Practice firms were initiated in the Australian TAFE sector in The ‘Australian Network of Practice Firms’ (ANPF) is a replica of a real firm, which has been developed to train students and provide them with real experiences in operating their own business. This enhances their skills in teamwork, cooperation, prioritising and gives them responsibilities and duties that gives them the basis of the competency of Certificate IV in Business (Administration) that is met in operating the firm. The School of Management (VET) runs a practice firm named ‘Grafic Illusions’ based on the partner organisation, ‘Red Mustard’. INTRODUCTION

A new and exciting practice firm, Grafic Illusions, is a dynamic design company based on Red Mustard, our business partner. Red Mustard is a small successful, graphic design company in Melbourne CBD. We decided to call the firm "Grafic Illusions" to reflect that we are a virtual (or simulated) graphic design business - an illusion - in the sense we operate in a simulated practice firm market economy in the real business world. WHAT IS GRAFIC ILLUSIONS?

Grafic Illusions works with other practice firms all over Australia as well as some international practice firms. We offer our services to these firms, as they do to us and this encourages business and starts the trading with the firms. To start trading we receive orders for our products from our customers and we fulfil these orders by creating the requested design. The order is then distributed to the customer with an invoice. WHO WE DO BUSINESS WITH & HOW WE DO IT

Grafic Illusions gets the involvement of all students who are doing Certificate IV in Business (Administration) by separating them into departments. These departments and what they deal with are the:  Administration – Deals with incoming calls, mail and general administration  Sales & Marketing & Creative Design – Creates and designs ideas for promotions and marketing  Finance – Deals with the financial side of the business, such as wages and the profit and loss the company is making  Human Resources – Deals with Occupational Health and Safety and motivational strategies  Trading – Deals with the trading of the products of Grafic Illusions to other companies BUSINESS DEPARTMENTS

Thank you for watching the slide show Hope you have enjoyed the RMIT Open Day 2002 and we hope to see you next year at RMIT