Your eye is naturally attracted to images, colors, interesting objects. Less so to text.
Come on, admit it. Don’t you like looking at book jackets that are zippy? How many of you go into a wine store and really know the difference between all of those bottles of wine and end up picking a bottle because it has a nice looking label?
I like blogs that have pictures and videos. When done well, my respect for the attention paid to visual detail and artistry transforms me into a subscriber. Make it easy for me to enjoy your content and I will be your biggest fan.
As with any communication effort, it is important to know how effective your tools are in building your presence. How engaged are your viewers? What is your Return on Investment (ROI)?
Video is the romance between text and image.
It is the energy that brings to life words and pictures on a page.
I am in love with the two minute video. One minute is even better, depending on what the story is. Video is a powerful way to bring faces of the people involved with your work to your viewers and to the world. While this is a very compelling reason to use video, it is just as important to know what your ROI is.
Here’s an excerpt from a post by Michael Hoffman of See3 on figuring out if and how video is working for you. He suggests 5 questions to help you think this through and does a great job at helping people become better at visual communication.
In fact, a Forrester study found that “any given video stands about a 50 times better chance of appearing on the first page of results than any given text page that Google has indexed”.
Coco Chanel made “the little black dress” chic and forever fabulous. A fashion statement that reveals taste as well as retains mystery. The ultimate communication of style.
Now if there was a Coco Chanel Officer – a CCO- on board of every entrepreneurial adventure, life would be a much more sane and stylish place. Is there a reason why my desk, my life, the inside of every pocketbook I own look like a storage container of black objects, mostly square with shiny surfaces and only operable by tapping and pecking?
Did anyone even bother to ask if there was a better looking way to connect?
I am enslaved to my Blackberry for email. I love my iPad for making everything I read, view, and listen to a beautiful experience. I am in control of my universe perched at the edge of my chair at my desk. If I am what I eat, does that mean I am what I Google?
This is what the inside of my brain feels like.
And yet, in the far reaches of my caffeine marinated memory, I do remember how delightful it was watching words caterpillaring out of my No. 2 pencil onto clean white sheets of paper and becoming something that could be read, viewed and listened to.
I wondered if my head looked like the inside of a pencil.
I also remember Coco Chanel believed that well designed clothes should reveal the style of the woman underneath. Now there’s incentive to focus on your inner icon. You are the attraction smoldering beneath your couture, behind your About Page. Better to be concerned with your essence, not your equipment.
This is something I find myself forgetting every time I get distracted by new shiny toys and lose myself in their distracting power. So, for the sake of the inside of my mind, I do the following:
Sharpen a pencil
Write one word at a time
Draw a picture
Rinse and repeat
This is a simple exercise, an act of expression at a thoughtful pace. The movement of your hand across paper, of phrases forming, vision becoming visual. Do these momentously and with great pleasure. These are gestures that draw in gazes.
Just like that little black dress.
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Cast on 15″ worth of stitches using both yarns. You will need to knit a swatch to find out how many stitches equal one inch.
Knit first row. Then knit every row. Every few rows, double wrap the yarn as you knit the row and drop the loops on the next row.
Cast off when you get to the length you need to to drape it luxuriously across your shoulders.
This is well worth stopping time for and making for yourself or someone you want to wrap your love around. I suggest you get used to people stopping for a second look.
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Honestly, if I get any lazier I will simply calcify.
I love knitting lace. No, what I really love is wearing lace that I have knit. The peek of shoulder through the openwork, how it seems to float around you.
What I don’t love is following those verkockte patterns with long repeats to remember. I have not been able to retain large amounts of information in my head with any success since I took the SATs in high school. So, how does a lazy, impatient, train riding knitter do lace?
Listen closely: Think thin yarn, pick thick needles. Knit all rows or purl all rows. Voila!
Lazy Hoong Yee’s Purly Girl Lace
This is glorified garter stitch done big. This is easy, no remember, no pattern, no goofing up garter stitch that says lace over your shoulder with a wink that says,” OK, OK, it’s not doily worthy knitting but it got you to look twice, didn’t it?”
This is knitting designed to move when you move. No stitch patterns to keep track of. Just purl, girl.
Here’s a little video to show you how.
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I absolutely love what Carolina Herrera loves – a simply perfect white shirt. Classic, elegant, timeless. All you stylish people know that and you probably have several of them in your closet.
photo by crazymf990
Which is exactly why I knit sweaters
I can’t imagine anything more deadening to the spirit than a roomful of well cut white shirts on well dressed people. When something like that becomes universally accepted good taste, unless it is worn with a dash of the unexpected, it quickly becomes uniform to the unimaginative.
Which, I repeat, is why I knit sweaters
To be more specific, I knit white shirts. Sweaters with the same impact as a sexy white shirt.
The sweater I am making is made with a copper colored cotton gima that knits up into an edgy stockinette stitch with a slight roll at the hems of the body and sleeves. It skims my hips, sports a low rounded V neck, long slightly flared bell sleeves and is knit loosely without any border ribbing. I intend to wear it whenever I feel the urge to wear a white shirt.
You know you want to look good, no, you know you want to look drop dead fabulous.
If everyone is wearing what everyone thinks is to die for, then how the heck do you stand out? If everyone is doing what everyone thinks they should be doing to be stylish or to be successful, how much of an impact could you possible make?
The laws of the universe are simple:
If they zig, you zag
Go where the puck isn’t
Create a need then fill it
Don’t be a big shot, wear a sweater
No matter what you do, what you strive for, what you wear.
This will take some creative thinking on your part. You need to figure out how to stand out from the madding crowd and maximize your position. With style, of course. As you can see, I am still working on my Don’t Need A White Shirt design.
Take the design of your impact into your own hands!
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If you want style notes and more for people who change the world, please check out:
I am a momspy, artspy and nonprofit knitter. Hi! Welcome to hoongyee.com, my blog where you will find style notes for people who change the world. read more>
