Industry Based Learning Report
Introduction
In this reflective report, I will be documenting my development as a Makeup Artist within the creative industry. Delving into the world of makeup and gaining more experience and knowledge through freelance work, workshops, collaborations, social media and networking. Using SWOT and SMART plans I will analyse my skills and knowledge as a creative and plan how I will achieve my current and future goals.
The Makeup Industry
To understand one's job and role as a creative, one must first research the industry they are in and apply that knowledge to their own development and practice. This is why I have decided to start with the research first. To look at what I am learning and then from there I can apply it and grow.
The makeup industry! A multibillion-pound empire that is ever-growing and developing. With the rise of social media, makeup artists have been on the rise and business is bigger than ever. Valued at £26.7 billion just in 2022 (John, 2022). Why makeup? People love to make themselves feel pretty. Some like to use it to create bold and creative looks, whereas others just like to wear a little in their day-to-day lives. Makeup plays a key part in various sectors such as entertainment, personal care, and fashion.
In the current climate, there are thousands of products to choose from as well as hundreds of ways a person can wear and do their makeup. A key thing that makeup artists need to constantly keep up with is makeup trends. They can change from week to week, month to month, and year to year. How do these trends become trends? Who are people look to learn from and follow these trends? With the rise in social media and its users, influencers play a key role in the makeup industry in today's climate. Most people rely on influencers and social media to keep up with the latest trends, new products, product reviews, and buying new products. This makes them a key tool for brands and businesses to use in terms of marketing (Kolb, 2020). This is one of the main ways a lot of makeup artists make money, by doing ads and campaigns with brands and businesses. With the book in the social media app TikTok and launching TikTok Shop in 2020, makeup sales went up 229% in the UK after the Covid lockdown and this was due to the way that brands and online businesses now sell products. By going live on TikTok and hosting a live shopping stream. Brands often collaborate with influencers, who then make commissions. They also bring with them their audience to the brand’s page and can give live makeup reviews which then leads to sales (Mirrors, 2022).
With positives, there are always negatives. A current threat to all brands and businesses is the Cost-of-Living Crisis. This is impacting people's lives as they will need to make some tough decisions when it comes to spending. People will prioritise their bills and food shop over buying cosmetics. Without any solutions being put into place currently. This will have a knock-on effect with sales in the makeup industry in all sectors such as selling products, beauty services, freelancers, theatre, tv and film. As well as people not being afford these things, businesses will also have to put up their prices themselves to stay afloat and keep up with increasing costs (Roberts, 2023).
Makeup Industry page: https://alisondouglas186.wixsite.com/my-site-1/the-makeup-industry
My Goal as a Creative
Taking all of this latest information I want to apply it to my own practices and develop as a freelance makeup artist. I already have HND Makeup Artistry. Now I want to develop that even further and create my own brand and business. Building up my social media, creating a logo, and getting my name out there by networking and collaborating with others within the industry. I also want to take on more clients within the next year to help build up my business and reputation as a makeup artist.
Current work
SWOT Analysis of the Makeup Industry
Job Roles
With being a fully qualified makeup artist in a variety of areas such as glam, fashion, editorial, period, theatre, TV, Film, and SFX makeup there are a lot of job roles that I can then take on. As well as having a plethora of other skills that can also be applied to various job sectors, I found that when doing my research there as way more job roles than I anticipated.
(Dooly, 2022) Looking at the jobs within the makeup industry I first looked at the more traditional jobs such as Theatre, TV & Film, Bridal, Fashion & Editorial, and Special Effects. These were all job sectors that I have freelanced in before and were most aligned with my qualifications and current skill set. I found that all of them could be broken down into 3 separate roles, those being lead makeup artist, makeup artists, and assistant makeup artists. All had separate roles and responsibilities within the team, but all were essential. With Theatre, TV & Film, and Special Effects, I found that joining a company would be best in these areas as it means continuous work rather than just one-off contracts like a freelancer would get (Class, 2021). I also investigated beauty counter sales, digital face chart designer, and charity worker. All are jobs that an MUA would not typically do but when researching, I found I had skills that also apply to these jobs (Hired, 2024).
