pieces because of the way there are positioned.

I really like Milton Glaser’s work, I feel that it looks so simple and was probably so easy to do such as the NY logo but yet it’s so effective.

Few designers evoke as much praise from their eminent peers as Milton Glaser. Over the last five decades, he has been one of the most internationally renowned and highly influential figures in design. Vastly prolific, his versatility as a practitioner spans many design disciplines, including graphics, exhibitions, interiors, furniture and products.

To many, Milton Glaser is the embodiment of American graphic design during the latter half of this century. His presence and impact on the profession internationally is formidable. Immensely creative and articulate, he is a modern renaissance man—one of a rare breed of intellectual designer-illustrators, who brings a depth of understanding and conceptual thinking, combined with a diverse richness of visual language, to his highly inventive and individualistic work.

Having initially trained as a classical fine artist, his historical roots in design were as co-founder of the New York-based Pushpin Studio in 1954, with Seymour Chwast, Edward Sorel and Reynold Ruffins. In Pushpin, Glaser was in the vanguard of a movement that reacted against the strict authoritarianism and austerity of modernism.

Exploring and re-interpreting the visual material of previous era’s of both fine art and commercial art, (including that of Victoriana, wood-cut illustration, comic books, Art Nouveau, and Art Deco), they sought to bring fresh ideas, humour and a new decorative and illustrative approach to the design of record sleeves, book covers, posters and magazines.

Immediately recognizable, the work of Pushpin Studio evolved to become an international force in graphic design during the 1960s and 1970s.

British graphic designer John Gorham recalls initially encountering Glaser’s work in London in 1964:
At lunchtime, a colleague and I would go to Zwemmers in Charing Cross Road. They had books and magazines from the United States that you couldn’t get anywhere else. We found early issues of Pushpin Graphic. Milton’s work was in there and we thought, ‘God Almighty! It’s incredible!’ We bought whatever we could find and indulged in the luxury of knowing that we were virtually the only people in London who had seen this kind of work. We thought we were light years ahead of everyone else! It was the fist time I had ever seen anyone thinking like Glaser. To me, he was the most exciting and influential designer of that period. He revolutionized graphic design throughout the world. What I admired was the brain behind the technique.

Such was the international success of Pushpin that, in 1970, they were the first American studio to have an exhibition at the prestigious Musée des Arts Decoratifs in Paris, a show which subsequently travelled to other cities in Europe and on to Japan.

Glaser eventually left Pushpin in 1976 to pursue other design work, and through his own company, Milton Glaser, Inc., has concentrated on expanding involvement as a multidisciplinary designer, undertaking exhibition, interior, product, supermarket and restaurant design projects.

Developing a major interest in publishing design (he was founder of New York magazine), he established with Walter Bernard (former art director of Time), WBMG, a magazine and newspaper design studio. Among his publication credits are Paris Match, L’Express, Esquire, The Washington Post, Fortune magazine and Banaradia (Barcelona).

As a lecturer, Glaser has taught at the Cooper Union and regularly (since 1961) at the School of Visual Arts in New York.

Here he answers a series of questions, which give a rare insight to the man himself:

On the subject of clarity of communication, would you say this is something which is missing from much of today’s design?

One must understand this relationship between clarity and ambiguity, because it is an essential component of communication. You can’t make everything explicit to people. There has to be work for the mind to do. Often the communication is not immediately clear but becomes clear quickly. That duration between seeing and understanding is always what you play with in communicating ideas.

Do you think that there should be an initial ‘surprise’ in order for that communication to be effective?

Well you would like that to happen, but it depends on what you can do to make people pay attention. In a culture like ours, everything is screaming for our attention, so at a certain point we become immune to the screaming. The question then is what do we do to penetrate people’s immunity?

Has there been a particular approach to the diversity of your work?

I have always thought that in order to stay interested in what you are doing, to some extent you have to operate in the realm of what you do not know; that professionalism moves you forward towards a kind of rote understanding, in the same way that academic activity leads you towards academic, or repeatable ideas. In design, what makes things interesting is moving around in the areas you are not a master of, so that you can surprise yourself and develop your own understanding. That development of one’s own understanding is, I think it seems to me, a critical issue in design activity—and life itself, I suppose.

As a designer are you still constantly learning?

You should try to surprise yourself as you work, so that you don’t know all the answers in advance and simply repeat them. I have an approach I’ve been using throughout my life, which is to start first with the nature of the audience, second with the nature of what you want that audience to do and then third, the methodology by which you move that audience to action. I am a non-specialist. For professional reasons, the field is one of professional practice, which means that you diminish the possibility of error by knowing everything in depth about one subject. My aim is to have a broader view of design. I am certainly not unique in this way, but I like to think that it is possible to operate in many areas if your interest leads you that way.

