Exploring Digital Media with art, design, and education.

Welcome to the West Valley College DM/IS001 Digital Media 1 Section: 84661

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Lesson 7 - Digital Media Industry - Most people perceive digital media as a cool and fun industry. They see special effects in TV and Movies and say "hey that looks fun, I wonder if I can do that?" The fact is that digital media is a business. It is not all fun and games. Many people spend long hours with short deadlines trying to complete a project. Many companies struggle to make profits, keep employees, and find business. For as many successes you hear about there are twice as many failures.

Some of the major concerns facing business today:

  • Company/Customer Relationship
  • Products
  • Employees
  • Production
  • Distribution
  • Copyrights - The most important info for this lesson. Please read what and how to copyright your artwork.

Useful links to digital media business sites.

Association of Internet Professionals - The Association of Internet Professionals (AIP) is the premier professional association for those involved in the creation, maintenance, facilitation, or distribution of Internet-related content.

www.gag.org - Graphic arts Guild.

Read info about working as contractor at www.artsource.com
The customer "client" is the person who is hiring you to create the digital media. Clients are hard to come by, once you have a client try to keep them by always give them the best product. For the fours years I was working within the digital media business, I had the same clients come back year after year. Relationships is the key to good business.
  1. The customer is always right. Give the client exactly what they want. The greatest problem in this business is that artist "people creating the digital media" think they know what the client will like. Wrong.
  2. Educating the client on the time it take to complete a project. Many clients think that since it is done on computer that it doesn't take much time to create, or changes are easy to do. Wrong.
  3. Always have good relationship with client because the best way to get new business is from referrals from existing clients.
  4. Always keep the client involved throughout the creation of a product. Get approval of milestones in the production.
  5. Advice - in a design meeting with a client, never give them more than 3 choices of a design ideas. The designer "you" is the expert and needs to help the client to make design decisions.
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gag
This is the best book for learning how to deal with clients. This is from the Graphic Artist Guild.
The production cycle is the process of producing a digital media product. This is usually done by a team of people that specialize in their jobs. The production cycle may vary from a few days for a web page to several years for a game or movie. The greatest challenge facing production come from time, equipment and staffing. Many clients want their products produced fast and many companies need to work long hours to complete a project on time. In addition, equipment is always changing. Employees always want the newest and best equipment. The newest equipment is always the most expensive. Also, finding and keeping trained employees is always a challenge. Many companies use part-time "contract worker" for production.
  1. Research and development - plan the content and writing the of information. User Interface analysis.
  2. Storyboarding and flowchart - the development of the look and feel as-well-as organization of product.
  3. Design development - creation of the artwork and programming.
  4. Testing - All products should be thoroughly tested before delivery.
  5. Changes and final approval from client.
 products

The ownership of artwork is very important to the business of digital media. Copyrights are laws that determine who owns the rights to use artwork.

When you create Artwork who owns it? You or the Client?
  1. The designer owns the artwork- if they are a contract employee on a digital media project.
  2. The company will own the copyright of the artwork if the designer is a full time employee of the company.
  3. Contract - if you work as a contractor, make sure to specify who owns the copyright in the contract.
  4. What can be copyrighted - artwork, layouts, music, video, anything that is fix on a surface. For example, a performance of a play is not copyrighted, but the script and score can be.

 

 

 
   
© Jeff Rascov 2009
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