Into the Studios: Business for Creatives

Hello everybody. Welcome. Thank you so much for joining us today. Today we are doing our into the studios for business for Creative session. We are here with Holly Mosher, who is the chair of this kind of department and multiple different things. So if you have any questions while Holly is presenting, please feel free to enter them into the chat area which will be located on the bottom right corner of your screen. Once you enter in your questions, I can bring them up during the Q&A which will be the 2nd.

Half of this session, but for now, sit back and enjoy and Holly let you take it away.

Thank you so much. Welcome, everybody. I'm excited to talk to you today about some of our minor and certificate programs we have. I'm going to talk about business and the creative industry, fashion merchandising and our E Sports management program. So before I do that, I want to tell you a little bit about myself.

They have a background in fashion and marketing.

I have a masters in apparel, textiles, merchandise, and marketing and a bachelors in fashion merchandising and marketing. I was a former retail buyer and worked in product development and design for private label for many different corporate retail offices prior to going into education full time doing consulting still in the field. Working with manufacturers who do design work is something that I enjoy doing. I also was a former.

Entrepreneur and I owned a online boutique, so I am truly passionate about some of the minors and certificates that we offer. Let me move on and tell you a little bit about why you might want to choose a minor or a certificate. So within choosing a minor or certificate, you can gain valuable skills, additional knowledge to enhance what you're already doing in your major.

Adding like something intriguing on your resume that kind of sets you apart from other people can help you with your career potential and opportunities out there in the workforce.

The right way to think about this is to kind of what complements your major when you're adding a minor or certificate to it. I think about like business in the creative industry is a great minor or certificate for someone who might want to choose social media marketing as a career path, who would maybe be able to do like graphic design or illustration as a major.

Fashion merchandising is a wonderful career path to also choose if you're interested in basically pretty much any of our art majors because we learn a lot of the design process and being able to work in product development for fashion is an amazing thing. So all of your skills kind of translate into product development there and enhancing it with a minor or certificate will help open doors for career essentials.

And then E Sports management is a great minor or certificate program to think about pairing with like our animation and game art major. There's many opportunities in the esports arena and industry that I'm going to get into further for career paths. Another thing to think about when you're choosing a minor or a certificate is how you create something that you might be passionate about. I know a lot of you are artist and you're very passionate about illustration, let's say.

But adding that on as, let's say, fashion merchandising, you could possibly design like a textile pattern or be an illustrator for some sort of textile company. This gives you other opportunities to enhance your career and a great way to also explore and find a niche in your specific marketplace that might help you with those additional opportunities. So as I said, we're going to talk about business and the creative industry.

Fashion, merchandising and our E Sports management degree. So our business in the creative industry focuses on helping students pursue being maybe a creative entrepreneur, maybe owning your own business one day or maybe working for a corporation and really understanding the design background as long as well as adding that business and marketing potential to your resume.

As I said, many of our graphic design students add business in the creative industry as a minor to enhance that so they can work in fields of marketing and promotional activities, such a big area for social media. So if you decide to do the business and the creative industry minor or certificate program, you are able to basically understand the overall business environment.

And really go through and create this business portfolio that's going to enhance what you're doing in your major as well as learn how to do a business plan which is going to help you. If you ever want to be an entrepreneur and really understand the logistics of what it's like to, you know, sell something, price it, make a profit out of it and some of those key financial areas that you should understand if you.

Ever want to work in any type of like field where you need to make profit? So thinking about your own business or even thinking about working for a company?

So one exciting thing that we focus on in the business and the creative industry minor is entrepreneurship. A lot of artists would like to do to be an entrepreneur and sell what they're doing. So we offer a business boot camp that happens twice a year and it's a really great way whether you're in the business minor or any type of major or minor at pcad you're able to attend. It's open to all students.

And this is a great way for you to really look at a business idea and think about how you can develop it and take it further. So the business boot camp is a way to kind of pitch your idea and get feedback. While we do the boot camp, we actually do a mock simulation of a business plan and we invite industry guests from local area businesses for the students to pitch their ideas of what they want to do for their business.

So it's a great way to kind of develop that idea and see what things are viable and what you might want to change in your business or enhance in your business.

Excuse me. So another thing that is really exciting in the business and the creative industry minor or certificate is we've had entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship Lecture series where we have entrepreneurs come in from different types of various businesses and tell us how they got started. So they're guest speakers who will come in and really let you know as an artist or a creative what they did to get their business going and.

How to be successful. We do lots of workshops on this as well as guest lectures to help enhance that in whatever field that you're interested in.

So I'm going to break down a little bit about some of the courses that are offered in the business and the creative industry. We have a two-part continuation course, 101 and 102 that is a broad overview of what business management and practices in the global business empire looks like. It really focuses in all the different areas how you can supplement your major with this minor as a career path and all the opportunities that are out there by learning more about business.

