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theholycovenantrpg · 3 years

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CONGRATULATIONS, MAL! YOU’VE BEEN ACCEPTED FOR THE ROLE OF DAMIEN WARD.

Admin Cas: At long last, our Antichrist is among us! Mal, your application left me totally enamoured by the vicious, wicked, and beautiful creature you placed before us. As you pointed out, Damien is a being of halves — half human, half divine, half animal — and yet, nothing in his life has even been done in halves. You breathed such life into him, made him so much more than his epithet or his Vice. The way you used the Prophecy that still lingers, even as it’s been fulfilled, and injected that into your future plots was just so exciting! And, I have to admit, when you mentioned the way that he tugs at his gloves as a threat, as a flex of his power — well, that just felt so DAMIEN. I can’t wait to see what you’ll do with him, and I’m beyond excited to see what ruin he wreaks on the dash! Please create and send in your account, review the information on our CHECKLIST, and follow everyone on the FOLLOW LIST. Welcome to the Holy Land!

OUT OF CHARACTER

Alias | Mal

Age | 25

Personal Pronouns | They/them

Activity Level | I’m a full time student and have other general life obligations, but I’m generally fairly free on the evenings and weekends. In numbers I’d estimate my activity at probably a 6/10.

Timezone | EST

Triggers | REMOVED

How did you find the group? | I came across one of your beautiful promos in the lsrpg tag, if I recall correctly.

Current/Past RP Accounts | Jove

IN CHARACTER

Character | Damien Ward

What drew you to this character? | I had Damien’s bio lingering in the back of my head since I first read it, and then Admin Rosey kindly suggested he and I might be a good fit for one another, and I sunk my teeth in. The image of eight year-old Damien standing over a body with wolves licking blood from his hands stuck in me like a fishhook. He’s half-mortal, half-divine, half-wild creature. I am reminded of classical Greek heroes, defined by transgression, made great and made beautiful by the same things that make him monstrous.

He’s in a position with so much glimmering potential on the horizon. He’s fulfilled his purpose, in a sense, and yet the world remains rebuilt beneath him. Is it enough for it to lift him up as it has? He was not built for times of peace, and here he is living in one. This can only go on so long, and how could I not adore a character surrounded in so much tantalizing possibility?

Also, I am such a sucker for the fascinating family dynamics that surround him. His own mother, who willingly took Lucifer himself into her arms, could not bear the sight of what they’d made together. Damien was made for wild, inky shadows, to be at home among bloody-mouthed beasts. And yet, when hell opened it’s maw to swallow him whole, he found family. An Antichrist who is loved, who might wrestle with his sister like a wolf-pip and turn his face upwards to face the judgement of a mother, and care what she sees. The thought must have been so utterly foreign to Damien as a child, whose mother could not stir a single response from him, for whom he could never find reason to twist his mouth into a smile. And yet he offers Azazel everything she asks for, he listens attentively to his father and learns to craft words of bright silver. It is a remarkable thing, that one could look into Damien’s wild, inky darkness and learn to love him. Perhaps the only thing stranger is that he has learned to love back.

Also, he’s evil and sexy and I love him.

What future plots do you have in mind for the character? |

THE FORTUNATE SON | The family dynamics surrounding Damien are stunning, fire-forged and battle-tested, yet razor thin cracks grow along their obsidian surface. They are bound so tightly together, love each other with terrifying ferocity, yet even the closest of bonds can snap when struck from the right angle. They are all caught up in tantalizing possibility, but the crack most likely to become a fissure runs in a sharp, direct line straight from Damien’s ambition to Judas’.

Damine knows what his pseudo father is: The Great Betrayer. Damien is not blind to the fact that he is a dangerous man to share power with, even an invisible crown. But he took Damien in when he was a hollow and wild thing. The first creature whose eyes Damien found recognition in was a wolf. Judas was the second. Damien has killed with them both. Sons rising up against their fathers is one of the oldest stories in the world. Damien has already lived it, once. In dark, seething moments, he wonders if he may have to live it again. Is Judas, like the wolf, not a creature of his nature? Is placing his trust in his hands not akin to placing his head in the mouth of the beast? And yet... neither has failed him thus far.

(And yet, he thinks with a secret tenderness he knows may curse him, he loves them both.)

I can see either Damien or Judas turning against the other should the right leverage be applied to their deep yet delicate bond. A war between them would be a terror wrought upon the world and upon themselves. Conflict between them would be devastating and delectable, both to the characters and the world around them. It might seem nearly inevitable, two ambitions like theirs poised so keenly for conflict, and yet I just as easily see them united should they find another common enemy. Damien’s sights may turn towards Judas should he find himself unable to resist the ache in his jaw to destroy, yet should he be given something else tantalizing to gnash his teeth against, Damien may always find himself choosing the latter.

SEVEN DEVILS | Outside of his found family, the Vices, each carefully hand-picked for their own strains of terror, are Damien’s closest allies upon this earth. Though even then, loyalty, let alone trust, among demons is a dangerously fickle thing. Even the best of the creatures of hell are a ravenous, power-hungry lot, and Damien is not nearly foolish enough to think none of them might hunger for the power he wields as their self-appointed leader. Raum is the only among them he can truly trust, she who he plucked from obscurity and gave grand purpose, she who is the closest being to him not called family. Yet he chose each of his Vices for a reason, and each of them has unique value to him. I see him trying to craft an individual loyalty with each of them, tethering them all one-by-one to his ambitions.

This is not to say I can’t see him failing in this lofty task, no matter what he might think of his silver-tongue and the bone-chilling power of his mere presence. Damien is perfectly capable of overestimating the power of his own thrall, or of being too caught up in the affairs of his family to hear the whispers passed between them, or countless other faults that may make him vulnerable to those in his inner circle. I would love to explore what may happen should one or more of the vices turn against him, their united front fracturing. Damien believes that he is the one who raised them high, who granted them their lofty titles, and that he has every right to cast them away should they fail him, and I can all too easily see such a move back-firing spectacularly.

The seven of them create a complex web of loyalties, and as much as Damien prefers to think himself the clever spider at its centre, he is just as capable of being caught up in it as any of the others.

LIVING IN THE AFTERMATH | Perhaps more of an internal development than an interpersonal one, but I’m deeply interested in exploring how the events since Lucifer was vanquished continue to affect Damien. He never found a father in the Morningstar. The word family will forever evoke Judas, Abbadon, and Azazel before the woman who birthed him and the man who sired him, but the Devil’s blood still runs in his veins. So much of what he is, as acerbic a thought as it may be, is owed to the circumstances of his birth.

Seizing hell and sending Lucifer careening upward, outcast from the realm he once ruled, was the first step to ridding the Antichrist of his father’s shadow, but it would prove to be far from the last. Three hundred years longer, Damien had to wait with a pernicious, buzzing anxiety, for the last of the Morningstar’s light to finally fade from his eyes, and that too would not bring the end of his influence. Though he did not stand in the way of the search for the bodies of God and his Morningstar, speaking of the affair left his tongue dry and bitter in his mouth. Their time had come and gone. All that was left of them was dust. And besides, if mortal and demonkind so desperately sought what was left of the Morningstar, all they had to do was turn their eyes to his progeny. Lucifer’s blood thrums through his veins, yet they seek his crumbled remains instead? It defies Damien’s understanding.

The Heretics and their precious Sanctus Terra (a name that to this day he can’t help but feel a petty disdain for) only exacerbated his frustration. Going to war with them was delightful, yes, crushing their ranks between his teeth brought a dark kind of satisfaction he hadn’t felt since he’d seized the Morningstar and ripped him from his throne. Damien could have waged war for centuries, never tiring of the taste of mortal blood, of flexing his power against their generals. But too many others were not so inclined - and it was with disdain (and a fair bit of pressure from those around him) that he agreed to set the war aside to establish the Holy Land. His beloved Azazel being made Moon - though were it up to him, he’d have given her the whole piece of land to her to do with what she pleased - at least served as something of a consolation prize. Even on this so-called neutral ground, the power of his family has made itself known and respected.

Still, his resentment for the place has not entirely faded, and while he’s willing to at least tolerate most of what it has to offer, some of its residents make that ire come bubbling up to the surface. Namely, Estienne, who in all their lofty arrogance and sly demeanour has come to be emblematic of everything Damien hates about the place. Estienne is but a pale imitation, thinking a touch of plague-given divinity makes them his equal, who seems to seek a dynasty with his own sister not unlike the one Damien has with his. It’s petty, Damien’s disdain, yet powerful. I see Estienne managing to push all of Damien’s buttons, and as much as Damien would like to forget about them entirely, they remain a thorn in his side, with more influence over him than he would ever care to admit.

CUT FROM THE CLOTH OF FATE | Damien was born swathed in prophecy. Destiny’s shadow has hung over him and lingered behind him for the entirety of his existence. The Antichrist, born to eat the world. And he’s done it, hasn’t he? He has torn the Morningstar from his throne and bit out his throat, he has brought Hell itself to the surface of the earth. Civilizations have fallen to his wrath, cities crumbled under his touch, the world as it was once known torn to pieces and turned to dust. Yet what is destruction wrought when revival follows it like a shadow?

I see Damien at something of a crossroads. In one sense, his prophecy is fulfilled; he took the world between his teeth and crushed an age to it’s bitter end. Half the world is his in all but name (though Judas’ shadow lurks around every corner, he too crafting himself an invisible throne), but contentedness can not and will not come easily to Damien. Something stirs within him, something yet to be named, perhaps even recognized, but its roots have already taken root in the core of him. Restlessness stirs in his hounds, power festering from underuse, and a quiet, dull ache grows in the set of his jaw. He was made to destroy, not to rule, but he cannot deny that there is something delectable about the word ‘king’.

I see him in quiet, solitary moments turning the prophecy over in his mind. What is one meant to do, once he’s swallowed the world? There are moments he regrets letting it regrow so quickly, giving him so little time to bask in the ruination of his making, and there are moments when he wonders if his prophecy remains unfulfilled, still dark and beckoning. Every moment spent with Nerissa pulls it from him, makes his hands itch to rip off his gloves and feel ruin blossom under his touch once more, this time with no rebirth to follow. There are times still, when he thinks he ought to tear apart the prophecy itself with his teeth, render it as meaningless and obsolete as the ashes of the Old Testament. His father was a king. Perhaps it is time to claim a different kind of birthright.

I can see Damien turning his sights on The Holy Land and Caelum (and maybe - if those lands have somehow fallen to his wrath - Infernum itself) hungry for destruction at whatever cost it may come. Just as easily, I can see him looking to his invisible throne and the crown of shadows growing on his brow, and decide that it is time to make them something more tangible. I’m not sure Damien himself knows exactly what he wants, but I know it would be utterly delightful to see which direction the story and the other characters may push him in, and find out.

Are you comfortable with killing off your character? | Yes. But if Damien is going down, he is going down in one hell of a blaze of glory.

IN DEPTH

Driving Character Motivation | The dark, beautiful thing about Damien is that if he were asked this question, I’m not sure he could give you a solid answer. Oh of course he wouldn’t say as much, his lips would twist up in something not quite a smile, and from his tongue he’d create something lovely and argent, perhaps ask what the earthquake’s driving motivation is to turn a city to dust, or what drives a pack of wolves to tear the stag limb from limb. It would be long after his shadow had ceased to fall upon you, after your bones had warmed from his chill, that you would realize he answered only with questions. That is, if he answered at all, and did not instead slit your throat for the presumption.

Damien is, above all else, inevitable. The trajectory of his life has forever been defined by what he is more than who. The line between them blurs beyond recognition. Damien is a force of nature, a wild animal, and a fatherless son all in the same breath. He is a creature of ferocious instinct, who knew that he thirsted for the sweet, metallic taste of blood long before he knew why.

All this is to say, Damien’s motivation is a fractured thing. One might call the thing driving his heart to beat and his hands to rend destiny or instinct or hunger, but in a word, I would call it ambition. Damien was born with grand purpose, with a dark, insatiable thirst. He was going to kill the world. Now he’s done just that, in a sense, chewed up the old world and spit it back out, only to watch his pseudo-father carefully tend to the remains. Something new has blossomed from Damien’s destruction and perhaps, were he anyone else, that would be enough.

Which path to carve forward remains unknown, even to Damien himself, but one thing remains certain: this is not where his story ends. He did not overthrow the Morningstar to live an idle eternity, to bask in even the chaotic peace of Infernum. He balances on the line between ‘prince’ and ‘king’ and yet is permitted to openly call himself neither. He looks to the north and sees wide swathes of earth that do not yet know his destructive trust. All the while, something inside him grows, inky shadows spreading where he stands. So many highs he has yet to reach, so many ways to wield his power against the world.

What does Damien want? The answer swirls like a storm building inside him, shapeless and impatient. If he really must name it, I believe he would choose a singular, all-encompassing word: MORE.

Character Traits |

Vicious: Full of vice. Is there a word that more completely sums up all that the Antichrist is? The word may conjure the traditional vices, but it is also a word for the wild, fierce cruelty Damien is capable of embodying so completely. He is vicious in that he is wicked, but also in that if he proclaimed he was raised by wolves one might believe him. Damien is a sharp, dangerous thing, and he bears each vice with pride, but none more than his self-appointed title: wrath.