Job Roles page: https://alisondouglas186.wixsite.com/my-site-1/job-roles-in-the-industry
Personal Development and Reflection
SMART Plan
Specific - My goal as a creative is to produce professional photos of my creative makeup and gain the knowledge I need to start my own business. I will produce a body of work that shows my development as a creative and reflection on everything I do. I will produce a weekly blog with reflective posts on all work and I hope to collaborate with others within the creative industries. I am doing a BA in Creative Enterprise
Measurable –I am going to give myself until the 1st of April to create content, produce photos and develop my branding. I will be working on everything on a weekly basis so I can stay on top of my workload.
Achievable - I know I am more than capable of achieving the results that I desire if I stick to my time scale plan and keep up with the tasks given out. I cannot predict the future and I do not know if anything will happen to change my current plan but if I stick to it everything will go great.
Relevant - By doing this project I get to show all the skills and knowledge I have gained in makeup and hair. I also choose to do the degree as I want to learn to be a creative entrepreneur, and this is something I previously have no knowledge or understanding of how to do. After graduating I also plan to work in Theatre/Editorial/Fashion Makeup or work withing a company to get in person experience as my profession as it is something I am passionate about and truly get enjoyment out of.
Time Bound - I have 1 main deadlines for this unit that being the 22 April 2024. To make sure I meet this deadline I created a week-by-week timescale plan that I keep in my notebook and give myself weekly tasks that I must be completed within a certain timeframe period. (Editorial, 2023)
SWOT Analysis
Below is a SWOT analysis of my skills and knowledge. I will highlight the things that I really want to focus on working on through the year that I feel will benefit my learning and development as a creative entrepreneur.
Workshops
This past year I have done 16 workshops. 8 with Bridge to Business and 8 with the Female Boss program. All were to help me learn about developing and starting my own business. I found most of the workshops to be rather good. My favourites being about Developing Branding, Idea Generation, Marketing, and a surprise to me Finance. I took away a lot from all the workshops. Some I did feel were rather short and could have gone more depth. With the Female Boss we were able to interact and speak with female entrepreneurs from around Scotland and hear their stories of how they got to where they are today. They were all so inspiring and made me realise that I to can become an entrepreneur. They really helped me to grown in my confidence (Scotland, 2024)
Female Boss page: https://alisondouglas186.wixsite.com/my-site-1/female-boss-program
Workshops page: https://alisondouglas186.wixsite.com/my-site-1/workshops
Networking
To develop my network, I joined LinkedIn. After being on it for a while I would say that it's great for connecting with photographers and other businesspeople. For makeup artists though it is not a platform that we would typically use unless we are looking for a job in beauty counter sales. It's not the best for gaining clients, rather it's better for collaborating with other brands, businesses, and freelancers.
Collaboration
Collaborations with other creatives was something that I really wanted to do this year. Through one of my classes I was able to collaborate with another makeup artist, a photographer and an interior designer. Together we created alternative photos with clients getting a makeup over brining their gothic fantasies to life. When going into this project I wanted to keep open mindset or as Carole Dweck would say growth mindset (Dweck, 2020). As I had never worked with a couple of these people before, so I was rather nervous. I took on a rather large role I found when it came to organising, paperwork, research and creative development. As with any group you will always get people that will sadly just not put as much work into a project as everyone else. A lot of the time I had to act as a mediator -a role I had never done before – especially when it came to people having creative differences. It could get heated, so I stepped in and offered compromises that suited everyone. Overall, the photos did turn out really food. Some do look rather dark which but the clients where happy with the experience that they had.
I did get asked to work with two other photographers in the class. The first one fell through, and the models did not turn up. The photographer is yet to rearrange. The second person that approached me we did do the photoshoot, which I documented on a TikTok videos, I designed the face charts for her, and we completed the shoot. On the day she said she was happy with how everything went and then messaged me a week later to arrange another photoshoot. Everything was going well and was positive. Then things took a weird turn. Out of nowhere she began to act in a very unprofessional manner towards me. So, I quietly cut all ties with her. Sometime in life things just don't end well, but keeping that growth mindset in mind, rather than getting upset and reacting back in a negative way, I decided not to, and just have breather, and move on from the experience. It was a learning experience I would say also, in the fact that something like that had never happened to me before so I had to quickly learn how I was going to respond.