We then have a principles of marketing course, which is really great because it helps you identify like the principles behind selling a product or displaying a product or promoting a product or even a service. It will really enhance what you might do as a company or as an entrepreneur.

We also have an accounting and finance course, which helps you with the logistics and the spreadsheets behind what you have to do as a business owner or someone who works with budgets and a company. And then we do have our entrepreneurship course is where you develop a full detailed business plan, which is something you could take away and pitch and take maybe to an SBA, a small Business Association lender or you might be able to help get grant funding.

For your specific business.

We also have our professional practices in the business and creative industry and so that helps you really mold your skill sets to be able to get a career that is enhanced with the business and the creative minor or certificate.

So moving on to our next minor or certificate, it's the esports management minor and certificate. What's very exciting about the E Sports Management one is that we actually have some really exciting campus events that go along with this.

Students who pursue an esports minor or certificate like to pair it with the animation and game art major. It opens up a lot of different doors of career opportunities.

So the esports industry has several different areas of where we can have opportunities for employment. There's affiliate affiliate marketing, E Sports managers.

A global esports creative a product or a content manager?

Even people who promote brands are real big part of the esports industry and even a virtual sports assistant, so there's many ways to kind of get yourself involved in working in this industry if this is something you're interested in.

Industry professionals are increasingly competitive in this area, so adding an esport minor to it is a great way for you to enhance your resume when you're out looking for that job after graduation. We also have a really exciting thing. Our E Sports team and our E Sports team is called the Pcad Peacocks. They are the first professional first team ever at a professional arts college. They compete.

They focus on strategy, cooperation, quick thinking, and they compete in League of Legends and Overwatch. They are considering some other games. I've spoke with the coach for the next upcoming season.

So as I said, the game art major is paired very nice with an E sports management minor. We also include in the curriculum some of the business classes as well so that you're able to work for these E sports companies in different capacities. So our curriculum for E Sports management has the first three business classes, the two global business overview classes and our accounting.

And finance for non majors, but then we move on to have some tailored specifically for E sports. The E Sports intro to E Sports is going to cover like the leagues, the teams, the gaming publishers out there, maybe tournament opportunities that we might have that could be a part of what you're planning as maybe a brand manager in that industry.

The next one is E sports events and gaming. So this is a great one because it really talks about and it really enhances your learning about how to plan an E sports event. So these events and these competitions are really big now and it this could be an avenue of a career path for you. And then last we have a sport analytics class that focuses on data collection and management skills strategies.

Team Management, player management. A lot of the necessary skills in order to get a job in the esports industry.

Our next minor or certificate program is fashion merchandising. Fashion merchandising or as we call it fame at pcad is one of our newest minors and certificates. So students who like to take the fashion merchandising, minor or certificate courses are interested in working in maybe fashion trend forecasting a product development supply chain.

Distribution, being a buyer like I was and working in design, those are all opportunities that can enhance your resume when you're looking at becoming a some, some specialized career in the fashion industry.

So some of those careers as I said are corporate retail merchandising careers like a retail buyer even understanding the the properties behind a textiles. So we have a textiles course that studies the fiber and fabric content, product development and design, visual merchandising and design, maybe being a costume curator.

Fashion product development, supply chain management and predicting trends as a trend analysis that could be color silhouette, it could be patterns, prints and sometimes those trend forecasters even forecast out two to five years, depending on what type of merchandise they are doing.

So our courses that we have in the fashion merchandising minor or certificate is intro to fashion merchandising. This is an enhanced look at the entire fashion industry. You're able to learn about the overview of what the opportunities are in the fashion industry and really understand the market niche of what's going on in current trending.

Our second one leads us to trend forecasting. You're able to predict trends, concentrate on body silhouettes, designs, fabrics, textiles, even a colors. All of this is really on the forefront of what the fashion industry is comprised of. We also have a history of costume that explores fashion through different eras. It's really interesting to kind of encompass the costume and the trend.

Forecasting together, because we can see where trends are recycled throughout the years, you'll see it again and again. So this is really helpful when you're doing product development or if you want to be in product development and design is understanding the whole fashion life cycle.

We have a retail sustainable buying class.

That focuses on sustainability in the fashion industry and planning out a merchandise plan. So how do buyers go to Fashion Week and pick out their merchandise in this course, you're really going to understand the logistics behind retail buying and how the industry is turning to more of a green type of industry and sustainability.

Our textiles course is very exciting. It has hands on techniques where you explore the properties of fabrics and fibers, maybe by utilizing different tests for abrasion of flame resistance, durability, how something maybe washes and how it's going to have shrinkage, chemical finishes like wrinkle resistance. All this plays a big part in the design and the selling.

Of fashion goods.

And then finally, our product development course is a digital course enhancing a line and collection development so you're able to really understand what goes into making a tech pack, which is what you send to a factory to have it mass produced and be able to design your own collection for a specific season.