Volatile: In certain environments, such as his childhood, one could be easily be mistaken in thinking the Antichrist scarce feels anything at all, cold and distant as he might be. The truth is something else entirely. It might not show on his face until the ice inside him has whirled into a blizzard, but without his gloves Damien’s power would act on its own accord. Damien feels deeply, quickly, and to those who know him well enough can seem almost childish in the changes of his mood. Especially now, when the path before him is so unclear, and Damien finds himself all but itching for his next direction.

Aloof: Cold is the first word that many think of when they encounter Damien. He walks into a room like the winter chill blowing in. And how fitting it is, that the distant, aloof child of the Morningstar could make even the fires of hell seem cold. Damien is a singular creature; he prefers to stand apart from most (with few exceptions made, for family and to an extent, the Vices). And how could he not, the only half-demon known to walk the Earth?

Eloquent: Damien came of age under the wing of Judas, the silver-tongued betrayer. He has learned to weave words from the best teacher one could desire. Yet, the Antichrist himself is not a creature of lies by his nature. He may employ them should they be needed, but Damien prefers those who look upon him to know exactly who he is. He barely spoke a word the first eight years of his life, silent as a shadow. Now, every word is chosen carefully, the beauty of his words a sharp contrast between the dread he invokes.

Passionate: How irritating he finds it, that language so often describes passion as a fire. Damien is a creature of ice and shadow. Passion, for Damien, is a blizzard, whiting-out everything in its path, a glacier, slow-moving and unstoppable, or the nocturnal beasts coming out of hiding at the fall of night, inevitable as it is fearsome. When Damien cares, he cares deeply, and with terrifying ferocity.

Dauntless: What does the Antichrist know of fear? Damien has never met an obstacle he did not hesitate to rise to meet, not even the Devil himself. As a child he looked down into the fiery mouth of hell and he found himself a home in its fires. Damien is bold, welcoming a challenge, particularly in battle, and does not do well with idleness.

In-Character Para Sample |

There’s something wonderfully fascinating about watching the effects of his presence before the affected even knows Damien lingers close by. Even creatures of hell can react like prey animals under the unseen gaze of a wolf, a mysterious chill creeping up their spines, hairs standing on end as they twist their necks in search of the source of their unease. The corner of Damien’s mouth ticks upward at the sight. It’s a rare thing in these languid days of peace, that he gets a chance to flex this particular muscle, lingering in the shadows of Infernum’s ever-ostentatious decor in a dark corner of a busy room. It will not last, the effect of Damien’s presence can only go unnoticed for so long. Sooner or later, the cold will seep deeply enough into someone’s skin to dismiss as a figment of imagination, and he will be given away. He’s only managed to escape notice so far because slipped in from a side-door, treading quickly and silently, and took a vantage point half-covered by a heavy velvet curtain, and, far more significantly, because the room’s attention is fixed on none other than Judas himself.

It’s a rare gift that Damien’s pseudo-father possesses, that silver-tongued charm that makes one believe that no matter what you may have heard about ‘The Great Betrayer,’ this time, you can trust him. Damien understands the mechanics of it, taught from Judas himself, exactly how to weave your phrases, the rise and fall that leaves a room full of creatures as wild as demons hanging on every word. Still, he has so few moments where he gets to watch Judas in his element while unobserved himself, watching with a hint of fondness as he sways opinions word by word. Typically, he would delegate one of the Vices, or perhaps someone below them, depending on the importance of matters, to keep an eye on his parental figure in his stead. Like Judas before him, Damien calls attention to himself by simply walking into a room. The dynasty that Judas, Abbadon, Azazel, and himself have carved out for themselves may not call themselves royalty, but the subjects of Infernum address them as if they wore crowns and carried sceptres all the same. Their power - much like what Judas displays now - is nameless, but it is palpable.

As much as he enjoys the light thrill of watching from the shadows as Judas works his political machinations, he did not come here just to watch. No, Damien has matters to discuss with his father of sorts, but the opportunity to glimpse him working his schemes unnoticed is not something he was about to turn down, even if the moment might be brief. Unfortunately, there’s nothing especially interesting about the conversation, mere political minutiae Damien rarely has the patience for. Judas reaches a pause and Damien watches a nearby demon shift uncomfortably on her feet, and Damien’s time to linger has come to an end.

“Judas,” he says, stepping out of his shadow-y corner. He cannot pretend it doesn’t bring him some satisfaction, the way the energy of the room so instantly changes. Eyes flit between Judas and himself, unsure where this goes next. There are precious few, who could get away with such an interruption, Damien one of them. He could wait, but why would he? He, too, wears an invisible crown. He, too, demands the attention of all that look upon. Sometimes, he thinks Judas ought to remember that fact. “My apologies for the interruption,” he says coolly. His expression betrays nothing, Judas likely the only person in the room who realizes that Damien has nothing especially urgent to say. Still, the room has come to a standstill, everyone else willing to wait on their two kings. Damien stands still as a sculpture, and watches with silent satisfaction the entire room stills with him, letting the long moment pass.

“A moment of your time?”

Extras |

Headcanons |

Though he adores the infernal terror of Azazel’s hellhounds, Damien has his own hunting dogs - a pack of wild wolves that came to him almost unbidden. He dotes on them, a reminder of the first wild creatures whose eyes he ever saw himself reflected in, but they are from domesticated. Though they may seem docile under Damien’s touch - lounging at the foot of his imaginary throne - but they are wild, vicious things, far quicker to show their anger than their master. The first sign of Damien’s displeasure is often not a hint in his body language, or even a look in his eye, but the low growl of the wolves at his side.

Serpents and birds of prey flock to Damien as hell, seeming to crawl out of the woodwork when he’s around. He’s open to their presence, but doesn’t dote on him the way he does his wolves. Still, it isn’t unheard of to see Damien with a hawk perched on his shoulder, or with some venomous snake casually curling itself around his ankle.

Usually, Damien doesn’t mind his lack of wings. It sets him apart from his demonic kin, a reminder to everyone around him that even in the realm of Infernum, he is something else, otherworldly no matter where he might make his abode. That only changes when - for whatever reason - he is in need of fast transport, and must rely on some other demon’s wings. He will not, under any circumstance, admit this out loud, and does what he must with all the animalistic grace that eternally characterizes his movement, but it is - to be frank - rather embarrassing.

Sometimes, as a threat, Damien will tug on the fingers of his gloves.

#accepted #accepted: damien

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weaselle · 5 years

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I got asked in my DMs to elaborate on my master project, so, just know if you click the read more, it’s gonna be like, a LONG ass read

(in b4: when I say things like “the poor” rest assured I am also “the poor” and not trying to feed into classist designations - I just need to be able to talk about different economic demographics. Also, I’ve pulled together several pieces of writing that cover this very involved endeavor for this ask, so there may occasionally be a slight overlap of information, tho I have tried to clean it up)

@victorylilygreen (lol, you asked) @ekinsellaauthor (idk I thought you might be interested)

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I have a plan to provide solutions to the socio-economic crisis facing this country. As I put this together over a couple of decades, it was important for me to not be telling people how they have to live, but rather provide them the tools they need to decide for themselves how to live. This plan then, is more like a mutable format, the first iteration of which provides the example and proof of concept. Then, when people see a successful solution available, they will be sure to copy it -- because this piece of social engineering is meant to be self replicating this way, I often refer to it as a socio-economic worm First, a breakdown of how I arrived at my plan:

The fundamental questions at the base of my attempts at large scale socio-economic fixes are:

1- Since every current system in our society is dysfunctional or corrupt, how can a single simple solution address the entire tangled web of institutions that effect every part of our human lives -- from agriculture, to rent, to wages, to government, to education, to the textile and clothing industry -- it's all problematic and needs to change.

2 - Since we can assume the wealthy will never help change the status quo, how can we get the middle class to pay the poor to create alternatives to current corrupt systems? in other words, how can we free time and money in the economy such that doctors and lawyers and computer techs can pay cashiers and gardeners and cooks to create banks and homes and grocery stores so we can bankrupt Wells Fargo and Century Real Estate and Whole Foods?

And the first answer is, we can create a simple solution that addresses all of it by bringing all that under one roof, for one small group of people, and addressing that microcosm in a way that is replicable by other small groups, as well as able to be scaled up such that it is applicable to the larger society.

To answer the second question, we have to create a situation where the poor are making more money than they currently do. And they need to do this by providing more of what the middle class need (for less money than the middle class currently spends on it) This will provide some immediate relief for the poor while freeing up money in the middle class to fund the larger solutions.

==========================================================

Since we can't create money from nothing, one way to accomplish that is: instead of the poor making more money, the base concept of socio-economic organization of individuals has to change such that it lowers the cost of living for the poor. Lowering the cost of living accomplishes many of the same things as increasing wages. And we have to do that while engaging in providing more of what the middle class needs for less money that they currently pay.

Therefore, we need to identify what the middle class needs. A fundamental problem facing the middle class is that raising a family and running a household and earning enough money to pay for it all is a full time job for three to five adults, and they are trying to do it with two. Which is a major problem for the poor also. What the middle class is trying to do about it is what the poor cannot: buy themselves more time, literally. They pay someone to clean their house, they pay someone to watch their kids, they pay someone to maintain their garden, they pay for food that requires less and less time to prepare or they order to go food. They pay a dry cleaner or laundry service to wash their clothes. If they can afford enough of these things, they wind up with as much left to do as 2 people have time for.

The important thing to realize here is that these chores are the genesis of the necessary institutions that have become corrupt or dysfunctional. Everything a household or family needs is a microcosm of the larger industries and institutions. For example, paying someone to take care of your children is the seed of a school. Paying someone to prepare your meal is the seed of food industry - if you pay them enough to prepare you enough food, it becomes more cost effective to start producing the ingredients or getting them directly from the source. Paying an accountant to do your taxes or getting help with budgeting etc, grows into a bank. Paying someone to wash your clothes is the seed of the clothing industry - soon they can offer repairs, replacing buttons, fixing burst seams, from there alterations and tailoring follow... This is how the poor will be paid to grow new institutions to replace current problematic systems.

SO. Low-income workers need to organize into cooperative communities that leverage group dynamics to lower costs. If four families live together, they don't need to buy four toolbox sets, they can buy one and share. 10 families worth of food bought in bulk costs much less than 10 individual families buying food at the grocery store. Heating a single large building and splitting the bill is much more cost-effective than paying to heat individual housing units. And when one such group is shown to provide solutions and success, other groups will inevitably come together and copy it on their own, unprompted.

AND once they are organized this way, they should offer those services the middle class are trying to use as stop gaps - the chores the middle class are buying themselves out of. The best way to do this is buy creating the solutions to the chore/time crunch for their own community, and then selling those solutions to the middle class. In other words, someone needs to do the house cleaning, the laundry, the cooking, the gardening etc for the building they all live in, and then they can go on to sell that service to middle class households.

They need to do this for less money than the sum of those things currently costs, which can be accomplished via two techniques. The first is simply by bringing all those services under one roof. When the gardener and the housecleaner are arriving in the same company vehicle, the consumer is getting passed less in gas and vehicle maintenance costs, and so on.

The second way is to identify the one or two most needed, most expensive services, and find a way to lower costs for just those services significantly. Maybe something like babysitters that function as small, suburban neighborhood daycares during peak daycare hours, and the babysitters would fill the rest of their work week elsewhere in the company.

Now! We have the poor with a lower cost of living, providing relief services to the middle class in a way designed to grow into the new food production, the new clothing industry, new banks, new schools, new hospitals... and when you have all these things, you can make whole cities that are largely autonomous. Again the concept is to bring under one roof smaller versions of all the needed things in life that have become the large problematic systems that currently exist, giving citizens the real power to either force those institutions to change, or replace them. When you have new cities, they can demand or create much larger change in government, in power production, in raw material sourcing for things like lumber and fuel. And hey can be built on purpose, instead of the chaotic haphazard growth typical of current cities. If citizens want to live sustainable, socially progressive lifestyles, it behooves them to live in municipalities explicitly designed to facilitate that.

This is my solution.

It starts with a single building. A single community. I have planed the building and community, budgeted it, designed it to be able to grow into these larger solutions. I have started the procedure to create it, taken the first small steps.

step One A: Creative Suite (already working with a small team on this)

My plan is to run several big fundraisers over the next year and partner with an SF Bay Area municipality (probably Oakland) to open a public arts production center by converting a warehouse.

The purpose would be to have a creative recreation suite with communal equipment and spaces, such that, if you wanted, for example, to make a music demo, or do a pod cast, or make cooking videos for youtube, you could easily accomplish that using the space and equipment available in the arts production center. To include:

dance floor / props and body work space

music center / DJ booth and instruments

recording studio - both audio and visual, with lighting, green screen, mics, cameras sound proofing

singing booths - individual sized sound proof recording studios, wired with a mic and output

industrial kitchen - large fridge space, rangetop and large oven, utensils / tools, big counter top

painting studio - surfaces (not always canvas) paints, brushes, frames

Crafting studio - buy bulk discount from creative center for reuse in berkeley?

wood and metal shop - partner with a tool library? is it possible to get a recyclable high-density ceramic 3-D printer to print tools with?

electronic repair (and robotics?) center

stage / small theater space / workshop with attached makeup studio

sewing and costuming – sewing machines and cloth bolts etc

gaming center - table top rpgs, card games, board games etc outdoor component, pool table, anything we can get a good deal on

computer bank - about 5 computers for general use / e games

leave one/take one library, scattered 1-2 person writers nooks

garden center

Amazingly my estimates from initial research indicates I can put a cheap, functional version of this together for about twenty thousand dollars. In terms of installing this stuff in like, an otherwise un-refurbished warehouse. Even if I spend $35k, that’s like, a new car. Plus I want the first month or so of funding to run the place up front. That’s gonna be water, garbage (it’s a lot for the dumpster a place like this needs) a shitload of electricity, and 3 people’s worth of monthly salaries to start.

