Narrow boat as a design studio?

[andork]

Firstly this is my first post in the community so hey!

I am a recent graphic design graduate along with my girlfriend. After spending some time finding work that suites us both we decided to give a start up studio a go. One decision lead to another and we found our selves looking at Narrow boats.

Assuming some how we can find the money through a loan or mortgage to get a Narrow boat, we were wondering if it would be practical to have a liveonboat that could double as a small design studio for us both. Not only does the lifestyle suite us down to a tee, but it could be a really nice, quirky way of setting up a new business (taking the 'studio' to potential new clients etc) which could be a great selling point.

Obviously this raises lots of questions,

-A wide boat would be best, however this limits our cruising

 

-continuous vs marina

 

-enough internet to keep us both online

 

-would you need extra licensing?

Ideally in the future we would love 2 boats, 1 designed as a studio and kitted out as such, and the other a live-on but obviously acquiring 1 boat straight out of uni is hard enough, never mind 2.

If anyone has any advice on the idea, or Narrow boating in general it would be greatly appreciated

 

Thanks,
Alex

[Athy]

Welcome!

Quite a few artists work from narrowboats, and I know of at least one graphic designer who does, or has done, likewise. So yes, your idea is feasible.

 

I would suggest that the one flaw in your idea is that of borrowing money. You'd be better advised to save up until you can afford a boat, otherwise you will be incurring debts from the outset. It is possible to borrow money to buy a boat, but I don't think many people do so.

[andork]

thanks for the reply! Great news to know that others do the same or similar!

As for the borrowing of money, I thought it was a common thing, The way we saw it, it would be cheaper than renting a house, or getting a mortgage on a property and all the bills to go with it. However that being said, unlike a house boats do loose value so its hard to compare.

were stuck living with parents after uni at the moment, so we are trying to figure out what to do next really

[David Mack]

Marine mortgages for narrow boats are all but unobtainable. But you can get an unsecured personal loan up to £25k, subject to status, which would get you a reasonable boat. But I suspect the problem may be that as recent graduates you probably don't have the earnings record needed to qualify.

 

Best of luck!

[Athy]

Marine mortgages for narrow boats are all but unobtainable.

I don't think that is true. But they are undesirable.

[andork]

Marine mortgages for narrow boats are all but unobtainable.

 

 

found a few places that apparently do them, but then we would still have the same issue of qualifying for them

 

 

 

I don't think that is true. But they are undesirable.

Just out of interest, what makes them less desirable than say a mortgage on a house? Does it come down to the lifestyle leaning towards being debt free and living cheaply or?

[Athy]

 

 

 

 

 

Just out of interest, what makes them less desirable than say a mortgage on a house? Does it come down to the lifestyle leaning towards being debt free and living cheaply or?

Absolutely! If you can get a boat without getting a mortgage, do so, otherwise you'll be committed to interest payments for some time to come. House mortgages are equally undesirable (believe me, I remember!) but, as houses tend to cost more than narrowboats, less avoidable.

[Texasboater]

Also boats are a depreciating asset,unlike houses generally.

[Neil2]

I agree with the comments about borrowing money to buy a boat.

 

And I suggest parking the idea for now and think about it again in the middle of Winter.

[Lady Muck]

As someone who has done similar - I'm freelance, it's a design type job, we bought with a marine mortgage, my business is 14 years old and I've had my boat for 10 of those years. Aside from the nitty gritty of buying etc these are my observations.

 

You will either have to spend a fortune on the electrics side of things or compromise - we've gone for the compromise route, because it's cheaper. I work from a single solid state laptop, which has a high res screen (Yoga pro series) no big monitor. I use it in tent mode with a wireless keyboard when onboard, fitted a little shelf at the back for it to sit on. If you have big macs and big monitors you will burn through electricity. Macs don't tend to get on with the 12v adaptors that are available. I know people who work onboard who have had to have them repaired from using these things., so you'd be looking at an invertor, I reckon. Power consumption and space are a big deal on a boat. When I work onboard it's from a tiny folding desk. I've had to look at the size of everything I use for work and think how I can make it smaller. We had desktop computers but they just weren't practical, they got full of ash from the burner, the cases developed condensation inside in the winter and they were just too big (we are on a narrowboat). BUT If you go for a big widebeam and full size kit, then how are you going to power everything?

 

Because electrics on a boat are a really big deal if you plan to cc and work onboard, you really need back up systems and a plan b so you can keep working, the engine isn't enough, we have solar panels and a genny.

 

If you really want to make it your permanent office then it will mean a different license and insurance. I don't meet clients on my boat.