So there's much opportunity here at Pcad for career success. We have a amazing career services department that will help you each step of the way with writing resumes, creating your portfolio, networking with specific industry. Our upcoming career day is something that we have twice a year and we bring in guest speakers from companies in all the different majors.

As well as we bring in companies recruiting for internships or possible careers when you graduate.

We also help with developing your personal brand, focusing on entrepreneurship as a business if that's what you would like when you graduate, partnering with corporations, both local and national, even global in some ways to help with career prep and job assistance. And as I mentioned and went into detail, we do a business bootcamp twice a year as well.

So I want you to think about how you can enhance your career opportunity here at pcad by adding a minor or certificate in business in the creative industry, E Sports management or fashion merchandising.

Does anybody have any questions?

Thank you so much, Holly. That was great information and I know that a lot of the students will find that very beneficial, especially when they are thinking about what are the other like.

Pathways that they could type in a creative industry.

Hmm.

OK.

So it does look like we received one question here, and that question is what skills should I learn ahead of time to make this department easier as I'm going throughout school, or what should I start researching or skills should I start, like practicing?

As far as business?

Any of those.

They OK. So I'll kind of hit all of them just so you can have a little bit of research. The best thing that I can give you right now is to really understand or try to research what's out there in each one of those fields. So you know, if you're looking at business in the creative industry, understanding what businesses are thriving and right now we're seeing a lot of declining businesses, maybe doing some research on why they're declining, understand what you know, things could be out there that could help turn them around or if you see a success story.

I always say like kind of keep up on the current trends with whatever you're interested in. If you go to esports, esports is great. If you can really look at the different teams that are out there, the companies that promote them as brands, even looking at game design companies, just having a common knowledge of the industry before you come here is amazing. So it really helps. And then fashion, fashion is exciting right now, if you were really looking at like what's going on in the industry, they have New York.

Fashion Week going on, you can watch on YouTube almost every designer that comes out with their fashion show and you're able to really see what's on the cutting edge of fashion and be able to kind of, you know, enhance understanding what the trends are, what the colors are for the season and really get that knowledge. You know, my background was fashion and I think I was doing that at a young age, just trying to know what was out there in the industry and what brands to kind of like look at and, you know, aspire to really want to be.

A designer for. So I guess that's what I would say look at your industry, if you want to add a minor, understand it a little bit better and you're going to be very successful because when you get to some of these classes and we're doing that global industry overview, you're going to go, oh, I remember talking about that company or that specific brand or I remember what happened last year. So I think it's, it's great advice and and any realm or any major or minor or certificate.

The other question that we got was, do you what makes it beneficial to take both a major and a minor?

So what makes it beneficial is that it opens up doors for you and other creative industries when you think about like adding business. As I said, graphic design could be a social media marketer. You know, that's something really to think about, like having that experience behind you, which is only as a minor or certificate, 18 credits, which we, you know, you're able to do.

Quite easily in your time here at pcad, you can just open those doors being an E sports, I mean so many companies that are game art companies are looking for that brand management or that team background. And E Sports is a really unique minor, not many schools have it. It really sets you apart when you're building your resume and then fashion is amazing for so many of the majors because it helps you already learning in your major so much about like.

Adobe design and product development that when you add fashion on it adds a niche to the marketplace that you might be able to get a job in that you really didn't even think about. So I think it just opens the doors out there for you to have possible career opportunities that are more specific too.

Perfect. Thank you so much. And then we do have one other question.

Which is what is one thing that you hear students excited about when taking any of these minors, or even talking about minors in general.

Well, it kind of goes back to what I said. Like they're really excited that they have other opportunities that can enhance what they're doing in their major. I know with fame, the fashion minor being new, I've heard so much about.

Being able to be a product developer and a designer in fashion which you know, without having that minor understanding the industry is a little bit difficult. Photography majors have talked about the fame minor as well-being able to be a fashion photographer, which is really exciting. And then it's the same with both business and esports. They really are excited about the opportunity and the doors that it opens. And as I said, it's only 18 credits, so it's.

That sounds like a lot for like one, you know semester, but you take it as you go throughout your years here and it really isn't that much. And it gives you a level of something new, different, maybe something you didn't know a lot about. We have many students and all the majors who focus on business as they're minor. You know, I have that in my undergrad, I have a design degree and I have a minor in business as well, and it probably couldn't have helped me more.

I can say when I got into the industry. So just with that, I think it opens up so many doors for you.

Perfect. Thank you so much. Those were great answers. So that looked like it was our last question that we have today. So thank you so much, Holly, for jumping on and taking your time everyday to talk to our students about these wonderful opportunities that they have. And thank you everybody who joined us either live or is watching this in the future. We do appreciate you coming and we are excited to see where this journey takes you all. Thank you all. Have a good night.

Thank you. Bye, bye.