Then there’s the rent or lease, which runs about $2 per square foot in the SF Bay, and I’ll need at least 5 grand a month’s worth of space. Plus monthly supplies, for whatever deals on paint and stuff we can scrounge. That means the monthly operating costs are like $25k a month. Hence large fundraisers for the initial build out and first month’s operating. Plus you draw your initial arts center membership from the fundraiser attendees.

Which, I’ve thrown warehouse parties before, so I think I can hit a target of a couple hundred people at each party spending $35 apiece. There’s a trick to it – you keep the cover charge low or non-existent, and then provide a lot of opportunities to spend money inside, like games and food and stuff. Low or no charge to attend drives attendance up, and then you have more people spending money.

One key element is, you fill out the paperwork to be a catering company. Not only do you use this to sell food at the event, but ALSO it allows you to file for a single-use liquor license so you can have a bar. Usually there are a finite number of liquor licenses in a municipality, and they can go for millions of dollars. But with a catering company’s single event liquor license you can legally sell alcohol at the party. NOW we’re talking money.

anyway, I’m HOPING I can find state, federal, or municipal grants and assistance programs for the arts (and also, maybe some kind of, entrepreneurial support programs, but for like, small personal internet ventures?) Maybe even get some city to cut the rent in half by forgiving the property taxes on the warehouse or something. If I can’t, I may have to adjust the fundraising vs start date timing. Membership will be a monthly fee like a gym. I’d love for it to be free, and will certainly stay open to anything that allows that, but by the numbers it’ll have to be about $50 a month. Still, that’s like a 24 our fitness membership. One refill of gasoline. About one person’s share of an electricity bill. A phone payment. It’s a doable monthly bill for a lot of people. Monthly budget to be supplemented using the space, for example dance classes, ticketed theater performances, live band music shows, etc. So it’s possible we could drive membership prices way down. and maybe certain days or times could be free to the public or something. I want it to be accessible. Of the 3 monthly salaries mentioned above (each at $20 an hour) one is for me and that’s all I need, enough money to live on and access to this facility. There’s no way I can figure out how to afford this kind of creative suite for just me, but I might be able to figure out how to make one a whole bunch of us can afford This is just the first step of a very involved something I’ve been putting together since forever. But even if I only ever accomplish this first nesting-doll of a scheme, I’ll be very pleased.

The Creative Suite is like, an egg. And it should hatch into a little baby iteration of a socio-economic worm I’ve conceived.

If I can grow it to the full beast, it should become a self replicating, bottom-up revolutionary process that could improve the lives of many millions of people and put more power over our personal day to day lives back into the hands of the common public.

I have thousands of words in hundreds of research drafts and notes and exploratory essays, etc, but… Roughly speaking that looks like

flip the Creative Suite into MN Building One, a scheme designed to allow minimum wage workers to access more free time, lower their cost of living, and build equity by acquiring and owning their own property. Mortgage is paid off in ten years. Meanwhile

Building One starts up a business called Full Service Living that leverages group economics to allow for ethically sourcing goods while addressing the issue that middle class nuclear families with two adults face 4 full time adults’ worth of labor to maintain the household and raise the children.

Full Service Living becomes FSL Pro, in which the first group offers the next group of minimum wage workers their old building (cutting out the banks from the process) while acquiring a second building, gives the new people in Building One entry level jobs in FSL that pay better than minimum wage, while adding second tier careers to the mix living in Building Two – lawyers, accountants, mechanics, teachers, etc. These two groups continue to propagate more communities in their paired type one and type two buildings. Each of these community pairs contains the seeds for various institutions designed into them, and are meant to cooperatively grow into:

Community Support Centers. These offer a variety of support services to surrounding communities. Such as: day care and after school programs, tax and bill/budgeting assistance, legal advice/support. The sum of the total efforts by all parties is designed to blossom into:

A school A construction and landscaping company A public owned Credit Union/Bank A public service law office An ethical clothing line An alternative low footprint locally sourced supermarket I call Alt-mart (Alt-mart works hand in hand with a food production construct I have in mind. It’s a little involved for this breakdown)

All that with room for other endeavors people see a need for. The initial concept brings most issues of modern life under a single multi-family roof such that communities are afforded the opportunity and resources to create alternatives to the flawed or corrupt institutions with which we are currently participating.

When that all coalesces into networks of these communities and institutions, we’ll have all the necessary pieces to the puzzle and I hope a city will be built. I’ve designed many elements of it. Engineering as well as socio-political and economic design. But who knows if I’ll ever get there.

More detailed breakdown of the plan follows:

Project Overview and Concept Exploration:

Begins with providing affordable housing, property ownership, and upward mobility to minimum wage workers. Becomes a network of live/work facilities with a focus on sustainable entrepreneurialism, accessible autonomy, and community outreach.

These facilities function as socio-economic labs - they are on paper corporations, to access any advantages, protections, and loop-holes available to the corrupt institutions currently running the economy. They target the large corporations, ultimately seeking to end them. They produce businesses such as restaurants that grow all their own food, and doctors that are paid for by the apartment complex to provide medical care to residents.

Additionally, theses facilities provide a new way of life, in a format that allows for autonomy, but also allows for successful participation in the current economy... where all the money is.They also attempt to alleviate the time crunch problem for the middle class, wherein managing a household and raising a family is actually three or four full time jobs.

As such, the facilities are designed to grow into these large businesses/institutions:

SCHOOL

A preschool through junior college school on 3 cooperative campuses, wherein the school functions as a microcosm of the economy as a whole for the purpose of study: school gardens provide cafeteria food; school wood shops produce school furniture; economy classes figure out how the school budget can afford the water, fertilizer, metal, and wood.

3rd graders have classes in the garden learning the biome and doing the weeding; 8th graders are each growing 3ftX3ft gardens and helping in the large garden; 11th graders are cross-pollenating and designing green housing and aquaponic systems; bachelor students are splicing plant genes in the lab.

But by then some of the students have stopped being involved in the garden, and are making replacement hinges for all the school doors as metal shop homework or squeezing enough money out of the school budget for a big homecoming event.

By the third campus, students are living on site, so there is housing to manage. Student store and cafeteria provide economic interactions; the whole of our socio-economic society done small for study and practice, under a single administration instead of our current system of a scholastic career being broken up into mismatched administrations, which is a disservice to our students.

ALT-MART

A facility meant to compete with Target and Walmart and Whole Foods etc. It grows from the live/work facility kitchen and meal-plan set up. Alt-mart features a permanent farmer’s market, supplemented with an onsite garden/nursery. There is an onsite industrial kitchen and restaurant that uses overstock from the farmer’s market and ingredients from the garden, possibly purchasing all unsold produce from the farmer’s market at a discount.

The restaurant offers prepared foods for sale to the public, kitchen processes overstock into consumer goods like ketchup, frozen microwaveable breakfast burritos, and canned corn. Bakery also, of course. Facility also features a tool-library with a 3-d printer that can print any tools not on the shelves.

Additionally features local tailoring and a second hand clothing store. The local tailors get access to all the second-hand pieces for use in making their own clothes to sell onsite, as well as some facility-bought cloth and onsite machinery (sewing machines to textile machines like tuffters, gins, and looms).

Toy aisle is franken-toy land, where in-house creative DIYers take second hand toys and make whole new toys out of them. Electronics section is mostly repair, and offers lessons in repair. Book-nook and greeting card section features local/community writers. And so on. The goal is to offer an alternative to the big one-stop-shop stores, with a focus on local/community sourcing.

CONSTRUCTION COMPANY

This business grows out of building maintenance and groundskeeping into a landscaping company, then into a construction company. It should be the company used by the network of facilities for any renovations and repairs, so it should grow quite large.

COMMUNITY-OWNED CREDIT UNION (and LAW OFFICE)

Basically a non-profit bank, that offers community outreach for people who need help with budgeting, would like to learn about mortgages and homeownership, etc. Grows out of a Community Support Center that also offers community office space and legal advice.

FIRST STOP HOSPITAL

Not a full hospital, at least not at first, this should just be a few medical professionals that can answer common questions, provide emergency medical response, and assess medical conditions. Not for treatment so much as to find out what kind of treatment you need and who to get it from. Where first-time parents bring their babies when they’re not sure if they need o bring their baby to an emergency room. Honestly, medical care is the hardest part of this whole thing and I'm not sure if it's going to be possible or what to do about it.

CATERING AND EVENTS COMPANY

This is what get’s the ball rolling, the catering folds into the care-taking positions within the facilities, and the events company later become basically the arts entertainment and media/information division. There's a traveling circus element. It's fun.

These projects can possibly culminate in a whole large, sustainable city built from the ground up, that I have outlined. It involves building a large hill and two small lakes. I am happy to talk a lot more about that, but it clearly necessitates all the above pieces and more.

OKAY, so much for the overview. Let’s start at the beginning. The loan is for 2 million dollars, for a property of 1 million and another million in remodel costs.

Note: I ran the following numbers for California. Obviously property values and minimum wages are different other places, but the concept should still be applicable. Additionally, these are preliminary estimates only. Additional research and budgeting is required.

____________________________________________________________________

First I have to tell you about a type of loan called “Micro debt”

Basically, if you loan 10 people a total of 100k, they are each responsible for 10k of debt. If one of them defaults, the other nine split their debt, so now each of them has about 11k of debt, which is payable as it is not a significant increase in debt per person. However, this also encourages them to all help make sure nobody defaults on the debt -- for example, if one person is in danger of defaulting because their car was totaled and they can’t get to work, there are nine other people with a vested interest in making sure that person gets access to a vehicle or ride share. If a person starts to default on payments because they are drinking all the time, there are nine other people who are going to drag the to AA meetings.

A couple of banks in Bangladesh and Germany have had success with this, citing a 98% repay rate which is a few percent better than the average home loan repay rate here in the United States. Additionally, there are at least a couple million people who have this structure of loan here in the states, so it's not unheard of nor untested, even specifically in our own economy.

_______________________________________________________________________

SO. 28 people get what is essentially a home loan for 2 million dollars. We'll call them group A. They each have about a $71,000 mortgage, their share of the loan. (note, an average mortgage in California is like, nearly half a million, so, less than a hundred thousand is a GOOD mortgage)

Group A buys property (ideally unused/abandoned industrial sites or dilapidated property in low income areas) for about a million, maybe a little under, and builds a facility on it for about a million, maybe a little over. (I looked at apartment building costs per square foot and reviewed properties currently for sale in California to get these numbers).

Some of the money is earmarked for partnering with the city on local infrastructure - so, say the streets in that neighborhood need repaving, we might buy all the materials for the city to do that, saving them money, incentivizing the city to work with us on rezoning and permits, while at the same time those kinds of improvements are an investment in the value of the property. This is because many of those buildings are not zoned as live-work the way this project requires, and rezoning without incentivizing the city to cooperate is a nightmare.

The facility is 60 bedrooms, with an industrial kitchen, plenty of diverse common space, and shared facilities (like at a gym: banks of private shower stalls, even a hot tub and a sauna, because if you’re going to ask people to give up single use showers in their own apartments, you want to add value).

Group A moves in and rents remaining rooms to an additional 28 people, we'll call them Group B.

Now, out of 60 rooms we have 56 people living in the facility. 10 of them are caretakers. Instead of paying money, they pay their way in labor, and they additionally receive a monthly stipend of 500 dollars a month to start. The caretakers do all the building maintenance and groundskeeping, they do the housekeeping and laundry, they make sure the bills are all paid, and they provide (cook) a meal plan. Utilities are all included in rent.

This means that anyone renting there has a single, affordable monthly bill for their cost of living, never has to cook, never has to do laundry or wash a dish. I call this Full Service Living. And the budget is for 60 but only 56 are planned in, with 4 slots available for social outreach, so this community can offer semi-temporary room and board for free to women fleeing abusive relationships, disabled veterans, homeless people with children, rehabilitated felons, whoever they want to help.

All this for a single payment of $1,000 per month, per paying resident.

Rent, food, utilities, housekeeping, everything. In an area where rent alone is more than that. This guarantees that a person making local minimum wage can afford to live, and pretty decently, with more free time and less headache.

When the building is paid off, if they want, Group A will each have a room to live in, plus a room to receive rent from, as income.

Let's break down the budget for this so far

(60 people, minus 10 caretakers and 4 outreach residents, equals 46 paying residents)

Per Month Costs to Paying Residents:

Meal plan for 60 people = $5,000.00

60 person phone plan = $1,800.00

Internet sufficient for a business: $400.00

Water bill for 60 people = $1,800.00

Electricity for 60 people = $3,600.00

Garbage bill for 60 people = $2,000.00

Caretaker stipend = $5,000.00

(subtotal: $19,600.00)

Building/Community fund = $1,853.002

million dollar mortgage = $21,213.00

Property tax = $3,334.00

Total: $46,000.00= $1,000 per paying resident per month, roughly $600 “room” and $400 “board” with as many costs of living as possible paid as one low bill.

