Week 2: Business Models, Studios, Estimating, Invoicing and Budget Management | Test & Rehearse-WIP

I was responsible for the administration and economics of my studio I had with a partner for 8 years. We worked under the premise that we needed to invoice a certain amount/month to get our salaries, pay office rent, etc. So a very loose model that in hindsight could have gained from some more structure. But we did well anyway. In projects there was a different approach with very structured budgeting and planning, as we often worked with collaborators and printers and everything just went through us, a part of that job was also to ensure the money we covered for others that were connected to the project, came back to us and usually that service of covering for them financially throughout the project meant that we added between 15-30% of the cost depending on what it was and what company etc.

Then I worked one year at an advertising firm where every 15 minutes where logged in a system–8 hrs/day and 65% of the time had to be debitable to break even and as an art director you were supposed to have at least 75% debitable time.

After I left that firm I worked briefly as a freelancer for another firm in town. They also tracked debitable hours but with less pressure on the individual and with a constant discussion on how to get a better balance between the time put in the project and its value.

I will be working with a phd proposal therefore I will be looking at what the economic models in the academic world looks like and what possibilities there are for me in terms of funding. I will be looking at one fully funded, full-time PhD position at a Swedish University as that is my main goal. But I will also sketch out a scenario for an unfunded full-time position at a European University and research possible grants and scholarships.

Research for funding

Co-financing
There is a possibility for co-financing, which requires a plan to be attached to the application documents. The researcher is responsible for ensuring that the application and any need for co-financing is anchored with the head of department, dean or vice-chancellor according to delegation order.

Grants and innovation office, LNU

The Grants and innovation office at the local university can help with a lot of things, for example finding financial support and have mapped out yearly grants provided to the university.

They also offer financial support for, for example, a mapping of the market and news review. For instance, GIO has close access to funds to verify your idea. The money (max 300,000 SEK) can be used for news review, market research, prototype production, various types of protection such as patent protection, design protection and trademark protection.

https://lnu.se/en/medarbetare/organisation/office-of-external-relations/grants-and-innovation-office/

Vetenskapsrådet

The Swedish Research Council is Sweden’s largest governmental research funding body, and supports research of the highest quality within all scientific fields.

https://www.vr.se/

The initial ambition was to create a scenario based on funding through scholarships, however, a scholarship funded PhD does not provide any social benefits. As scholarship funding is not employment, I would not be entitled to work-based benefits such as sickness benefit or parental benefit from the Social Insurance Agency. I would not be entitled to the collective agreement-based benefits such as parental benefit supplement and compensation for medicines. Problems therefore arise in the event of prolonged illness or parental leave. Studying with scholarship does not add to pension and is calculated to lower ones pension with 2.5 percent for each year. Working part-time would allow me to keep these benefits and pays for pension.   

Workshop challenge

Scenario 1

A fully funded, full-time PhD position at a Swedish University

	Entry	After 50%	After 80%
Gross salary*	29 450 SEK	31 550 SEK	33 200 SEK
Take-home salary**	22 652 SEK	24 130 SEK	25 263 SEK

	Year 1-6
Yearly invoicing*	+410 000 SEK
Monthly invoicing*	+34 167 SEK
Monthly invoicing**	+25 625 SEK
Occupational pension***	-1 000 SEK
Take-home salary****	19 255 SEK

This is the local university’s own budgeting for the dissertation.

https://lnu.se/globalassets/fkh/forskarutbildning/medarbetare/riktlinjer-och-rutiner-for-disputation-fkh-rev.-210609.pdf

This is a short term time plan for a possible application to the Linnaeus University. I will probably revise this, but so far this is what I am doing.

Scenario 2

	Year 1	Year 2	Year 3	Year 4
Gross salary	353 400 SEK	353 400 SEK	378 600 SEK	395 100 SEK
Holiday compensation	0 SEK	4 712 SEK*	5 048 SEK**	5 268 SEK***
Doctoral backpack	10 000 SEK	10 000 sek	10 000 sek	10 000 sek
Total	363 400 SEK	368 112 SEK	393 648 SEK	410 368 SEK

Further research for PhD proposal

Application kit

I will create a sort of application kit, so if I get my proposal ready everything else is ready to go as well. These are taken from a call for a phd position in a Swedish University. Some of these will be in the submission for the assignment and some not.

