, start to approach creativity with one eye on the business side of the equation.
You see many consumers love your products purely for what they are – a stunning silver ring, a hand-carved piece of furniture. They also buy into your individual story – a talented designer maker, steered only by passion and creativity. But here’s the crux of it – they are used to very slick marketing and effortless transactions.
We’re dealing with a generation of buyers who have been pampered by a fast moving and efficient consumer market. So where does this leave us as individual creatives? The answer is simple – if we want to excel in this sector and build a successful income from our creative talents, we have to step up to the challenge.
Wherever we sell or market our creations we’re competing with big businesses. They know exactly how to talk to customers, they use the right language and images for their highly targeted demographic. They know where to find them, what colours they prefer, what magazines they read and what brands they support. This puts us on the back foot. Many creatives back down from this challenge, but look a little closer at the really successful designer makers and you’ll see that when it comes to the business side of creativity, they’re as slick as the biggest high-street giants.
This highlights that we each have the ability to turn our ‘create and post’ approach into a far more efficient micro-business. By analysing our online traffic, customers, current trends and copywriting, by making our customer service and communication precise and fun, the opportunities are endless.
My partner and I have recently completed a new book which aims to help you commercialize your creativity in this way. ‘Get Paid for Your Passion’ was written with help from some of the top 10 selling Etsy creatives in the UK and the world – illustrators who’ve shipped over 5,000 prints in 48 hours, photographers with internationally selling books and globally recognized social media gurus have all come together to put together this book which will give your creativity true strategy and direction. It’s had fantastic write-ups from the editors of some of the leading UK craft blogs and will be out in November. Check out the website here.
Whether you continue as you have been or decide to evolve and grow, it’s worth bearing one thing in mind - our sector is beginning to blossom. This opens up a wealth of opportunity for creatives like us, but it also means that the competition for sales will only continue to increase. As the first wave of creative people in this new era we’re in an incredibly strong position, we can be amongst the first to market with well-run creative micro-businesses. This will give us a brilliant chance of making an income doing what we love.
Mike Carthew and Anna Ward run and deal with a community of talented creatives on a daily basis. They are the authors of ‘Get Paid for Your Passion’ which will be available on Amazon and in ebook format in November.
*Statistics from Crafts Council ‘Contemporary Craft Sector Profile and Analysis -In 2020, Rocketry managed to face the sudden changes and achieve its goals. Its members worked on giving the best results and they continue with even more energy and new data to develop and improve.
The past year, a great achievement for the Project was the construction of Hyperion, which is our first project, as well as the completion of the design of Pegasus, our team’s second project. Also, we began working on the R&D projects SIRIUS, Tailcone and Airbrakes, putting this way the team dynamically in the field of research and development. The consolidation of a Safety Sub-team was an important step, showing once again the importance of this topic for Rocketry.
A big success for our team was the import of solid propellant and COTS motor in Greece, making A.S.A.T. the first team that has ever done something like this in our country. Furthermore, our Project started working with Mr. Rene Van Hulst who is able to mentor us with his help and experience on the field.
Last but not least, our team was accepted to participate in the Spaceport America Cup (SAC) 2021, in New Mexico, U.S.A., the largest intercollegiate rocketry competition in the world, making this the greatest success of Rocketry for 2020. More than 140 teams from all over the world will participate in the competition, with our team being among the 18 European ones! This competition is a once in a lifetime experience worth living and our team is determined and ready to overcome any obstacle in the way.
Thus, we have started working on the project SELENE! A.S.A.T. is going to compete in the 10.000ft with COTS Solid Rocket Motor with SELENE, a new and innovative project from our team. Its major key-points are the live data telemetry, CO2 ejection system and the fully operational and deployable Payload, aiming to conduct an experiment containing measurement of radioactivity. Lastly, the model will have new and innovative design features, making a fully updated and remarkable design based on our experience manufacturing Hyperion.
Two equally important goals are the manufacturing and testing of SIRIUS, a Solid Rocket Motor with total impulse of 9500Ns, as well as the manufacturing and testing of Airbrakes. SIRIUS is currently in progress, as we aim at designing the team’s largest solid motor with a much better mass optimization and material selection. In the meanwhile, Airbrakes is a brand-new chapter for our team, introducing Reaction Control Systems (RCS) to our team. Finally, we want in 2021 to manage to launch Hyperion in Greece.
For one more year, Rocketry wants to keep working on innovative projects. At the same time, we always stay focused on our main mission of giving the opportunity to students to gain knowledge around the field of rocketry!
Timothy Van Patten began out in present enterprise as an actor, most notably within the basketball-themed sequence The White Shadow from 1979 to 1981. By the ’90s, Van Patten made the change to behind the digicam, honing his craft by directing over 30 episodes of Touched By An Angel earlier than discovering essential success over at HBO. He’s directed episodes of most of HBO’s flagship exhibits, like Intercourse And The Metropolis, The Wire, Rome, Deadwood, and The Sopranos. He was nominated for 4 Emmys for guiding episodes of the landmark sequence, together with the climactic “Long Term Parking.” Van Patten was additionally nominated for an Emmy for guiding the Recreation Of Thrones pilot, and received in 2012 for Boardwalk Empire.
So it’s not stunning that HBO and Van Patten would group up once more for the cable channel’s newest status undertaking, Perry Mason, which simply completed its first season. Van Patten directed a number of episodes of the prequel sequence that includes the early, gritty years of the legendary protection legal professional, evident by his acquainted depictions of brutal but aesthetically lovely violence and nostalgic palettes. Van Patten additionally served as a producer on the sequence, which was not too long ago renewed for a second season. He talked to us in regards to the present’s finale—which was useful as a result of we had many questions (spoilers under).
The A.V. Membership: You have got such a present for locating magnificence in violence, along with your work in The Sopranos, Boardwalk Empire, and this sequence. It’s sort of brutal, however you continue to can’t look away from it.
Timothy Van Patten: I’ll do what the violence requires. In different phrases, I believe a part of it’s, it needs to be earned. Whenever you’re working with nice writing, it often is earned. Let’s simply take, for instance, the killing of Drea de Matteo’s character [Adriana] on The Sopranos. When she’s killed by Silvio—you could possibly see that coming as a result of she was an informer. However, you didn’t must see the graphic element of that killing as a result of it wouldn’t be an honorable strategy to kind of ship her off the present, for one. Additionally, it was a lot extra highly effective to go away it to the creativeness. And the heartbreak. So, she crawls by way of the body, and he’s kind of trailing her along with his pistol leveled, and you realize it’s coming.
However, in greater sequences, yeah. I imply, I strive to not get too graphic, however even whether it is graphic, it’s about composition, isn’t it? I’d moderately kind of indicate it than be tremendous in-your-face with it. For instance, seeing it in a tableau typically, like while you see Ennis get killed on the finish, or when he’s killing Seidel, or when he will get drowned. And timing-wise, you realize, do it in actual time. In Boardwalk Empire, when Shea Whigham’s character kills the federal agent in his personal front room, I believed, “Well, gosh, how long does it actually take to punch somebody into the next world?” And that battle went on for minutes. Minutes! It was clumsy, and sloppy, and… yeah. So I assume I kind of deal with it as per the present and the character and never attempt to be [Laughs.]—that is going to sound unusual—however to not be