Sharing a room adds a "board" payment to the room, so if you move a romantic partner in with you and split it evenly, you each pay $700. I also have discount rate breakdowns for people with children in various scenarios, but it starts to get complicated for what is supposed to be a simple overview. Basically it comes down to an inherent flexibility in the meal plan; the fact that a food budget for 60 people easily accommodates an extra mouth to feed could allow a group to offer a single parent a separate room for their child with no board payment, so they could live in two rooms for $1,500; stuff like that.

At those payments, the building is paid off in ten years. TEN. Our low income earners don't have to wait 30 years to be actual property owners, and they only have to give the bank an added $500k instead of the 1.4 million a 30 year mortgage would net.

Here is one place people replicating the format and participating in their own group can do whatever they want. The 28 building shareholders have the option of leaving everything the same but owning the place outright, which means they are no longer paying the ~$500 mortgage portion of their bills, instead each receiving about $500 in rent from the other residents, which is a net gain of $1k per month each in disposable income. Or they could all just sell the building and split the money 28 ways. Or they could all move out and use the entire building to generate residual income. Anything is good, we've made almost 30 people property owners and built them equity for only minimum wage while they provided relief services to the surrounding community, so anything they think is best, we've already done it good.

Ideally they move into a second building and sell the first building to group B, which is what the very first group will have to do to complete the seeding of the entire project.

SO. The two buildings I mention represent two stages of the greater project. Full Service Living, and Full Service Living Professional (hereafter FSL, and FSL Pro)

In the first stage, you have 10 caretakers providing full service living to 46 paying individuals, most of whom make minimum wage, and 4 social outreach recipients. FSL is basically getting as much of your life as possible handled with a single low bill, something similar to living in a good hotel.

To expand, The caretakers additionally seek to offer this service to middle class households - these homes already hire a house cleaner, a gardener, use a dry-cleaner, order delivery food, so they are prime clients. As middle class households become clients, the caretakers need more people to handle the work load, and the other people living in the facility quit their minimum wage jobs and work for the FSL company. This will earn the group profits as a whole while paying the individuals close to $25 an hour. THIS allows the second building to be much nicer.

With a second, much nicer building, the 28 people move in, and they find 28 new renters from higher up the economic food chain. These folks need to earn at least 35k a year and include people from a specific list of professions. This new group of 28 shall be referred to hereafter as the tenants.

The rent agreement is unique: The 28 tenants pay about 2k per month each for the same package, the FSL company from the first building provides all the housekeeping, meal plan, etc. The tenants also agree to pay one third of any increase in their wages, up to a cap, with the money going toward renovations, improvements, and additional services and amenities. This means as your income increases, you pay more actual dollars, but a smaller percentage of your over all income

So if you are making 35k you earn 3k a month, which means you pay 2/3 of your income to the facility (many people spend this much on rent plus food). If you double your income, you now earn 6k per month. Your rent package would go up by 1/3 of your additional income, or one thousand dollars, and you would still have an extra two thousand dollars per month of personal discretionary income. You would have started out paying 2/3 of your income, but now you’d be paying only 1/2 your income. Your building improves, your life improves, but you’ll always be able to afford it, and every raise you get does give you more spending money. Additionally, the staff is motivated to really give you all the support they can, as a well supported individual is more likely to have monetary success.

And one more important thing. Tenants either pay an additional 500 bucks a month in money, OR they offer $500 of their professional services to residents of the facility. Unclaimed time must be made available to the surrounding public for free.

So, say a paralegal values her time at $50 dollars an hour for qualified legal advice (such as, do I need a lawyer for this? what kind of lawyer do I need? What is this legal process going to look like?). The 50 residents only use an hour this month, so something like 9 appointments should be made available to the surrounding community for free - the facility staff will handle outreach (letting the community know of the offer via flyers etc). They will handle making the appointments according to her availability, and will provide the facility’s communal office space to hold them in.

These programs allow businesses to grow in a very low risk environment. Let’s look at a day care worker. She’s a classroom assistant at a day care, going to school part time to finish her teaching degree. She offers residents hours of baby sitting as her $500 service. As she earns more money, the facility also earns more money, and can renovate a space that sometimes functions as a play room for kids. No longer going to school, she is earning more money, the facility hires a permanent babysitter or two, and she manages them. Free to residents, they accept neighborhood kids for a reasonable fee. Low cost good quality day care becomes available to the neighborhood. She’s a class lead at a good school now, making more money, so the facility can afford to hire classroom assistants and the baby-sitting / daycare starts offering after-school programs to older children, well on its way to being a small private school, with our tenant running it.

Similarly, restaurants and construction companies grow out of offering facility residents goods and services.

To recap the ideal situation here: 28 people live in a nice 60 bedroom facility. They own a business in a neighboring facility, which houses workers who are paid fairly, but who also pay the first group monthly on a ten year lease (instead of paying a bank) -- after which that second group owns the building they live in and no longer has to pay. Everyone’s cooking, cleaning, laundry, are all done for them. By now their meals are largely made from the facility’s garden and aquaponics greenhouse, which includes a fish-farming pool, a few goats, a cow or two, and some chickens and ducks. Living with them in the facility is their lawyer, their nurse, their electronics expert, etc. They’re all part owners in their own non-profit bank/credit union, and there is an onsite day care, gym, and communal workshop. The group offers outreach programs to the surrounding community: low cost high quality day care, legal advice. They provide semi-temporary room and board to those in need, such as women fleeing abusive relationships, disabled veterans, and the homeless (especially those with children). They are an active part of an ongoing socio-economic program designed to give low-income housing, property ownership, retirement options, and upward mobility to minimum wage workers, as well as alternatives to broken institutions to all.

By the time they pay off the second building’s mortgage, the first building has been paid for over again, and THAT group can move into a ANOTHER FSL Pro building, offering their new building to a new round of pro tenants while offering that first building to a THIRD round of low income workers.

The first 28 people achieve all of this, building ownership, business proprietorship, community support, within the same thirty years it takes to pay off a standard home loan, starting with nothing more than entry level jobs and this master plan.

From there, growth continues. More buildings are offered to more low income earners. More facilities means more services, amenities, cooperative power, a stronger micro-economy. Political influence also increases with membership...

Eventually, you can take all these businesses and facility/communities, and go build a whole city, which looks a little like this

See the problem with cities is they grew organically. No one ever sat down and said “we know we want a hundred thousand people to live here -- what is the best design for that?” Instead is was just, some people, and then some more people, and then some more...

So.

You go out in the middle of wherever. You dig two GIANT holes. You take the dirt from the holes and you build a nice big hill. You fill the holes with water and you have two lakes. Now you have a nice place people want to live, nestled between the lakes, under the hill. It gives you enough water and topography to create a resource feedback loop and control things like wind and sun exposure.

You regulate everything for sustainability, design it from the ground up.

Current municipalities have to provide everything for the public from a budget that largely comes from property tax, which is 2% of the property value. That’s why when there’s something like a homelessness problem, there is no money to address it properly.

This city holds all the property in a trust administered by the elected city officials. Instead of rent paid to private landlords, the public leases their homes and businesses directly from the city, which keeps rents low and controlled and gives the city an incredibly large budget compared to current municipalities, which allows them to provide outstanding public services -- transportation, healthcare, parks -- as well as giving them enough budget to address any issues like homelessness. Regulation and organization for sustainability as a whole city addresses the fact that existence is always interlocked issues. For example:

Grey water. In this city, only approved cleansers are allowed for sale or use (and the city provides one. Because the city provides it, it has to be cheap and easy, which means that there is always room for improvement, or, a business selling better cleansers for more money. But no one will ever go without one available, even if they are broke). SO, no bleach down the drain. So you can take the grey water of the city, and dump it on the top of the hill into a manmade creek/river, which starts full of rocks, then pebbles, then sand (a natural filtration process) flows down the hill and ends up in the first lake, which is recreational. The second lake sits a little lower, and the water flows into it from the first lake. In the second lake there are fish farming and bi-valve farming, which additionally filters the water (especially bi-valves like fresh water muscles, which feed by straining the water through organic filters and not-for-food populations should be in the first lake as well). The city pulls its water from the second lake through its combination water purification facility / power plant. The power plant uses a steam turbine already so we simply run that steam through a charcoal filter, and re-condense it into molecularly clean water for municipal use; this uses our existing power generator, instead of requiring massive amounts of additional power.

That’s just one example. The city has it’s own sustainable agriculture program, and grows it’s own food. There are public meal plans, and a lot of organization of the city economy that I just don’t have the energy to get into here.

These designs allow a large group of people to live with very little environmental impact. It would be healthier for the citizens. And it would encourage a certain amount of political unity, while removing a lot of stress from modern life.

The city is modular in growth. So when the city population doubles, roughly half of them build a city nearby and live there.

_______________________________________________________________________

Aside from the first two facilities (and then probably the first of the cities, if that happens) I don't need or want to be involved. As it replicates into more and more facilities, the baseline should remain: "here is a format by which minimum wage workers can own property and grow wealth in a way that allows them more control over their lives and denies profits to existing corrupt industries and corporations -- copy it if you want and suit it to your own group of residents”

I don't want to tell people how to live or what to do, I want to give them tools and templates to improve their own lives, whatever that looks like to them.

Anyway, believe it or not, this is only about a tenth of the detail I’ve put into this. I can never get the whole picture of any of this out in one go, but I've spent a lot of time on all the details which, as you can tell, are innumerable. The ways in which the FSL buildings act as entrepreneurial incubators by cutting start-up overhead to nearly zero while providing an initial customer base of 60 regulars, the various permutations that could address specific scenarios, the details of how to add gardens and fish and food production supplemented by ethical food sourcing.. I could just. keep. going. forever.

It addresses the whole tangled set of problems. You have to help high population areas, but also go out to the middle of the country. You have to help low income earners and people in poverty, but also our middle class is struggling. You have to do things that effect education, infrastructure, ocean management, industrialized food production, population density/overcrowding issues, helps prevent homelessness, creates better jobs for workers of big box stores while providing affordable more sustainable alternatives to their customers...

I think this plan does all that and more.

I’m exhausted and can’t find all my work on this right now, it’s buried in email chains and computer back ups, but I think I more or less encapsulated it. Good night

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dippedanddripped · 4 years

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It was back in early March when Jerry Lorenzo and Alessandro Sartori presented their Zegna x Fear of God collaboration at Paris Fashion Week, setting the stage for one of the most curious fashion collisions in recent memory. The clothing itself did not disappoint, delivering a sensibility that somehow bridges the sartorial gap between Skepta and Don Draper. Who says a polo neck shouldn’t be bulbous with a zip? Or a tracksuit can’t be made of luxurious silk? Together, they want to blow open the menswear conversation, bringing into being a hypermodern way of comfortable dressing that cherry-picks the best bits of luxury and chic sportswear. Think of it like bodega-core for when the bodega has an exclusive dress code policy.

The Los Angeles streetwear dynamo and Milanese tailoring savant might ostensibly make for odd bedfellows, but theirs is a relationship built on mutual admiration. The dynamic isn’t so much a case of the student and teacher; rather, it’s totally egalitarian, with Lorenzo’s intuitive knowing of what young guys want to wear just as important as Sartori’s unrivaled technical expertise. In other words, they’re both reading from the same script. “I think that the difference [between Fear of God and Zegna] is obvious on an aesthetic level from far away,” Lorenzo previously explained to us. “But the souls of the brands are the same. And when we sat together, we knew that immediately, and we also had a desire to create a new language that would require the best of both worlds.”

Keen to find out where the pair were currently at given the events of recent months, we caught up with them over Zoom.

Let’s start from the beginning. What attracted you guys to working together?

Jerry Lorenzo: I’ve been a fan of Zegna for a long time. The first luxury suit to ever live in my household was a Zegna suit that my dad bought back in the ’90s. Alessandro being the head of the house made the opportunity even more exciting to me. I wanted to not only learn from the 110-year-old-plus house, but also learn from Alessandro, whom I really look up to, and whose aesthetic I’ve been a fan of for a long time. Usually, you don’t want to meet people in fashion, because they’re never what you hope them to be, but Alessandro just gets better with time.

Alessandro Sartori : We come across as very polite, but we are honest in what we say. It all started when a mutual friend asked, “Do you want to organize a coffee with this designer?” I remember seeing Jerry’s work first on the web and then in a very beautiful store in Tokyo. I was attracted by the chicness of the clothing, because what he does is not only has to do with his aesthetic and his feel, but he also has a timeless grammar. After a year or less, we talked about doing something because we shared so many values and ideas. The idea was to combine chic American sportswear with the timeless aesthetic of an Italian house.

Two opposites on the same page.

AS: I haven’t told you this, Jerry, but one of the best comments I got a couple of weeks ago was from an Italian retailer. He said to me, “You know what I adored about the picture and the video I saw? It didn’t feel like it was in Paris or of the time.” And I said, “Well, I never thought about that.”

JL: It’s exactly what we were hoping for — we wanted to land somewhere that was informed by the things we loved of the past, but spoke to something new; a new day, a new decade. Creating something that defines the early ’20s. I feel that’s the best possible comment that we can get. They’re seeing something that they hadn’t seen before.

Henry Ruggeri

Your presentation in March feels like a lifetime ago! How did that go?

AS: Jerry wanted to create something that looked like an art installation. A retrospective on this collection 10 years from now. We created a fantastic environment where there was no sense of time.