 

It's a big risk to your business moving onboard and getting used to it and trying to keep things going. We bought wireless internet dongles and practised before we moved, but we didn't predict how difficult managing the electrics was going to be and it was incredibly difficult. We had no shoreline to begin with. Starting a business on a boat seems like too much all at once, to me, maybe do one or the other but not both at the same time.

 

If you're cruising and working and living onboard it does has it's advantages, you can do jobs outside in the winter when it's still light, you can keep the boat warm all year. You can work in nicer places in the summer, we are out of town now.

 

If you do cruise you'll encounter problems such as getting to meetings, mooring up somewhere where your wireless internet service provider has no coverage, work equipment breaking when you're miles away from anywhere that sells replacements. It's a nightmare getting deliveries, especially if you're outside of London. Even on my mooring I just cannot, but we now have Doddle in London and that's a godsend.

 

You have to consider how you are going to back up - I back up in three places - Dropbox, drives on the boat and drives offsite. I've lost the boats set of drives and a laptop before (stolen on a train journey) so I can't stress enough how important this is.

 

Internet is a major expense, I've had to go for maximum deals on our phones and I have two sims on business deals for the dongle, plus spare pay as you go sims incase one service provider doesn't work. I've had to faff about unlocking the dongle so that the other sims work. I've discovered that I can't use the cheaper deals for business because the upload/download speeds are throttled. BUT it's far easier than it used to be, I pay £75.50 a month just for the two sims for the dongle but 10 years ago we had two vodafone contracts for 10gb in total and it was about £120 a month and it was only gprs. I had to mail cds out and dropbox didn't exist. Technology continues to improve and it gets easier, for every aspect of our business.

 

Printers can be a pain onboard and personally I've given up. They get dried up or full of dust, I spent far too much on colour printers, but now I have a b&w laser printer and go to a print shop for anything else. But thankfully I no longer need to print things out much as the laptop works as a big tablet.

 

To conclude, you have to really really want to live on a boat to decide to work from one, my work life is way more difficult than my land based colleagues.

 

The only thing that was easier was insurance - our boat insurance provider (Towergate) also does business insurance especially in the creative industries and it was no problem at all to get a policy that combined our home and work life. Much harder when we rented a house and actually cheaper (no idea why!)

Edited July 29, 2016 by Lady Muck

[Jim Batty]

I think there are two big questions here: 1) Do you want to live on a narrowboat?, and 2) Could you run a design studio from one?

 

Only you will know if you can enjoy no. 1 -- after asking dozens of questions here (!), then perhaps hiring a boat for a week out of season to see how you get on, then looking at a bunch for sale to see how different the layouts can be in 7-foot wide floating living spaces.

 

If the answer to no.1 is a resounding ‘Yes!’, then there should be no reason why you can’t run a small graphic design business out of it -- as most design these days is created digitally and can be run through a good laptop, backup hard drives, a smartphone and a reasonable internet connection for communication with clients, acquiring and sending imagery, research, sharing ideas, and so on. And all that can be done from a tabletop. You probably know all this already.

 

The biggest challenge you’ll have, as with all small businesses -- whether they’re run out of a bedroom, a Camden studio or a converted butty, is getting yourself known so that you can secure work and build up clients. And that can take years ... depending on a load of factors ... such as how commercial or not your work is, how ‘different’ or ‘niche’ it appears, who your competitors are, how good a self-promoter you are, ...

 

But I think if you really like boating and really enjoy graphic design, there’s no reason you can’t combine the two in some way.

[MissMax]

Thank you Lady Muck for posting. It has been a real eye opener for me. I am hoping to do photography from the boat hence my thread about keep all my computers and electric.

Your post has been very much appreciated

[magictime]

Just out of interest, what makes them less desirable than say a mortgage on a house? Does it come down to the lifestyle leaning towards being debt free and living cheaply or?

 

We must have made about £100,000 of mortgage payments over the past 20 years or so, but if we sold our house tomorrow we'd expect to get all £100,000 back because of the rise in property prices.

 

If we'd made £100,000 of marine mortgage payments over the past 20 years, maybe having initially borrowed £50,000 to buy a boat, we'd probably expect to get back more like £25,000 because of the way boats depreciate in value.

 

That would still beat renting a house (or a boat), of course - at least we'd have some sort of asset to show for making all those payments.

[Lady Muck]

Thank you Lady Muck for posting. It has been a real eye opener for me. I am hoping to do photography from the boat hence my thread about keep all my computers and electric.