For example, I am very interested in the design of restaurants, so I’ve designed them. And I’ve designed supermarkets—which is usually thought of as a highly specialized activity, reserved for those who have the credentials to do it. I felt that it was possible to do some of this work without credentials. I have been opportunistic and through the years have sort of blurred the distinction a little between professional practice in architecture, product design, interior design, graphic design and magazine design.

When you cross disciplines, from two dimensions to three, is it pure instinct that drives you?

Yes. Knowledge that is replicable. After all, if you have some idea how color functions on a flat surface, you will have at least the beginnings of an understanding of how it operates on a three-dimensional surface.

And so by using that knowledge, and your intelligence, you make comparisons. For instance, when I started doing interiors, I learned that the nature of light, and the nature of color, intersect in a very interesting way in three-dimensional interiors. It is very difficult to understand theoretically and you have to physically see it. As an example, I once painted a room in a restaurant a sort of French yellow and when that particular yellow was illuminated by incandescent light and turned the corner into shadow, it became this horrible green. Those kind of things you really have to learn on the job.

Has design become a commodity to be bought and sold, and less of an art?

I would say that is true to some degree. The idea of design as an artistic activity has changed over the last fifty years. Designers have always wanted to say that good design is good business, and that as a result it has moved more towards being a business than an art.

I use the words art and design with some trepidation, because everybody has their own internal definition of what those words mean. What I call art is rarely what other people call art, but there is has to be some agreement on what those words mean? I would say that with the professionalization of the practice, the widespread use of the computer and the conviction of business today, design is an important marketing tool, which is orientated more towards effectiveness than beauty.

Does this sadden you at all?

Personally it saddens me, because I think that there is some cultural benefit in maintaining a position that aesthetics of beauty and ideas, of coherence by virtue of beauty, are important to that culture.

It seems to me that once you reach a point where economics are the only criteria for what you do, you are basically in a bad situation. There has to be some kind of contravening notion that there are things equally important to money in the human experience.

What advice would you give to today’s students and the younger generation of designers?

I would say: take the responsibility for what you do. Design is an activity, which affects human consciousness, and the way people think and act. It also affects their value system, and you should take that seriously. I mean you don’t want to hurt people. You don’t want to injure people, you don’t want to misrepresent things, you don’t want to lie to them. In my view, the same principles involved in good citizenship should be applied to being a good designer.

Is there anything in design you have yet to achieve?

I think what I’m chasing after is what I’ve always chased after in my life, and that is how to see haw far I could go, how much more you could learn, how you can modify what you believe and how you can change what you believe. Basically it is a continuance. I have always been curious about what I was capable of doing- and I am still curious about that.

It is a question of how much you can stay within the context of what you are, and what you and continually change or refresh that. I was talking to a student recently who came in for an evaluation, and that great thing about the practice of design is that you don’t ever learn it fundamentally.

You never get to a point when you have understood what you are doing. You gat to a degree of understanding, but you always know there is more out there that you have not yet grasped. It is an ever-ending book, in the sense and you never get there. There is no point at which you say, ‘Ah! Finally I’ve got it!’ It’s like the search for the spiritual. There is no level in which you get there.

Drawing has always been such an important part of your work, but is it a skill that fewer designers possess today?

My feeling about drawing is that I have deeply invested in it because so much of my work is characterized by it, and I have used the skill as a means of developing a personal idiom which is harder to do through design alone. Although many designers have found another personal voice without using drawing, I feel it is at the root of everything, because it is essentially an intellectual activity. People think that it has something to do with the way your hand operates, but drawing is a decision by the brain to represent reality through any kind of means you choose.

There doesn’t seem to be an alternative way to develop a neurological path from brain to hand without drawing. You can’t do it sitting and thinking about it, so what happens is that the body itself is involved in the thought process. I can’t see any other way of doing it, in the same way that I can’t think of a man becoming an athlete without developing his muscles. There’s no way of becoming an athlete by sitting thinking, or using a computer. I think drawing is one of the instruments by which the brain changes its perception of reality, and it also develops a kind of acuity in terms of colour, form, shape and proportion. I don’t know how you would get that information another way. Unless the brain is engaged in solving a problem, which is to say you look at something and you try drawing, there is no methodology to do that in a theoretical way. I don’t know of a substitute for the development of judgement, and judgement itself is of course a core element in design. I don’t know how you would develop judgement without going through this very primitive thing of sitting down in front of something and trying to represent it physically in the world. I’m a great believer in that as an objective, although I don’t think it is taught very well.