JL: That’s exactly what it was. We are trying to establish this new wardrobe for the modern man; the foundation and the principles of it are classic and timelessness. So maintaining that theme throughout all the communication, all the feelings, all the emotions from the setup, again, to the music that was played, to the location that Ali found, it really spoke to all of the different nuances that I believe Alessandro and myself poured into the project.

I feel that the runway and re-see still serves a purpose with a collection like this. To allow people to get really get up close with the fabrics and craftsmanship. Jerry, you’ve never done a runway show, and Alessandro, you just announced an online show for Zegna. But how do you compensate for that lack of physical interaction?

AS: I think the normal shows as we know needed a refresh anyhow. That’s one of the reasons why, when we decided to go with the presentation in Paris, we didn’t think about spending more or less money. We wanted to have the best effect for that collection according to what we wanted to achieve and tell. The place, the collection, the music, the light, the production, all at once conveyed the full idea of what we wanted. It felt timeless.

We decided to do a combination of digital and physical for this season at Zegna. We took the idea that we can’t invite people as a creative and challenging idea for what could be the future. Will we be able to do shows as before? Do we need to do shows before? We don’t know. I think that there’s going to be more formats, perhaps more private. Physical with, say, 300 people. But sensory in a way you can touch the fabric, you can see the material, and you can see the silhouette.

JL: We’re a little different than you guys in having never done a fashion show. Our biggest presentation was what we did together in Paris. And so we’re used to the digital way of presenting. However, as my craft develops and we start to play with knits and tailoring, and our pieces become more complex and beautiful to the touch, there’s the flip side of maybe that’s what we want to do. Perhaps having the human experience that maybe we haven’t had in the past.

We’re used to being digital, but it’s sad that at this moment — as we’re playing in a lot of new categories, that we were able to play within with Zegna and Alessandro — we kind of don’t have a platform to share this physically with the world. But as we’ve always done as a species, we adapt to the times, and we find ways to do what we have to do. I think creativity thrives when it’s limited.

There’s been a lot of talk about streetwear being outmuscled by menswear among young people as a kind of trend, but I don’t think it’s as binary as that. The modern man’s wardrobe is fluid.

JL: That’s what we believe. We believe that there’s not this jump from wearing a hoodie and sweats one day to the perfect tailored suit the next. There’s this in between area that speaks to the transition, but that also speaks to the time that the gentleman is in, in an honest way. Fear of God has always tried to create products that allow our customer to be who they are. We wanted to create something that’s digestible for our customer, that he could see himself in, that’s not intimidating. That when he walks into a room with a suit on, or something tailored, he still looks like himself, and he doesn’t look like he’s made this 10 year jump to being older.

I don’t think it’s as black as white as a tailored suiting world and a streetwear world. I think we’re all very complex individuals who have tons of different needs and desires. We were really just trying to speak to the modern lifestyle, and understanding those needs and desires, and how the consumer moves, and what his day is like, and how we can help him be best prepared for that through his wardrobe.

I’m growing, as I’m maturing in the same way that you are. My taste, needs and desires all develop, and you could say it’s an assumption that the rest of the world is kind of feeling the same way. The research and development that we depend on is asking the question “what’s missing from our closet? How do we want to present ourselves? Today’s a little different than it was yesterday, and what are the solutions that we can create?” I think we all live in the same world, and so we’re connected. And you assume that what you’re feeling is what other people are feeling, whether right or wrong, but that’s usually the safest assumption. So we’ve taken on the responsibility of an industry pacesetter and leader in what we do, and we do feel a responsibility to step up first in these instances, and go with our gut versus watching the market change and being reactive, and we’re going to continue to do that.

This collection won’t be cheap, but it embodies the “buy less but better” mentality.

AS: From day one we thought about life long garments. About pieces that you can mix and match — one collection after the other. Let’s think about a garment that you can easily give to your younger brother, or to your girlfriend. The quality of fabric and construction means it’s built to last. If you open the garments inside, you see the quality.

I’m intrigued how that plays into the studio dynamic. Jerry is very intuitive with no formal training, whereas you studied fashion design, Alessandro. How does it play out?

AS: We didn’t know how each other worked at first, but when we entered the room, I saw a fantastic soul, and the beautiful aesthetic behind the man. Keeping that in mind, all the discussion, bigger or smaller about a centimeter, or pants, or a jacket, whatever, were all part of this common idea to deliver the best possible project.

JL: We’re [Fear of God] are so unorthodox in our process, coming in with two to 300-plus images and vintage references, with what I thought was an all over the place story. Alessandro was quickly able to understand them as well as the emotion that we were trying to get across. We agreed on the question, and we agreed on that perspective, which allowed us to easily work through and work past the different ways of working that we both were accustomed to.

Let’s talk about the collection itself. Those turtle necks are wild and immediately caught my eye! I know it’s like asking to pick a favorite child, but do you have any stand out pieces?

JL: It’s exactly like picking your favorite child because we’re really trying to tell a full story. And so, every word, every child, is necessary. And if you leave one out, the story is not complete. The piece you are speaking about, I love that it’s this rear zip, like a turtleneck, but not, but it’s with shirting fabric. Living in LA and not being able to wear this turtleneck swag, it’s just like, “How do we do this?”

We considered so many different things, wanting this clean look without a lapel and this new turtleneck feel that’s not heavy knit. Every piece, if we speak to the turtleneck, or we speak to anything, is it as effortless and relaxed as it is sophisticated and elegant? That was the filter that we do everything through. On top of that, I just think it’s a solution. It’s a solution that it’s a shirt that didn’t really exist. Maybe for women in a different way, maybe with shoulder pads back in the day, but I felt we needed to propose something new in this area that wasn’t as stuffy as a traditional suit and tie. So it’s a pretty cool piece for you to mention, because it really speaks to all those different elements.

AS: I think we created, I don’t want to say new categories, but new pieces that didn’t exist in the classic menswear wardrobe before. I haven’t seen a sports pant that uses the best fabrics and finishes in the market. To channel this sportswear attitude through a tailoring mindset is interesting. I’m sure that guys will find the collection interesting because we’ll convey not only a new aesthetic, but also a lot of new pieces.

To finish, I wanted to ask about the suit. Jerry, I was learning today about the role of the suit and its relationship with black identity, power, and social politics. I think of stuff like Obama’s tan suit to Kanye and the Rosewood movement to the very idea of Sunday best. So what does this mean to you on a cultural level? The same goes for you, Alessandro.

JL: If you Google Sunday best Chicago, there’s this image that comes up of five young black kids in front of this old car and they’re all in their Sunday best. It’s a portrait that we have hanging up in my mom’s house. And there is something about a Sunday best and getting dressed for church and something about this term of church clothes, which were always considered your best clothes.

There is a lot of nuances that go into the feeling a suit gives you, and the emotion that a suit gives you, and a good feeling suit. And I think a lot of times Americans, and maybe people of color, have different shapes, many times the proportions and silhouettes aren’t best for them.

And that’s one of the things that I also considered during this process is making suits that allow the people who wear them to still feel like themselves, and even a better version of themselves, and not someone else. A lot of times when you put a suit on you begin to feel like someone else instead of the best version of yourself.

And so, yeah, there’s a lot of that deep down emotion that goes into it. And it comes from exactly that, the Sunday best growing up and only being able to wear your church clothes on Sundays. And if you got caught wearing your slacks or your blazer during the week, you would definitely catch a spanking and be in trouble. So there’s a lot of that that culturally we poured into this project.

AS: Yeah. I totally agree. First of all, I googled Sunday best Chicago 1941 [holds up phone to camera]. Amazing! I want to start from one of the sentences Jerry said about looking your best. We did this process and quite often people are forgetting that, but think, Graeme, of the first time you feel fantastic, when you were sensing what is good on you for the first time. It’s not the second time or the third; it’s only the first time because you’re used to it after that.

So when you put something on yourself and it’s so right — not every garment you own is like that — just a few pieces, and you put it on and you say, “Wow.” That emotion, and you fix and block that emotion in your mind, is exactly when we click — your emotions, the piece, this time. So we’re trying to convey — and I think it’s a very important story to build as far as suiting goes since I consider suiting the most iconic piece of the menswear uniform — that it’s very important to be able for each customer to have a proper one. Because if not, you look like somebody else.

Jerry Lorenzo: Yep. Very well said. And I think that was the beauty in us coming together because I have a perspective of some shapes and silhouettes and you have a perspective of shapes and silhouettes, and how do we honor each and all these different body types and still give them the same emotion.

#zegna #Fear of God x Zegna #the Power of Suiting #jerry lorenzo #Alessandro Sartori #mens suits #la streetwear brands #milano italy #milanese tailoring #streetwear blog #fashion blog

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sometimesalwaysmusic · 7 years

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SLACK BRIDGES

Slack Bridges (SB) has been making waves in the capital, having played many of the major and up-and-coming festivals in the region in their (relatively) short lifespan. In advance of their debut LP release show at the Rainbow Bistro, we caught up with bassist Garrett Bass for an in-depth conversation on influences, guests in their live show and maintaining their serious momentum moving into 2018.

VITALS

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/slackbridges/

Web: http://www.slackbridges.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/slackbridges/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/slackbridges

Upcoming Release: Joy of Joys (LP, Nov 2017)

Upcoming shows: Saturday, November 11 - Slack Bridges LP Release, with Mushy Gushy & Zattar. The Rainbow, Ottawa, ON. 9PM.

SA: How did Slack Bridges come to be? SB: In 2014, Chris (guitar) and myself had just started rehearsing with a local soul group and we realized we’d rather just work with each other. We started meeting up semi-regularly and putting some song skeletons together, but a combination of us having trouble finding a singer and both pretty busy meant that the songs just sat there for about a year and a half. In late 2015, I heard an album by an old pal Matt Gilmour under his alias “Gold Bonds” and really loved the sound of his voice. I showed Chris and we decided to reach out and see if Matt liked any of the tracks. The rest happened pretty quickly - Matt joined, he recommended our drummer Paul, I tracked down our keyboardist Marcus and things started coming together. Now as we release our first full length (we put out an EP last May), we have Zac Sedlar on alto sax and a few musicians who play off and on with us.

SA: What bands, musicians or artists would you cite as the biggest influences on your sound? SB: As a group of people, our tastes in soulful and funky music are pretty diverse, but we all speak the same language. So, half of the time we’re referencing the vintage stuff, from Chicago style soul like Curtis Mayfield, southern soul like Don Bryant, Anne Peebles, etc. and jazz fusion pioneers like Herbie Hancock… and then the other half of the time we’re referencing classic hip-hop and modern R&B guys like Anderson .Paak, Kendrick, etc. I think it’s pretty cool that you can be so varied but still under the same umbrella. When we’re writing we’re referencing across the map.. “hey can you try some Chicago soul strings at that part?” “Can we get some of that Saturday Night Live sax ripping in the background here?” “How can we get a big Kendrick-style Moog bass on this one?” It’s cool! This type of diversity really shows through on our new record. We really do yield influence from the history of soulful music throughout the ages.

SA: Thus far in the band’s lifetime, what has been your biggest success? SB: We played Bluesfest this summer, which was pretty great. We also played Ottawa’s first soul music fest this year which some of us played a big role in putting on. It was really cool to see this kind of music as a community-builder, and a way of bringing people together. I’d say the biggest success has been getting a grant from the Ontario Arts Council though. It was really cool to have a big agency like that believe in what we’re up to! Plus it allowed us to take the album we’d been picking away at and get some guest musicians on it, get it professionally mixed, mastered, pressed on vinyl… we would be dropping a very different product right now without that cash. It's safe to say that we are proud of our record and earning that grant.

SA: On the other hand, what is the biggest challenge you have faced, and how have you dealt with it? SB: We’re mainly 9-5ers and being in a band can be a big time management piece compared to how it used to be when we were kids. We’ve got 6 schedules to work around and we’re always trying to find a fine balance between being fun, efficient and reducing burn-out. For example, I’m a teacher and Matt is a grad student, so we work hard all year and then have summer off. Right at that point, Chris starts working 10-12 hour days at all the festivals. It’s a lot of juggling to get people together and gett’er done. Fortunately, when we all get in the jam space and play music together it’s a blast and definitely cathartic.

SA: How do you approach the song-writing process? SB: I actually had a friend read the back of the album and say “oh come on, you guys don’t actually all write the songs together. Who brings in the song?” To which my response was… yeah, actually, we do, and it’s crazy. Haha! Usually someone busts out an idea and we just jam the hell out of until we have a song. I’ll record what we have and dump it onto the net, Matt will brainstorm and revise some lyrics for the following week and we’ll keep at it for about 4-5 weeks until it’s a done deal. Sometimes, we improvise or revise for fun, but crafting a song is one of the funnest parts of being in a band for all of us, and we compose democratically. I think that our new record is definitely a reflection of this democratic and diverse approach too.

SA: What are your thoughts on the Ottawa music scene? SB: I’ve been here for about 12 years and it’s better now that it ever was. There’s a ton of variety! I feel like you could see a wide array of music any night of the week if you’re not too picky about genre. I can name a few artists worth watching in just about any portion of the scene… soul/funk, jazz, punk, rock n’ roll, garage, reggae/ska, indie, songwriter, folk, celtic, gypsy. We feel lucky to be part of Ottawa's music infrastructure, and are excited to grow with it as it becomes more accessible to others. It's always sweet to see new people come out, new bands, labels, venues, and organizations dedicated to improving our creative community.

