A Story
Many years ago, before smartphones and tablets, I was living in China and I had the bold idea to launch a business around the online delivery of interactive picture books for the voracious Chinese educational market. I hired some freelancers and we had had so much fun developing a a couple of IPs and a whole bunch of storybooks. Then I took it all along to a web development firm and paid them a chunk of change to develop a website and technology build for delivering all this to my customers.
Great. It went well, good response, very happy. However, because of poor strategic planning I wasn’t able to follow up on the initial success. I sold the platform and content for a small sum and moved on. To put it simply I hadn’t though about where I was going with the business and so I had no direction to follow when it came to moving beyond the first step.
Are you starting a business based on stories and pictures?
This is a diagnosis sheet for focusing ideas. For people putting together a project or business with some sort of illustrated intellectual property content. Maybe it’s a children’s book series, an animation startup, tshirt company, startup toy company a kids licensing brand or something totally new. If you are bringing a business project to the world and it is based around telling stories with pictures, then this worksheet is for you, to help you think through your business idea.
When we bring a project into the world we try to make something great. I hate to think of people with good intentions not achieving their goals. I want you to succeed and I want your project to have an impact.
So I created this project diagnosis sheet for people in a similar position. It aims to help clarify your thinking around audience, positioning and strategy. A secondary goal is to focus your thinking onto something that will help you feel good about what you are doing.
This is the sort of thing I like to work through with my clients. if you’ve had a look at this sheet, and want to go beyond this basic overview and get more strategic about your project, get in touch with Screen and Pencil.
Screen_Pencil_project_diagnosis_sheet_01-Copy-1.pdf (239 downloads)