What would you hope for the future of design?

Nothing I wouldn’t hope for culture in general. There needs to be a return to a value system which suggests there are other values; that there is a sense of community; that beauty and doing things well are important; and the whole idea of craft and caring for what we do, simply because it is important to do so, rather than receiving economic benefit. I don’t see design as an activity removed from everything else in the development of culture.

Once a design rebel whose imagery was totally synonymous with its time in recent decades, Glaser is now the greatly revered practitioner statesman of his profession. Steven Heller, a leading U.S. design critic, views his compatriot thus: “He is perhaps the most articulate of U.S. graphic designers, although ‘graphic designer’ is far too limiting a term to express what Milton does, and what he has accomplished. I think what he accomplishes in his work as a designer/illustrator is the pure articulation of an idea through form. Not only is he a brilliant aestheticist and form-giver, but one of the few designers whose social conscience, certainly in his latter years, has been a motivating factor in the kind of work he does.”

In the 1990s, Glaser has continued to expand the diversity of his projects, the profusion of styles and eclecticism of imagery which have all been a key factor in his idiosyncratic approach to design.

Viewing his work retrospectively, it his apparent that he is one of the very few designers who can knowingly, articulate visually, the most extraordinarily inventive and ambitious ideas in any style or form of his choosing. It is this dual capability of being able to execute all of his ideas himself, in combination with a prolific array of techniques, which is Glaser’s greatest asset.

He is one of a handful of post-war designers whose approach re-defined expression in design: “He opened a new way of seeing things. He was the equivalent to graphic design that The Beatles were to music at the time,” adds John Gorham.

Strikingly colourful, often outwardly exotic, and retaining the quality of a fine artist, much of Glaser’s prolific output of illustrative posters, blur the distinction between graphic design and painting. In contrast, his work in type design and corporate identity, display equal inventiveness in purer graphic forms. Over a period of four decades, the ever-artful Glaser has become the most celebrated of US designers, evolving a continually developing and uniquely personalised American style of graphic design, always defying the rigid constraints of any formal categorization.

As Gorham succinctly describes the Glaser phenomenon: “Milton has always been one jump ahead of everyone else.”

Know about common techniques, materials, tools and equipment and their application to design and manufacture

Know about common techniques, materials, tools and equipment and their application to design and manufacture

Describe a range of common techniques, materials, used in design and manufacture

The Technology and Design Learning Area equips learners to apply knowledge, experiences and resources purposefully to critique, design and make products, processes and systems.

These are created to solve a problem or meet a need. Some examples of current technologies include medical procedures, housing, household products and appliances, electronic equipment, tools, recreation and leisure products, fads and children’s toys.

These can enhance lives and empower people, eg laser eye surgery, motorised wheelchairs, communication and media systems, and medical research. The use or abuse of technology can create social differences, disagreements and ethical conflicts, eg genetically modified foods, in-vitro fertilisation technology.

While designing, developing and using technology is linked to the evolution of our species, our future existence will be influenced greatly by technologies currently being, or yet to be, designed and created.

Consequently, responsible and democratic decision-making, taking into account cultural, societal and environmental factors, is an important aspect of Technology and Design. Note: Technology and Design is often confused with Computer Technology, Information Communication Technology or Learning Technologies.

Computer Technology is one of many learning tools used in the ‘design processes’ of Technology and Design.

In a supportive environment, technically literate learners become increasingly confident, self-sufficient and independent in using a range of materials, components and resources, information systems, techniques and equipment effectively and safely to design and make products, processes and systems relevant to real life experiences and with practical applications

Examine critically the impact of past and present technologies in the home, commercial enterprise and local and global environments, and develop understandings about the role, range and effects of technologies on society and the environment.

Develop a solid repertoire of creative thinking, risk-taking, decision-making, problem-solving and communication skills to develop innovative and original solutions.

Give examples of common tools and equipment used in design

Describe the physical properties and capabilities of a range of materials, tools and equipment used in design

Describe the characteristics of different materials and the potential of these characteristics to achieve different effects

Adopt the preferred approach based on the requirements of the brief

Document the planned design approach

Use a selected technique make a product, prototype or sample ensuring consistency with the selected approach and the brief

Present the designed product, prototype or model in accordance with the brief specifications.

Creative Media Industry Awareness

Creative Media Industry Awareness

Know how the Creative Media sector is structured

 Describe the industries within the Creative Media sector

The UK Government Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) definition recognises twelve (12) creative sectors, down from fourteen (14) in their 2001 document. They are:

• Advertising
• Architecture
• Arts and antique markets
• Crafts
• Design
• Designer Fashion
• Film, video and photography
• Software, computer games and electronic publishing
• Music and the visual and performing arts
• Publishing
• Television
• Radio

 Describe cross-industry ownership in the Creative Media sector

Cross-industry ownership is the term for one company owning sister companies within different media branches.