SA: You are set to release your debut full length album, Joy of Joys, at the Rainbow Bistro on November 11. Social media tells us that you've been rehearsing with Olexandra from the Peptides. Can you tell us how that rehearsals have been going, and what can fans expect from your upcoming release show? SB: Our set is feeling great! After festival season it’s nice to be able to add some new material. We have some really fantastic people joining us on the 11th. Olexandra has been a huge supporter of this band and does such a great job with the Peptides, so it’s awesome to have her come up for a bunch of songs. We’ll also have Nick Dyson crushing it on trumpet and a couple other surprises up our sleeves. Expect a fun, intense, energetic, dynamic, and powerful set. We will be be playing songs off of our new record, as well as some brand new material. There will be lots of opportunities to dance and wild out. Our friends DJ Zattar and Mushy Gushy will also be playing some killer tunes as well. It's going to be a really great party.

SA: Given each band members' history with bands of a variety of genres, what made you want to follow this style with this band, and how has your song-writing approach compared or contrasted with past projects? SB: For most of us, we’ve just really always wanted to play in this kind of group but it wasn’t a possibility a few years ago. In terms of songwriting, half of us come from a punk rock background where you jam out a song until it sounds good, and the other come from a jazz or blues background where you improvise and really explore an arrangement. Put the two together and it makes for some really fun songwriting. That being said, we all have a fascination with complex, impressive, and tastefully executed music from the heart. That remains consistent in our songwriting, but our new record shows an honesty and maturity in how we have evolved as people and songwriters alike. That growth is something we all go through.

SA: Ottawa Jazz Festival, Ottawa Bluesfest, House of Paint, and the list goes on. You guys have hit a lot of the major festivals coming through Ottawa thus far. Though this is quite the enviable position, how do you keep this kind of momentum building, given all the tremendous successes that 2017 had for the band? SB: We managed to do a lot without an official LP out, which was pretty amazing! A lot of what got us into those festivals was word-of-mouth, which we’re super grateful for, but we’re really excited to be able to push a unique record that we put a lot of work into and give new listeners a clearer idea of what we do. I think now the goal is to keep building momentum, enjoy writing and releasing even more material, and see if we can take our momentum to some of the bigger festivals in Montreal, Toronto and Halifax, etc.

SA: What comes next for Slack Bridges post album release, and moving into 2018? We wish you guys the best, and good luck! SB: We’ll just be trying to get the record out there for the next little bit, hopefully collaborating with some more great Ottawa talent in the process. Otherwise, we’re just going to keep experimenting and writing soulful music and try to represent Ottawa one funky track at a time!

#slackbridges #ottawa #newmusic #funk #soul #joyofjoys #albumrelease #houseofpaint #ottawabluesfest #ottawajazzfestival #rainbowbistro #thepeptides #ontario #canada

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differentkindapiratemovies-blog · 5 years

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Reflections

Overview

I really wish I had given myself more time this year to really develop a lot of my projects but due personal issues I ended up not being present at a lot of most of the classes and workshops although I still believe I have completed most of the work independently to the best standard I could. I tend to deal a lot with creative bock due to over thinking and this year was by far a real challenge for me. I really overcame a lot of problems I have when it comes to working on projects. I struggled a lot with the majority of what I had and wanted to do even though a lot of it is stuff I have done before in my life. I like to think of myself as very resourceful when I don’t have a lot on hand and not a lotta time. I pride myself at being able to look at what I have around me and create something out of it. My work this year often involved only one other person to be my subject of whatever it was I was working on and other than that I tend to be my own writer, director, crew, producer, everything. It’s not that I am against working with others but I get very bad social anxiety, partially when I have a certain idea in mind and really want to find people on the same wave length. I find it very easy to talk to my best friend who appears in almost every piece of work I’ve created throughout this year. She’s helped me a great deal in getting my work completed and letting me just kind of tell her what to do however going into next year I really want to meet new people and collaborate on projects even though I’m apprehensive. However I still pride myself on being a truly independent filmmaker and I would like to learn every single aspect of the process so I can become and unstoppable force of creative fuck.

I like to work in a physical sketchbook and although I believe I have shown all the relevant information from it here on the blog I feel as though that the book itself is the real blog, where I keep everything from inspiration and influence and personal ideas for movies and projects and of course all my many class notes and theory I’ve caught up and studied over the last few months. I work entirely in this book, I bring it everywhere I go and is a huge part of development of ideas and has a lot of information in it from the philosophical side of creativity to the practical. It’s very important to me to do things my way and keep everything together as my projects tend to over lap especially if there’s several being completed in a short space of time. With this year I believe it’s important to see my work as a whole and also represents the kinda rag tag way I tend to work. Things get messy when I come up with a bunch of different ideas and my sketchbook for this years work defiantly represents that. It’s filled with every little thing I write down. I’ve always worked in a big A4 sketchbook and I always will I think. I feel that my blog does not represent fully what the sketchbook is full of however I think I have accumulated the most relevant sections. The book itself is filled with all my ideas from the terrible ones to the ones I am actively pursuing. You can find pages from it in my blog.

I keep thinking of the things I would have done differently but I’ve truly had a break through this year by at least finishing the projects and learning to not become so obsessed with something that it leaves you stagnant. I wish I had more time to really explore and develop my work such as my moving image work, which is my main passion. I wish I could have really made something that ticked all the boxes but I did what I did with the best I had. Overall I have a lot to learn still and want to get better at my craft and I can’t wait to go on to the next year where I can hopefully really begin to flourish. I would have done a lotta things differently and I made a lot of mistakes. My ideas tend to go bigger than what I can actually practically pull off which I’m aware is a normal part of creating, especially in movies. As well as the feeling that what you make doesn’t 100 percent turn out how you wanted it to be, but I understand the process of learning from one project and moving on to the next one. I tend to do things my way and am very persistent about that although I don’t feel this gets in the way of experimentation which I certainly did this year.

Photography

Three Studies of a Woman in the Sun. Three portraits of my friend and artist Katie Russell. Shot on a Canon 600D RAW I wanted to capture her identity through three images. The middle image you see in the three panels on my blog is her in a natural environment and utterly neutral. That one is relatively light feeling due the summers day behind her however she's looking off and something implies it’s more melancholy than the photo lets on. Perhaps the uplifting summer isn’t enough to hold her inner more negative emotions or that maybe the summer is no longer a good thing with it getting hotter and hotter each year. Maybe this isn’t a summer of celebration, but one of the end of the world. The bottom one is a real captured moment of her closing her eyes perhaps to imply her shyness in an industrial area, somewhere I often find comfort due to high containers and is generally aesthetically pleasing to me almost because of how not pleasing it is. The top one is how Katie would usually be and dress in her own environment, the lighting highlighting how she expresses herself through her own image. I like how the darkness is almost bleeding in around the edges of the photograph. I experimented with lighting a lot with this one and took several different photos that were the contender for the third portrait. Here, now she is herself, seems to project more confidence looking directly into the camera like this time the camera is invading HER space as oppose to the other ones where she’s almost apart of the scenery. Now she’s outta the sun she is the one who is shining. Notice how also she seems to fill up the frame more more the more comfortable she gets.

I missed my opportunity to use the photo studio or learn about it during the workshops or take some really good crafted photographs I feel but just like all my work I did the best with what I had. I really wish I could have learned to use black and white film. I also would have really liked to do something maybe more elaborate with costumes and big lights perhaps something more in line with Cindy Sherman however I would never pass up the opportunity for raw photography, which is my favourite kind. I consider raw photography to be as real as you can get it without too much manipulation of the subject and no manipulation once you’ve taken your photos. I enjoyed it although I don’t think photography is something I would do on a professional level. I enjoy taking photos a lot though.

Web Media

Web Media if defiantly my weakest part of the year. Not only do I find it frustrating and boring I have no interest in ever using websites to tell my stories or anything else unless it’s in the form of a kind of blog which I did do. I thought the narrative aspects of the module was interesting however web media is for sure not for me and I hope not to revisit it at any point. However I still had ideas and can appreciate how creative you can be with it. Originally I wanted re-tell the story of Odyssey through minimalist squares however that wasn’t really possible for me so I decided that it would be a chose your own adventure with a more artistic and low quality edge that would give it a pleasing aesthetic. This is the only project I really collaborated with someone on, having my friend to help me with the technical sides of coding however came up with the whole idea and development.

Moving Image

During film production I tend to take on every role including camera man, directing and sound and of course I always come up with the ideas, from script development to on the spot changes and ideas. Everything but being in front of the camera which I have even done as well. I consider filmmaking to be my main practice.

In addition to researching all the different roles the filmmaking process demands I also she a scene related to a bigger structure. On the scene from The Great Hydration War script that I wrote myself I did my best to make every shot tell us something. I played around a lot with power dynamic and it’s constantly changing. When our main character thinks they are in control the camera angle is low, making them seem large and powerful, but when the villain gets the upper hand you’ll see that they have the power. When they are both pointing guns at each other you’ll see that they’re both at the same level and share the power of the scene because it could go either way. Jazoor, the main character from the script, sees a figure. Unsure of who it is we see them in a wide, impersonal and unidentified. But when they stand up and Jazoor realises that it’s her twin from back on Earth. “It’s you!” Jazoor exclaims. With what she knows she gains the power to deal with the situation. She’s got this. However she’s flooded with doubt; “You sure?” Says the Dryborg, an evil futurist cyborg whose one weakness if water. The camera swoops up, leaving the character feeling vulnerable with no idea what kind of situation this is. Then she brings up her gun, bringing the power back to her. I did this throughout the entire scene and tried my best to make sure I was expressing the characters feelings and positions through the angles even though obviously it’s quite a non-sensical script and sort of ridiculous scene. I thought about the lighting as the scene was based on an alternate reality Earth in the past where the sun is blue so I made sure all of the scene were glowing in this blue light which I managed to do in post. As for the costumes me and my friend, who played the character, helped design it. I wanted something si-fi esque but obviously I had no budget and not a lot of time so I decided to try and take the comedic route and make it have more charm than actually trying to make the audience buy what was going on. The scene is a pivotal part of the larger structure and story and that I had written but the storyboards for the scene were in fact drawn before I wrote it.

For the scene I shot it on my trusty Canon 600D DSLR I’ve been using for many years. It’s trust worthy and takes footage so it works for me but I’d love to use something more professional and something closer to the industry standard. I like the cameras available at the university but sometimes its just much more practical to use your own camera but for the in coming year I really want to learn a different range of cameras and shoot on them. With more time and the same opportunity as other students I could of created something of a higher standard, perhaps something longer also.

Conclusion

I feel like I could have done a lot better with all of my projects and made them to a better standard and quality and with more meaning if I had been more personally okay this year. I’m very passionate about my chosen subjects and like to think I’ve had several break throughs this year with my work. I am quite proud of some of the things I’ve created, particularly the ones I created for other modules, the short films Campussies! And HELLo. Everything I make has either not to do with politics or is anti-politics.

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jamiekturner · 5 years

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Kalium

A quick glance at Kalium’s selection of full concept design demos should be enough to convince you that you’ve made the right choice in a website-building tool. This visually stunning theme gives you the opportunity to showcase your work as you’ve always wanted to.

Kalium provides a host of layout designs and drag and drop design elements, plugins, and premium fonts in addition to their concept demos.

TheGem

A versatile, flexible, responsive, and creative WordPress theme is one way to introduce TheGem. The best toolbox on the market to satisfy a web designer’s creative needs is another, and perhaps more accurate description. TheGem could in fact be accurately described as providing the ultimate WordPress toolbox.

TheGem’s 70+ built-in creative concepts provide plenty of website-building ammunition to see you through 2019 and beyond.

Uncode – Creative Multiuse WordPress Theme

Instead of plowing through a list of website features (which Uncode will happily provide), this creative multiuse theme takes a different approach. Uncode invites you to browse its showcase of user-inspired and creative websites to give you a picture of the web-building possibilities that await if you give this WordPress theme a try.

Blogs, Stunning portfolios, online shops, and everything in between are easy to create with Uncode.

Real Homes

Real Homes can boast of a 4.66/5.00-star rating for a reason. This #1 ranked specialty WordPress theme’s advanced property search and property listing features give realtors the functionality their agencies require to conduct their business operations.

Real Homes provides a full range of design options and detail pages to work with, including frontend major payment gateways and property submission features.

Grenada – Creative Ajax Portfolio Showcase Slider Theme

Grenada is a creative Ajax portfolio showcase slider theme that offers just the right solution for creative types deserving of top-quality portfolios to showcase their efforts. While being Gutenberg compatible, Grenada could be described as a minimalist, elegant, or innovative WordPress theme, or all of the above—in keeping with the latest design standards and trends.

You’ll find a set of creative portfolio slides, the Ajax creative portfolio showcase page load, and Visual Composer included in this WordPress theme’s toolkit.

Houzez – Highly Customizable Real Estate WordPress Theme

Houzez offers a complete selection of the functionalities and features real estate agents and agencies look for to carry them through a busy workday. Of particular note is Houzez’ Advance Search capabilities along with this specialty theme’s efficient and time-saving Property Management system.

Users particularly like the drag and drop capability that lets them perfectly match this theme’s capabilities to their business model.

Avada WordPress Theme

If you’re tired of the design restrictions some WordPress themes are known to carry along with them, you might consider giving Avada a closeup look. Avada’s professionally designed and crafted demos coupled with an impressive array of design options lets you build any type or style of website you can envision without having to delve into coding, custom or otherwise, to achieve what you’re after.