1. A personal letter/description describing my background, interest in the subject, the intention of the doctoral program and an account of merits and experiences of relevance to the education and research assignment. 

2. CV with certified copies of diplomas, academic grades and other relevant certificates.
   
3. A copy of my master thesis / work
   
4. A phd proposal presenting an idea for my dissertation. Describing the research problem that the doctoral student wants to study, research questions, the theoretical framework and which methods are intended to be used to answer the research questions. The proposal may comprise a maximum of 3,000 words, including a reference list
   
5. Where applicable, copies of other publications (articles in journals, reports, etc.).
   
6. Two letters of recommendation or contact information for two reference persons

PhD Proposal research

I am doing weekly research on how to approach the proposal. I need to find a direction that feels suitable for me and I am currently also looking at what might be suitable for the Department where I am having my meeting in August. Angela Reyes writes and talks about postcolonial semiotics (in linguistics) and I am looking into whether that is an approach for me in visual communication and/or typography/written language. Postcolonial semiotics are the processes through which signs are linked to the colonial and its ongoing relevance in the construction of value. 

Dr Reyes article on Postcolonial Semiotics strongly contributed to me taking an aim towards semiotics.

Angela Reyes

Reyes talks about how postcolonial semiotics – can be used as a way to think through the binary and how binaries develop through historical, ideological and semiotic processes, how they organize perceptions, how they appear to collapse or splinter (she introduces a third in binary semiotics which is centered in this talk, and a very interesting theory where she proposes that the third might be the denoted and denoting. Sort of like a vessel of ideology). She discusses how they might be more productively thought through in terms of threes.

She talks about binaries having been invented to structure our world view, perception in opposites and asks: “how do such dichotomies emerge on what basis and to what effect and what do they elucidate or conceal”

Binaries enable us to speak of things as things as though they are real so they enable us to hear see and feel and act on those things as if they’re real things and also binaries help us enter into dialectical arrangements where they may synthesize or break.

Categories, the signs that constitute them, and the binaries they may be positioned along are in no way natural or inherent phenomena, any sign and its contrast, any category and its contrast are on going products of historical, ideological and semiotic processes “

Angela Reyes

Should I look at visual language–written language as I am very interested in book history and that could make for a pathway to include that?  Maybe I should have a closer look at research in postcolonial semiotics in western writing systems.

Jürgen Spitzmüller

I am reading everything I can find on Jürgen Spitzmüller’s research on ideologies of graphic language. This is very close to my ambition with this proposal. He is coming from a perspective of language which differentiates his perspectives a bit from mine, but that can actually be a good thing as I can then possibly build on his research and use that as navigation for my own.

Eero Tarasti

Modal competence–to provide something with a meaning

signified–coloniase

signifier–coloniasant

“The position of a colonized object cannot be improved by its being shifted to the status of a colonizing object, that is to say, by subordinating others to it or by trying to emphasize the excellence of its inner qualities. The only real solution would be the dissolution of the relationship of signifying–that of subordinating/subordinated, or dominant/dominated–which in most cases is a impossible venture.”

References

Postcolonial Semiotics in Annual Review of Anthropology by Angela Reyes

SPITZMÜLLER, Jürgen. 2012. ‘Floating ideologies: Metamorphoses of graphic “Germanness”‘ Orthography As Social Action : Scripts, Spelling, Identity and Power, edited by Jaffe Alexandra, et al., De Gruyter, Inc. ProQuest Ebook Central. [Available at: http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/falmouth-ebooks/detail.action?docID=893929.]

SPITZMÜLLER, Jürgen. 2015. ‘Graphic variation and graphic ideologies: a metapragmatic approach’. In Social Semiotics 25:2 pages 126-141. [Available at: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10350330.2015.1010323]

TARASTI, Eero. 1998. ‘On post-colonial semiotics.’ Sign Systems Studies, 26, 115-135. Available at: https://doi.org/10.12697/SSS.1998.26.05