Photoshoot
Kaptured Majik
Branding
Who knew that developing your logo and branding would be so difficult? I needed to first figure out what I wanted to tell my audience. What did I stand for and value? This meant looking into myself and figuring out why I was doing what I was doing. Why did I want to create this business? As a makeup artist, I aim to offer all my clients an experience, which is what branding is all about (Decker,2023). In this case, I am more of a creative makeup artist, I love to play with colour and create something that is unique to each client. Straight away I knew I wanted to stay away from the traditional makeup artist logos, those usually being simple with nude colours. It just wasn't me and not a good representation of me and my work. I was able to collaborate with a student graphic designer. When we had our meeting, we spoke about different colour schemes, and I showed her some of my work and my website. I decided to go with a purple, pink and black colour theme. I felt this suited the look I was going for best. Though I liked the design she gave me it wasn't exactly right, so I did go and edit it on Ibis Paint and Canva a little bit just to add those finishing touches that I wanted. I am satisfied with my branding the now, but I may still go to a more professional graphic designer to create something similar but far more polished looking.
Branding page: https://alisondouglas186.wixsite.com/my-site-1/s-projects-side-by-side
Social Media
Usually, I am more of an Instagram person, and I have a good number of followers on there, but as a makeup artist we must follow trends and fashions, so this year I really focused on creating video content for TikTok and some other platforms. I did a lot of experimenting with the different styles of videos to figure out which ones I enjoyed making the most and what my audience interacted with the most. I found making Days in the Life videos the easiest to make and Get Ready With Me’s the most fun. Though they do take a lot of time to create. You can sit for 2 to 3 hours filming a makeup video depending on the look and then another 2 hours editing. I used the Cap Cut app a lot to edit my videos. Its user friendly and is the go-to app for people to use when creating and editing content for social media the now. I learned how to use it watching some videos and tutorials. A new skill that I gained as I have never done video editing before. Learning how to cut clips, add effects, add transitions, voiceovers and so much more (Tech, 2023).
Link to creative page: https://alisondouglas186.wixsite.com/my-site-1/creative-project
Feedback
As you can see the feedback on my social media content is all good. Some brands like Doll Beauty and Pat McGrath have interacted with my content. I was really overwhelmed with emotion when I got those notifications. Though I am a small creator I seem to have a lot of luck when it comes to gaining attention from brands which is excellent. My audience seemed to interact with my GRWM’s more than any other of the content that I have posted. So going forth those are the style videos I am going to focus more on posting. From my tutors they did all say that I needed to add in more Harvard referencing to my blogs. I had read all the material and done all this research and development and then just forgot to reference. Having that feedback though I then started to apply it to my blogs.
Reflection/Conclusion
What has been happening?
At the start of the year, I had to set some goals for myself and my business. I first did all my research to help me understand what I wanted to do with my skills and knowledge. I created a Swot analysis and Smart plan to help identify what my strengths and weaknesses were, see where I could develop more, and set realistic goals for myself. I decided that for my creative project, I wanted to work on developing my brand/logo and build my professional portfolio with better-quality photos of my work. I would do this by collaborating with others in my course and by creating social media content to help grow my online platforms, this way I can attract more people that would like to hire me.
What have I been learning?
Regarding my creative project and reflecting apon my SMART and SWOT plans I can see the areas in which I have learned and grown. I have learnt that not everything needs to be absolutely perfect. I read this book called Feck Perfuction by James Victore at the start of the year and it really struck a chord with me. Before I tended to be hard on myself and get overwhelmed with the smallest of details not going my way. Having read this book though, I realised that art is subjective, it looks different to everyone. People that like my work, will like it because it is those imperfections is what makes it different and stand out from everyone else's (Victore, 2019). (Bassot, 2020) Other things that I would say that I have learnt to do that has been beneficial to my learning and development this past year, is learning the art of reflective writing. It's something that was completely new to me and I wasn't too sure if I was going to be any good at it. looking at reflective model writing I experimented using different ones on my blog such as Gibs Model and ERA Model. Both are good to use the one I led best was the Driscoll model –which I am currently using. Consisting of 3 simple questions, it is easy to use, and you can use to reflect about various subjects. Which I felt was best as they are more open-ended questions that allowed me to really sit and think about what I had learned and what my next steps would be (University, 2024). Thought I have learnt about mindset this past year I have at times had both a fixed mindset and a growth mindset depending on the situation. When it comes to others, I would say I keep that growth mindset and encourage and build people up as much as I can, but for some reason I struggle to do this for myself (Dweck ,2012). Even now after developing myself as a creative entrepreneur, I am having doubts about being able to get my business started or getting a job within the creative industry. This imposter syndrome comes in and makes me feel as if I just can't do it. Why would I ever think that I can be an entrepreneur? I also hate the unknown which when starting your own business, you just don't know how it will go.