Avada has been a #1 top-seller for 5 years running.

KnowAll

KnowAll – your fully featured knowledge base theme for WordPress. This theme provides your customers with the opportunity to handle their needs by themselves. With KnowAll, you will be able to offer support to your customers even when you are not around.

KnowAll is fully responsive and easily customizable. Plus, it provides valuable insights that can help you to improve your business.

MOVEDO – We DO MOVE Your World

Movement, whether it’s real or apparent, has a way of capturing a user’s attention and inviting that user to explore further. The MOVEDO WordPress theme offers a way for you to capitalize on movement to move your world and that of your website users.

Features such as ultra-dynamic parallax, unique animations, and changeable typography provide great ways to get you out of any design rut you might find yourself in.

Schema

Schema successfully addresses and manages one of the most difficult challenges web designers face; designing an engaging UX and at the same time taking SEO into account. Search engines are famous for their ever-changing search algorithms.

Rather than trying to work the problem yourself, let Schema guide the engines content element by content element through your sites. One less design worry.

Pofo – Creative Portfolio, Blog and eCommerce WordPress Theme

Pofo, with its more than 150 pre-built design elements, its wide range of demo and home pages and website building tools is a designer’s dream when it comes to building stunning creative portfolios.

Portfolio content represents the heart and soul of many businesses and creative enterprises; especially those that rely heavily on having an online presence. This multipurpose WordPress theme will not only meet your portfolio design needs, but your blog’s and eCommerce’s needs as well.

ForumPress

Many web designers sail through project after project without significant problems until they’re faced with the situation of having to incorporate a forum – and they get stuck. Most WP themes don’t address this need adequately, if at all. ForumPress does.

Powered by the bbPress forum plugin, this forum-focused theme provides everything needed to put in place a forum suited for your user community, while matching your company brand.

Conclusion

Have you been searching in vain to find the right WordPress theme to carry you into 2019 and beyond? We’ve more than likely found what you’re looking for.

You are given the opportunity to select from 15 of the best the market has to offer. Thus, you should have little problem in zeroing in on one that precisely matches your needs.

Happy Hunting!

The post How to publish a WordPress site and get instant results? Use one of these themes appeared first on Design your way.

from Web Development & Designing https://www.designyourway.net/blog/wp/how-to-publish-wordpress-site-themes/

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unixcommerce · 6 years

Text

The Art Of Crafting More Powerful Content: 5 Top Tactics from the Experts

Welcome to the second piece in our new multi-part “Collective Wisdom” series of content marketing strategy articles, where you’ll learn proven methods taking you from the beginning of the content planning cycle to its final post-publication conclusion, and featuring insight from some of the world’s most respected and successful digital marketers. Previously in “How to Boost Your Content Marketing Efforts By Planning Ahead,” we looked at implementing a smart and robust content planning strategy. Now it’s time to take a look at the intrinsically important content creation stage of any successful content marketing campaign.

Crafting Powerful Content

As we’ll explore, skillfully crafting content is one of the most important steps on a successful content marketing journey. After all, content is the centerpiece you present to the digital world — so let’s examine some of the strongest tactics to incorporate in your next campaign. [bctt tweet=”“Crafting content is a mélange in which you wear the varied hats of artist, air traffic controller, plumber, magician, statistician, salesman, marketer, and librarian.” — Lane R. Ellis @lanerellis” username=”toprank”]

Tactic 1: Incorporate Appropriate, Effective, and Engaging Visuals

Should you use visual elements in your content? Here’s a hint: Yes! Today’s marketing draws heavily on the use of interesting and compelling images and other visual content to both draw people in and clearly illustrate messages. It’s no surprise that marketers use more visuals of all types — images, animated GIFs, videos, in-content playable games, and others — than ever before. Over time, a barrage of studies have shown their superior ability for us to remember them. Compared to plain text copy, which by some calculations has only about 10% recall after three days, some 65% of visual content stays in our memories after the same period of time, according to Dr. John Medina’s “Brain Rules” and other studies. Furthermore, according to HubSpot research, visual content is over 40 times more likely to be shared on social platforms, and brands have become increasingly creative in using techniques including animated GIFs, such as the good examples shown in “10 brands using beautifully creative GIFs right now.” Videos, graphic presentations, charts and other data visualizations, animated GIFs, stock photos, fine art photos, screenshots, scans, and experimental imagery should all be considered and used to fill your specific content needs. The trick is knowing what to use and where to incorporate it, and understanding your audience helps narrow down the most appropriate and effective visuals for any particular piece of content. [bctt tweet=”“You’ve got seconds to grab your audience’s attention and only minutes to keep it.” — Dr. John Medina @BrainRulesBooks” username=”toprank”] TopRank Marketing Senior Content Marketing Manager Joshua Nite has looked into the importance of choosing dynamic and compelling images to include in written content campaigns, as he deftly explains in “How to Choose Dynamic Images for Your Blog Posts.” [bctt tweet=”“The right visual does more than take up space. It captures attention, creates a little mystery, invites the reader to dig into your carefully-crafted text.” — Josh Nite @NiteWrites” username=”toprank”] Aside from its use in blog posts, great imagery’s power of engagement carries over into the realm of content promotion. “Good visuals are doubly important for amplification, too: Your Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn shares will all include an image,” Josh noted. Knowing your intended audience and where they’re most likely to encounter a link to the shiny new content on your website is an important factor in choosing which visual elements will have the greatest pull and engagement. For example, if your audience is clicking on a link to your new blog post or other content primarily on Reddit, the imagery and overall experience those people expect and find engaging is usually quite different than what someone finding your content on LinkedIn in looking for. Use authoritative research on user experience to guide the visual imagery you choose, including the latest statistics on these elements, such as those Jeff Bullas has compiled in his “15 Visual Content Marketing Statistics That’ll Blow Your Mind.” [bctt tweet=”“People will forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel.” — Jeff Bullas @jeffbullas” username=”toprank”]

Tactic 2: Make it Easy For Readers to Share Your Content in the Ways They Prefer

You can have plenty of winning content in place, but without intuitive and expected methods in place to share your carefully-crafted work, it will likely remain largely a content island unto itself — a phenomena Lee Odden calls Invisible Content Syndrome. Every audience has their own preferred means of sharing the things they find and love online. So, part of your content creation process should be to see that these methods are fully implemented, whether its as simple as having easily-found social sharing buttons and functionality, offering click-to-tweet messaging, or as advanced as using automatic copying of shortened and trackable URLs. Heidi Cohen, Chief Content Officer at Actionable Marketing Guide, has gathered together some of her favorite ways of giving readers a variety of ways to share content, in “7 Ways to Get Extra Mileage From Your Blog Posts.” [bctt tweet=”“It’s eye candy that attracts readers by making it easy for them to get the meaning of your post quickly.” — Heidi Cohen @heidicohen” username=”toprank”] More content than ever is including click-to-tweet functionality, as it provides a useful way for readers to quickly and easily share key takeaways or especially insightful quotes, however, it may not be right for your content if your audience is not generally using Twitter.

Tactic 3: Harness the Power of Gamification

Interactive content and entertaining game-based or game-like content, including elements such as quizzes, polls, and surveys, are a proven way to boost engagement and content stickiness, raising time-on-page rates as fast as racking up a high score. According to data from DemandGen, 91% of B2B buyers prefer interactive and visual content, which should come as no great surprise considering that such content stands out and is often a sign of well-thought-out content strategy. Live-streaming platform Twitch has grown to become the twelfth most-visited site in the U.S. according to Alexa data, and its 15-million-plus daily users have helped bring active audience participation into the mainstream, as our own content strategist Nick Nelson detailed recently in his fascinating “How Twitch is Breaking New Ground In Audience Engagement #CMWorld.” Our own Caitlin Burgess recently examined the power of interactive content in “Interactive Content Marketing: Why B2B Marketers Should Take Their Content from Boring to Bold,” a helpful deep-dive into not only why this form of content creates such strong engagement, but how to best use it in your content marketing campaigns. [bctt tweet=”“The real opportunity with #interactivecontent doesn’t lay in the interactivity itself. The real value creation is in the excitement or connection that you can make with your audience.” — Caitlin Burgess @CaitlinMBurgess” username=”toprank”] Or, as Liraz Rahmin Postan noted in her look at gamification for Outbrain: “As content marketers, it’s so important to keep your audience engaged and motivated to keep going. Fun, game-based and interactive content does this really well.” Gamification can include video, as our team did ahead of this year’s Content Marketing World conference, with retro 8-bit videos featuring event speakers: TopRank Marketing digital strategy director Ashley Zeckman shows the entire series of video in “Ready Player One: Top CMWorld Speakers Dish Go-To Classic Content Marketing Combos.”

Tactic 4: Run With Traditional On-Page SEO Tactics

Crafting content wouldn’t be complete without using longstanding, tried-and-true SEO tactics such as basic metadata, some of which are so fundamental that they should always be used. Some of the same metadata elements I first used in 1993 during the pre-Google days are still wise to incorporate, including the ubiquitous-but-important HTML title and description tags. Eighty-two percent of marketing influencers say that the effectiveness of SEO is generally increasing, according to MarketingProfs and Octos statistics. Our own CEO, Lee Odden, explores some of these fundamental SEO questions in his “Power Pages and Best Answer Content: Should You Go Long or Short Form?” In addition, SparkToro’s Rand Fishkin, co-founder of Moz, also takes a look at just what SEO means today in his helpful piece “What Does It Mean to “Write for SEO” in 2018?” [bctt tweet=”“There’s no reason you have to use this old-school junk methodology that became like pseudoscience in the SEO world and had a recent revival. You should be using words & phrases that Google has related to a particular keyword.” — @randfish” username=”toprank”] SEO is so ingrained in the structure of the web that it’s been surprising to hear it being given the last rites by some in the industry. However, from our perspective, SEO is not only still a viable tactic, but also necessary — you just need to put the time into thoughtfully analyzing the data so you can pull actionable insights. [bctt tweet=”“Every marketer has access to this data. It’s time to analyze it and use it to inform your content strategy to create customized, relevant, and insightful content that is more valuable to your target audience.” — @annieleuman” username=”toprank”]

Tactic 5: Creativity Is Key For Making Best-Answer Content That Stands Out

No matter how many technical tricks or contraptions you use in a content marketing campaign, the road will be a long uphill one if you don’t present creative and useful information that fills a need for your audience. Being the best answer is the key tenet of Lee’s “Be the Best Answer: 5 Steps to Grow Influence for Your Brand,” which shows how creating or co-creating relevant and credible content is a vitally important step in a successful digital marketing campaign. [bctt tweet=”“Influence plays an important role in a ‘Best Answer’ marketing strategy.” — Lee Odden @leeodden” username=”toprank”] The best content creation involves both art and creativity, as comic author Scott Adams once summed up by pointing out that, “Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep,” or as artist Paul Klee said, “One eye sees, the other feels.” The greater the creativity you and your team have, the more of an an edge you can have on the competition, and creative content draws audiences in, entertains, and when done well, enlightens. It’s one of the main ways to differentiate your content.

Tying It All Together — What Next?

By incorporating appropriate, effective, and engaging visuals, making sharing easy, harnessing the power of gamification, using fundamental SEO tactics, and offering best-answer content, your content marketing will include the elements that give your strategy a much better chance at success. These aren’t the only elements you’ll want to include in your content crafting tool bag, however, and next up we’ll take a close look at another group of important content creation tactics as we continue our “Collective Wisdom” series. In the meantime learn more by catching us at an upcoming conference or webinar, including these four:

Pubcon Las Vegas 2018 on October 17 in Las Vegas — “5 Secrets to Growing Influence in Marketing”

ITSMA Marketing Vision 2018 on November 7 in Cambridge, MA. — “Influence the Influencers – How B2B technology companies can build brand awareness with content and influence ”

MarketingProfs 2018 Marketing B2B Forum on November 15 in San Francisco — “The Confluence Equation: How Content & Influencers Drive B2B Marketing Success”

The post The Art Of Crafting More Powerful Content: 5 Top Tactics from the Experts appeared first on Online Marketing Blog – TopRank®.

http://www.toprankblog.com/

The post The Art Of Crafting More Powerful Content: 5 Top Tactics from the Experts appeared first on Unix Commerce.