Good examples of this are the BBC and Virgin.
The BBC were originally just television channels (BBC1 and BBC2), broadcasting entertainment and news across both their channels, but has since expanded into over 10 channels (BBC1, BBC2, BBC3, BBC4, BBC News 24, Parliament, CBBC, CBeebies, BBC Alba and BBC America etc.), a publishing company for magazines and a worldwide television broadcast empire, BBC Worldwide LTD, as well as BBC radio stations and iPlayer. The BBC business spans Television, Radio, Publishing, and Software, computer games and electronic publishing.

Virgin, and its creator Richard Branson, managed to break into an array of different markets with the Virgin brand, and is perhaps one of the best examples of cross-industry ownership, due to the immediate differences between each of the brand labels Virgin has acquired over the years; including Virgin Music, Trains, Broadband, Phone, TV, Airways, Galactic, Money, Mobile and Holiday Cruises. It is doubtless that Virgin spans a plethora of markets and certainly has its fingers in a lot of pies.


 Explain the relevant relationships between a range of industries within the Creative Media sector

Most industries in the world often interact with others in order to create a more powerful effect on their target audience and the general public.
This would be, for example, one company hiring an advertising firm to promote them and help them to sell their product. While this is going on, the advertising firm may be establishing connections with a video production company to create a viral video or online advertisement to help spread the word of the product via the internet as well as through the traditional methods of advertising and selling the product to retailers.

Whilst the video may be in the first stages of production, the advertising firm may hire a "behind the scenes" photographer to help market the product a bit more, showing the viewer what happens on the other side of the screen; and alongside all this, the original company or advertising firm may suggest that special graphics are needed in the video, and pitch this to the video production company, who would subsequently contact graphics design companies who acts accordingly.

This creates a web of different companies working together on the same project, and the different sectors of the industry (in this case, publishing, advertising, design, film, video and photography).



Describe the stages of a specific Creative Media project life cycle

In the Creative Media sector, there are four stages in the project life cycle:
BIRTH (INITIATION) PHASE - Everything is defined and the first ideas for the project emerge.

PLANNING PHASE - The project is now planned out in more detail, and is given a bit more flesh and content, and is split up into different tasks and sub-tasks, with resources allocated to each, and an estimated completion time is established.

EXECUTION & CONTROLLING PHASE - The project is carried out, and all the relevant tasks are performed by the assigned people, and the deadline worked towards. This is perhaps the most important phase of the lot, being the phase in which the project tasks are performed, and in which quality and standards must be maintained in order to meet the client's needs.

EXIT (CLOSURE) PHASE - The project is completed, and the participants are debriefed, and the project manager ensures that the project is completed. Please see uploaded pdf for a more in depth life of a project explanation that is specifically created for one of our regular clients. 

Explain and justify resources required for a specific project

Every project requires different teams of people, each assigned to a different task. For instance, those working on a film would have the audio team, the lighting team, the special effects team, the make up team etc. whereas those working on a video game would have the storyboard team, the animation team, the concept artists, voice actors etc. so the teams vary from project to project as necessary, each working on their own section or task.

Describe the vision, mission and values of a specific Creative Media organisation

Different Creative Media organisations will have different goals and different projects. For instance, a television company will have different aims to a publishing firm, but ultimately their goal will be to produce something to please the client and complete the project in a reasonable period of time in order to generate a profit.

The aims and objectives of companies in any scenario can be brought under four generic categories:
REPUTATIONAL - most companies want to ensure they have a good reputation amongst the public, their target audience and their competitors. This includes advertising and publicising the company, in particular younger businesses, and those with fewer in their employ.
ADVERTISING - a more exact way of demonstrating a business's reputation, and is a way to spread the company's brand and get it out in the public consciousness, in order to get some attention from a target audience the company maybe hasn't tried to tap before.
PROFIT - the main goal of a business: to make money. Without earning capital and generating a decent income in order to pay taxes, bills and purchase new resources in order to continue to manufacture and research new products and maintain a steady profit to expense ratio.
FUTURE - future aims and objectives are similar in purpose to short- and long-term plans (usually 1-5 years). Company officials will discuss the best course of action for their short- and long-term goals for the business, in which direction they are headed as a corporation, and which way is the best to influence the course of the company in order to generate the best result.