What am I going to do next?
Going forward I want to either get a job in the creative industries so that I can put my learning in to action and I will also continue to work on my social media accounts and building up my client list. I am going to be signing up to some creative job sites such as The Dots which is essential like LinkedIn, but it's aimed at creatives and companies such as the BBC, ITV, Spotify, Google, fashion brands and makeup brands all post job adverts on there and creatives also all interact on their with one another (Dots,2019). When it comes to myself, I am going to work on having a more growth mindset when it comes to my own work and life as this is the only way that I am going to become a successful creative entrepreneur. This may take days, months or years but I know that I will eventually achieve all my goals.
Blog Link: https://alisondouglas186.wixsite.com/my-site-1/industry-based-learning
Bibliography
Bassot, B. (2020). The reflective journal. 3rd ed. London: Red Globe Press.
Class, M. (2021) What is a film makeup artist? the role of makeup artists on film and television productions - 2024, MasterClass. Available at: https://www.masterclass.com/articles/what-is-a-film-makeup-artist-the-role-of-makeup-artists-on-film-and-television-productions (Accessed: 19 February 2024).
Decker, A. (2023). The Ultimate Guide to Branding in 2020. [online] Hubspot.com. Available at: https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/branding.
Dooley, G. (2022) Special effects makeup artists, Brushstroke Makeup School. Available at: https://brushstroke.co.uk/special-effects-makeup-artist/ (Accessed: 19 February 2024).
Dots, T. (2019). The Dots. [online] The Dots. Available at: https://the-dots.com/.
Dweck, C. (2012). Mindset: How You Can Fulfil Your Potential. London: Robinson.
Editorial, W. (2023). How to Create a SMART Plan: The Complete Guide. [online] WinSavvy. Available at: https://www.winsavvy.com/smart-plan/ [Accessed 15 Apr. 2024].
Hired, S. (2024) 20 best beauty counter jobs in Scotland (hiring now!) | simplyhired, Simply Hired. Available at: https://www.simplyhired.co.uk/search?q=beauty+counter&l=scotland (Accessed: 26 February 2024).
John, J. (2022). The expansion of the beauty industry in the UK - Companies House. [online] companieshouse.blog.gov.uk. Available at: https://companieshouse.blog.gov.uk/2022/01/31/the-expansion-of-the-beauty-industry-in-the-uk/.
Kolb, B M. (2020). Entrepreneurship For the Creative and Cultural Industries. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge. pp.1-243.
Mirrors, H. (2022) UK Beauty Industry Statistics 2023: Facts, stats and trends, hollywood mirrors. Available at: https://www.hollywoodmirrors.co.uk/blogs/news/uk-beauty-industry-statistics (Accessed: 04 December 2023).
Roberts, L. (2023). What dies the Cost of Living Crisis mean for your Small Business. [Online]. Bionic. Last Updated: 31 October 2023. Available at: https://bionic.co.uk/blog/small-business-cost-of-living-crisis/ [Accessed 21 November 2023].
Scotland, Y.E. (2024). Our Offer. [online] bridge2business.org.uk. Available at: https://bridge2business.org.uk/programmes.php?pid=24 [Accessed 15 Apr. 2024].
Tech, T. (2023). CapCut Crash Course: A Beginner’s Guide to Mastering the Free Desktop Video Editor. [online] www.youtube.com. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-FJIc93RqE [Accessed 13 Apr. 2024].
University, H. (2024) Library: Reflective writing: ERA, ERA - Reflective writing - Library at University of Hull. Available at: https://libguides.hull.ac.uk/reflectivewriting/era(Accessed: 20 February 2024).
Victore, J. (2019). Feck perfuction : dangerous ideas on the business of life. San Francisco: Books.
