SWAT I 'erd

Another acronym to learn and dissect into digestible chunks of applicable knowledge.


SWOT - Strengths, Opportunities, Weaknesses, and Threats. The application of this strain of marketing theory can give me an advantage when considering the strengths and weaknesses of potential competition, marking it against my own, to either give me an extra hold on the metaphorical ladder, or to be influenced by the work produced.


I have decided to look at a local illustrator/promoter called Thomas Hudson. Despite him not having what could be called, an enterprise as such, he has made himself a name locally, working for various publications, including zines, flyers, posters, books, and CD covers for his band.
I chose him as an example, as he uses a mix of collage and illustration that is similar to how I want to work and design. His visual approach to design may seem infantile, but works on a similar basis to how south park and Luke Drozd are, which is by using cruder imagery, and simpler methods for communication, makes the receiver warmer to the work produced. The use of mixed media and illustration techniques are something I would like to pursue further.


However, when navigating what is meant to be his homepage for navigation, it turns out that the homepage is lacking in any sort of navigational facilities, but does not actually have any content on it! Instead it redirects to his flickr site, which admittedly has a lot of fantastic work on it, but with no real navigation in which to find, or select a certain piece of work, leaves a lot to be reconsidered. With any self-respecting designer/illustrator, there is a link or two that redirect you to a store in which you can easily navigate and select work and products to purchase. The variety of work is a major strength, displaying the obvious chronological progress from his early stages of being in the industry, and boasting the various labels, venues and club nights he has a had a hand in promoting and designing for. 


The opportunities presented are not present either, with the only real example of having opportunities is Thom's networking with local talent, including underground publications, and being on a need-to-know basis with people he needed-to-know for his self-promotion. However I think that another negative thing is to be considered in the case that he is in a band that has kicked off majorly in the past 2 years, which has not hindered his work, since he does almost all the promotion of his band, label, and artwork respectively. 


The threat was that he may of not been able to continue his style of illustration and design for much longer due to the ever changing trends and fashions of the industry, alongside his weakness of the band going on tour, and inadvertedly taking attention away from his work in the industry, which can now be put into action purely for the music industry. Maybe after he has finished his tour, he will get back to focussing on his visual work rather than his aural one.