Describe how a specific Creative Media organisation is funded, governed and regulated

An organisation can be broken down into several different departments, each with a different role to play and a function to perform. For instance, there would be a financial department, an administration department, a PR department, an HR department, Research and Development (R&D).

The role of an individual department can vary slightly from company to company, but are fundamentally the same. For instance, the Finance department would be responsible for tracking the company's income, expenses, allocating budgets to other departments for resources they want/need, liaising with suppliers and writing up invoices for clients, customers and/or retailers; whereas the R&D department would be looking into developing a new scope for business, and looking across the market for a gap that could be exploited, and comparing the product in development to existing models from competing companies, as well as any similar products in order to determine important defining factors such as price, size/scale, target audiences, ease of use, advertising methods, name and features.

The R&D department would also seek what customers want in the product, so may compile a questionnaire/survey (which would be conducted via the internet, face-to-face interaction, over the phone.) in order to gather information relevant to the product, and find out how to improve it by adding or removing features the consumers like/dislike respectively.

Explain the role of a specific team within the organisation

A specific team will have a tighter and better relationship with each other, as they are interacting with each other more and constantly assessing each other’s' strengths and weaknesses in order to maximise efficiency; whereas the relationship between team members and others within the organisation can easily vary from person-to-person, as one team member may have a friend in a different department, and may know other people from previous jobs, school, tasks or from out-of-work activities (such as the gym or sporting clubs), and as such, there could be people without the team who gets on with team members A, B and C, but doesn't get along with D or E.

Explain the relationship between the specific team and others within the organisation

A team will have numerous roles and responsibilities within that team, each person assigned to a specific task, usually playing to their stronger skills, and if need be, sub-teams are allocated. The roles usually vary from industry to industry, but there are a couple which apply across the board:
Project Manager - the leader of the team, the project manager is in charge of overseeing the project and quality controlling as the project advances. The project manager dictates which tasks are done in the project, who performs them and in what order they are done.
Salesperson - the person who pitches the product or product idea to clients or to their superiors within the organisation.
Researcher - researches the current market for the product the team is developing and designing. This includes looking for gaps in the market, researching similar products, price-checking, looking into the competition and finding out how best to improve the product.
Financier - deals with the budget and dealing with suppliers and retailers, dealing with expenses and profits, and how much capital is allocated where. 

Explain the individual roles within a specific team

Virgin group employee more than 50,000 people around the world operating in over 50 different countries. Virgin has main employees that are part of the Senior Investment Team. 

The individual roles in the company Virgin start from the CEO of the Virgin group and is responsible for the management of the groups capital investments and the Virgin brand. Next is the chairman of the Virgin group who takes care of the investment banking and business management. Virgin has many partners that are in charge of the different areas of the company. Each partner is responsible for that area. Some of the areas include the development and expansion, licensing the brand, financial and risks positions and external relations.

This is a typical companies business hierarchy:

Explain their responsibilities and outputs within a specific project life cycle

At the Radio Station role of the service manager is to basically be in charge of the whole service. The two assistant managers are in charge of the coordinators and the teachers in their area. One of the assistant managers is in charge of the curriculum and performance within the service and the other looks after the development of the service. Underneath the service manager on the hierarchy is the resources and support service manager who looks after resources, support and finance.

 As well as the managers, each member of staff has a different responsibility within the service. The support staff are in charge of a number of different things from sorting new registrations, workshops, music lesson counts, answering phones and dealing with parents, customers and queries. 

The finance staff are in charge of money income and outcome, looking after direct debits, bank details, bad debts, invoices and mileage claims. Resources are responsible for assigning/exchanging instruments to pupils or schools, workshops, repairing and maintenance.

Describe examples of interdependence between team members

In relation to where I work at the Radio Station we constantly rely on each other to complete the tasks that need to be completed. As a team we work together to pass on relevant information to other employees. Each part of the service work closely together to make sure that jobs are completed and all the correct information is being handed over in order to update old information.

 As the service covers a big area then it is important that employees know what is going on within the company and can depend on each other to get tasks completed. The finance team work closely with the admin team and resources if a new registration comes through then they will work together to sort out the fees, who will be teaching them, which instrument they will be playing and registering them on the database. If a pupil has decided to give up parents should notify admin who will print of a summary and update the system, then it will be passed through to finance, depending on their account the fees will be cancelled.

 Resources should then be aware that an instrument should be returned. Resources work with admin, teachers, schools and the courier to organise which instruments need to be delivered and where.

 Each section needs to work together so that the process runs smoothly and efficiently so that there is no issues down the line. The management and coordinators work with teachers to discuss who will deliver different workshops. All of the teams within the service will depend on each other to give the right information.