Your post has been very much appreciated

I know two pro photographers who live aboard.

[magictime]

What alternatives are you actually weighing up here? Because borrowing to buy a boat to work from might make a lot more sense if the alternative is renting a studio space.

[Stilllearning]

What alternatives are you actually weighing up here? Because borrowing to buy a boat to work from might make a lot more sense if the alternative is renting a studio space.

Especially if the alternative is renting a studio AND somewhere to live.

[Athy]

What an excellent and comprehensive post, Lady Muck. But you put an awful lot of emphasis on computers: Alex said that he wanted just enough computer power to keep him and his g/f online, he didn't mention using computers for his graphic work. So perhaps he won't need such vast reservoirs of power.

[Lady Muck]

I don't know any graphic designers who don't use computers (Macs) constantly. If the Op and his partner don't then that's incredibly rare, now. My best mate is a graphic designer and travels constantly and manages with a rather heavy Macbook pro. We use the same software that she does for our jobs, too.

And if you've never lived onboard you may not realise what an issue power is going to be and quite how much power a decent set up can use - we certainly didn't, like the OP we thought the main problem we'd face was internet.

i never went around looking at the back of laptops for the power spec until I lived onboard.

Edited July 29, 2016 by Lady Muck

[Athy]

Fair enough, thanks for the explanation. One of my best friends was a graphic designer before he switched to selling reggae records for a living, but that was 15 years or more ago, I think he used paper and such. I guess the profession has progressed since then.

[andork]

wow, I genuinly can't believe how fantastic all your advice has been! can't say i've ever had that from a forum post before!

I think you have all reinforced my worries with it and highlighted some more. I half expected to need solar panels and a gennie but then never considered that along side other needs.

 

Lady muck is right, I was hoping to work from Macbooks so that looks to be a bit of a problem there.

initially I was expecting it to be an alternative way of living, being similar if not cheaper than that of renting a house, but it seems unless you have the disposable income and security it's an idea to hang onto for a while.

Thanks so much for the advice!

[MissMax]

You could buy a cheap boat and liveabord at a mooring place/Marina and use the shore power supply. Don't give up hope of starting your dream early

[Neil2]

This is a bit off topic but a few years ago when we were setting up our current business and trying to get everything on the cheap we asked a friend whose son was studying graphic design if he could help us with some marketing stuff. We thought it would be good experience for him and look good on his CV and we would pay him a small fee.

 

We expected to sit down with with a sketch pad and he would come up with some rough design suggestions but he turned up with his MacBook insisting the computer was quicker and better. We were rather underwhelmed with what he eventually came up with and I asked could he try doing some rough sketches- just random thoughts based on what we had discussed. He tried but the results were even more disappointing, and the whole experience was a little embarrassing.

 

I hope in retrospect that the young guy learned something from this episode. So many of our engagements in the modern world involve the PC I wonder if we are losing the ability, and failing to recognise the value, of able to communicate with simple skills.

 

 

Edited for bad grammar...

Edited July 29, 2016 by Neil2

[andork]

had a look into that, but in Nottingham for example i'm looking 7k a year just for the mooring, hardly seems worth it

[andork]

This is a bit off topic but a few years ago when we were setting up our current business and trying to get everything on the cheap we asked a friend whose son was studying graphic design if he could help us with some marketing stuff. We thought it would be good experience for him and look good on his CV and we would pay him a small fee.

 

We expected to sit down with with a sketch pad and he would come up with some rough design suggestions but he turned up with his MacBook insisting the computer was quicker and better. We were rather underwhelmed with what he eventually came up with and I asked could he try doing some rough sketches- just random thoughts based on what we had discussed. He tried but the results were even more disappointing, and the whole experience was a little embarrassing.

 

I hope in retrospect that the young guy learned something from this episode. So many of our engagements in the modern world involve the PC I wonder if we are losing the ability to, and failing to recognise the value of, being able to communicate with simple skills.

thats a great story! I was lucky enough to be taught the very traditional ways of graphic design, with minimal use of a PC, but more importantly than that It was about how to discover insights and great ideas. Anyone can learn photoshop, design is soo much more than that.

For a good half of any project I will work on paper. There is no quicker way of getting ideas down and getting ideas across to clients. nor are you being pulled in by what everyone else has done that is scattered all over the internet.

 

Don't get me wrong, you cant be a designer in this day and age without the internet and a computer, but it should never start there.

[Boat&Bikes]

had a look into that, but in Nottingham for example i'm looking 7k a year just for the mooring, hardly seems worth it

Sounds a lot.. what sized boat are you thinking of?