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christopheruearle · 6 years

Text

The Art Of Crafting More Powerful Content: 5 Top Tactics from the Experts

Crafting Powerful Content

As we’ll explore, skillfully crafting content is one of the most important steps on a successful content marketing journey. After all, content is the centerpiece you present to the digital world — so let’s examine some of the strongest tactics to incorporate in your next campaign. [bctt tweet="“Crafting content is a mélange in which you wear the varied hats of artist, air traffic controller, plumber, magician, statistician, salesman, marketer, and librarian.” — Lane R. Ellis @lanerellis" username="toprank"]

Tactic 1: Incorporate Appropriate, Effective, and Engaging Visuals

Should you use visual elements in your content? Here’s a hint: Yes! Today’s marketing draws heavily on the use of interesting and compelling images and other visual content to both draw people in and clearly illustrate messages. It’s no surprise that marketers use more visuals of all types — images, animated GIFs, videos, in-content playable games, and others — than ever before. Over time, a barrage of studies have shown their superior ability for us to remember them. Compared to plain text copy, which by some calculations has only about 10% recall after three days, some 65% of visual content stays in our memories after the same period of time, according to Dr. John Medina’s “Brain Rules” and other studies. Furthermore, according to HubSpot research, visual content is over 40 times more likely to be shared on social platforms, and brands have become increasingly creative in using techniques including animated GIFs, such as the good examples shown in “10 brands using beautifully creative GIFs right now.” Videos, graphic presentations, charts and other data visualizations, animated GIFs, stock photos, fine art photos, screenshots, scans, and experimental imagery should all be considered and used to fill your specific content needs. The trick is knowing what to use and where to incorporate it, and understanding your audience helps narrow down the most appropriate and effective visuals for any particular piece of content. [bctt tweet="“You've got seconds to grab your audience's attention and only minutes to keep it.” — Dr. John Medina @BrainRulesBooks" username="toprank"] TopRank Marketing Senior Content Marketing Manager Joshua Nite has looked into the importance of choosing dynamic and compelling images to include in written content campaigns, as he deftly explains in “How to Choose Dynamic Images for Your Blog Posts.” [bctt tweet="“The right visual does more than take up space. It captures attention, creates a little mystery, invites the reader to dig into your carefully-crafted text.” — Josh Nite @NiteWrites" username="toprank"] Aside from its use in blog posts, great imagery’s power of engagement carries over into the realm of content promotion. “Good visuals are doubly important for amplification, too: Your Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn shares will all include an image,” Josh noted. Knowing your intended audience and where they’re most likely to encounter a link to the shiny new content on your website is an important factor in choosing which visual elements will have the greatest pull and engagement. For example, if your audience is clicking on a link to your new blog post or other content primarily on Reddit, the imagery and overall experience those people expect and find engaging is usually quite different than what someone finding your content on LinkedIn in looking for. Use authoritative research on user experience to guide the visual imagery you choose, including the latest statistics on these elements, such as those Jeff Bullas has compiled in his “15 Visual Content Marketing Statistics That’ll Blow Your Mind.” [bctt tweet="“People will forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel.” — Jeff Bullas @jeffbullas" username="toprank"]

Tactic 2: Make it Easy For Readers to Share Your Content in the Ways They Prefer

You can have plenty of winning content in place, but without intuitive and expected methods in place to share your carefully-crafted work, it will likely remain largely a content island unto itself — a phenomena Lee Odden calls Invisible Content Syndrome. Every audience has their own preferred means of sharing the things they find and love online. So, part of your content creation process should be to see that these methods are fully implemented, whether its as simple as having easily-found social sharing buttons and functionality, offering click-to-tweet messaging, or as advanced as using automatic copying of shortened and trackable URLs. Heidi Cohen, Chief Content Officer at Actionable Marketing Guide, has gathered together some of her favorite ways of giving readers a variety of ways to share content, in “7 Ways to Get Extra Mileage From Your Blog Posts.” [bctt tweet="“It’s eye candy that attracts readers by making it easy for them to get the meaning of your post quickly.” — Heidi Cohen @heidicohen" username="toprank"] More content than ever is including click-to-tweet functionality, as it provides a useful way for readers to quickly and easily share key takeaways or especially insightful quotes, however, it may not be right for your content if your audience is not generally using Twitter.

Tactic 3: Harness the Power of Gamification

Interactive content and entertaining game-based or game-like content, including elements such as quizzes, polls, and surveys, are a proven way to boost engagement and content stickiness, raising time-on-page rates as fast as racking up a high score. According to data from DemandGen, 91% of B2B buyers prefer interactive and visual content, which should come as no great surprise considering that such content stands out and is often a sign of well-thought-out content strategy. Live-streaming platform Twitch has grown to become the twelfth most-visited site in the U.S. according to Alexa data, and its 15-million-plus daily users have helped bring active audience participation into the mainstream, as our own content strategist Nick Nelson detailed recently in his fascinating “How Twitch is Breaking New Ground In Audience Engagement #CMWorld.” Our own Caitlin Burgess recently examined the power of interactive content in “Interactive Content Marketing: Why B2B Marketers Should Take Their Content from Boring to Bold,” a helpful deep-dive into not only why this form of content creates such strong engagement, but how to best use it in your content marketing campaigns. [bctt tweet="“The real opportunity with #interactivecontent doesn’t lay in the interactivity itself. The real value creation is in the excitement or connection that you can make with your audience.” — Caitlin Burgess @CaitlinMBurgess" username="toprank"] Or, as Liraz Rahmin Postan noted in her look at gamification for Outbrain: “As content marketers, it’s so important to keep your audience engaged and motivated to keep going. Fun, game-based and interactive content does this really well.” Gamification can include video, as our team did ahead of this year’s Content Marketing World conference, with retro 8-bit videos featuring event speakers:

youtube

TopRank Marketing digital strategy director Ashley Zeckman shows the entire series of video in “Ready Player One: Top CMWorld Speakers Dish Go-To Classic Content Marketing Combos.”

Tactic 4: Run With Traditional On-Page SEO Tactics

Crafting content wouldn’t be complete without using longstanding, tried-and-true SEO tactics such as basic metadata, some of which are so fundamental that they should always be used. Some of the same metadata elements I first used in 1993 during the pre-Google days are still wise to incorporate, including the ubiquitous-but-important HTML title and description tags. Eighty-two percent of marketing influencers say that the effectiveness of SEO is generally increasing, according to MarketingProfs and Octos statistics. Our own CEO, Lee Odden, explores some of these fundamental SEO questions in his “Power Pages and Best Answer Content: Should You Go Long or Short Form?” In addition, SparkToro’s Rand Fishkin, co-founder of Moz, also takes a look at just what SEO means today in his helpful piece “What Does It Mean to "Write for SEO" in 2018?” [bctt tweet="“There's no reason you have to use this old-school junk methodology that became like pseudoscience in the SEO world and had a recent revival. You should be using words & phrases that Google has related to a particular keyword.” — @randfish" username="toprank"] SEO is so ingrained in the structure of the web that it’s been surprising to hear it being given the last rites by some in the industry. However, from our perspective, SEO is not only still a viable tactic, but also necessary — you just need to put the time into thoughtfully analyzing the data so you can pull actionable insights. [bctt tweet="“Every marketer has access to this data. It’s time to analyze it and use it to inform your content strategy to create customized, relevant, and insightful content that is more valuable to your target audience.” — @annieleuman" username="toprank"]

Tactic 5: Creativity Is Key For Making Best-Answer Content That Stands Out

No matter how many technical tricks or contraptions you use in a content marketing campaign, the road will be a long uphill one if you don’t present creative and useful information that fills a need for your audience. Being the best answer is the key tenet of Lee’s “Be the Best Answer: 5 Steps to Grow Influence for Your Brand,” which shows how creating or co-creating relevant and credible content is a vitally important step in a successful digital marketing campaign. [bctt tweet="“Influence plays an important role in a ‘Best Answer’ marketing strategy.” — Lee Odden @leeodden" username="toprank"] The best content creation involves both art and creativity, as comic author Scott Adams once summed up by pointing out that, “Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep,” or as artist Paul Klee said, “One eye sees, the other feels.” The greater the creativity you and your team have, the more of an an edge you can have on the competition, and creative content draws audiences in, entertains, and when done well, enlightens. It’s one of the main ways to differentiate your content.

Tying It All Together — What Next?

Pubcon Las Vegas 2018 on October 17 in Las Vegas — “5 Secrets to Growing Influence in Marketing”

ITSMA Marketing Vision 2018 on November 7 in Cambridge, MA. — “Influence the Influencers – How B2B technology companies can build brand awareness with content and influence ”

MarketingProfs 2018 Marketing B2B Forum on November 15 in San Francisco — “The Confluence Equation: How Content & Influencers Drive B2B Marketing Success”

The post The Art Of Crafting More Powerful Content: 5 Top Tactics from the Experts appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

0 notes

digitalmark18-blog · 6 years

Text

I Gave Up on Squarespace and Built My Own Photo Website from Scratch

New Post has been published on https://britishdigitalmarketingnews.com/i-gave-up-on-squarespace-and-built-my-own-photo-website-from-scratch/

I Gave Up on Squarespace and Built My Own Photo Website from Scratch

For the past several years my photography website called Squarespace home. Among online, fully-contained, content management systems, it is hard to go wrong with Squarespace. Offering domain registration and hosting, plus well-crafted templates, Squarespace makes it easy to create a professional looking website.

Squarespace has many benefits. Their choices of templates are great, they are visually appealing and generally function for the purposes for which they were built. Want to add e-commerce to your website? Simple. Want to start blogging? Add a blogging page and the rest is done for you. Need technical support? A chatroom or phone call away.

Squarespace has made available to individuals what would otherwise cost many hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars to accomplish through a component web developer, all for a somewhat reasonable monthly cost. While my website doesn’t see much traffic (no fault of Squarespace’s), I decided to transfer my domain from Squarespace to a dedicated hosting service. Which meant I had to start over and build my website from scratch.

Why would I opt to leave the carefully crafted, polished environment of Squarespace? Largely because of content management.

Before I go any further, I should make a couple things clear. First, this is not a criticism of Squarespace per se. Squarespace exists for a very specific purpose. Like I mentioned, Squarespace has made available tools for anyone to develop a professional looking website; whether that is to support a business, portfolio, or project without the need for costly web development. If you are willing to put in the time to get familiar with the Squarespace environment, it will likely suit your needs well.

Secondly, users of Squarespace will already know this. If they needed the extra flexibility of a self-managed website, they most likely would have gone that route in the first place. In my case, I started with Squarespace under the same circumstances. I wanted a well-tailored look with modern functionality, all for very little effort. It was after several years of use, however, when the needs for a self-managed website became more apparent.

Now in terms of content management, you may own your content but you really don’t own your website. Yes, you have a domain name, which you technically own and can take elsewhere, but your content is supported by a template that is managed and owned by Squarespace. Squarespace is a business and like any business, it could shut its doors tomorrow. Leaving you with very few options to recover your efforts in the event of a worst case scenario. To be fair, Squarespace does allow you to download your “site”, but not in any way that would make it easy to seamlessly transfer that content to another provider.

For a portfolio, this is likely not that big of a deal, but can be especially so if you use your website for any means of income. After several years of use, it was this overall lack of ownership that made me decide to leave Squarespace and host my website elsewhere. There is something to be said for having complete control over all areas of your website, from the media you upload on down to the HTML and CSS files that make up the core of a website.

Under this scenario, if worst came to worst, I know that I can easily take my website to any hosting service with little downtime in between. This should be an important consideration for all photographers or creators of any kind.

The following is a narrative about the decisions I made in building and designing this website and that it might be a helpful resource for others looking to do something similar. I tried to approach building this site as logically as I could, so each ‘Part’ is, more or less, in order of consideration. As such, I will begin by discussing my first decision in choosing a hosting platform.

Part 1

Choosing a Hosting Platform

Choosing a hosting platform was a bit of struggle. With numerous options available you think it would it would be anything but, however, quantity does not always equal quality. Simply Googling “best website hosting 2018” is not a bad place to start to get a handle on the current environment of website hosting. You can then use that information to further filter your choices.

Another option, and the one I eventually chose, was to search Stack Exchange and web developer subreddits on Reddit. Both have a massive user base and what better way to find this kind of information than from the people who are likely to have experience using hosting services? There was plenty of good advice to be had, but many stressed the importance of quality customer service over technical differences.

Speaking of technical differences, one technical decision you will likely have to make is choosing between shared hosting or dedicated hosting. With shared hosting, as the name implies, you are sharing server resources along with other websites. Dedicated hosting, on the other hand, provides dedicated resources for a single website. Both have their benefits. Shared hosting is significantly cheaper, while dedicated hosting favors stability. I would venture to say that for the vast majority of people, shared hosting is more than enough.

After comparing most of the major players in web hosting, I eventually chose a shared hosting plane from Siteground. They received great feedback from users (especially customer service), had reasonable yearly rates for shared hosting, and a solid introductory feature set for users just starting out with their own self-managed website.

Domain Transfers

When you sign up for a Squarespace account, you will also likely register for your own domain (website) name. It is actually a nice feature that Squarespace offers in that, as a service, everything is self-contained. You can have your domain name and website up and going in the 10 minutes that it takes to create an account; no need to buy a domain from another provider. This was the route I took when I used Squarespace and registered my name as the domain name.

Squarespace, fortunately, makes this a relatively painless experience by offering the tools needed to prepare your domain to be transferred to another provider. I followed the exact steps found here and encountered no issues. The transfer from Squarespace to Siteground took all of 10 minutes (although they do estimate that it can sometimes take as long as 48 hours). With the domain transfer complete, it was time to begin putting the pieces together for this site.

Part 2

WordPress (CMS) or Static HTML?

The next decision was to decide whether I should use WordPress or static HTML/CSS. Saying that WordPress is the most used CMS in the world is no exaggeration. According to WordPress, 30% of websites are built using WordPress, which include a number of big names such as The New York Times, Forbes, BBC America, TechCrunch.

If WordPress is good enough to manage these websites, it is good enough to manage your own personal website. The ubiquity of WordPress also means that hosting services generally offer easy WordPress installations. So, if you are coming from Squarespace and still like the idea of a CMS, WordPress (or one of the many variants) is a good way to go.

But, there is another consideration, and that is a static HTML website. Static meaning no CMS or dynamically rendered web pages say, via PHP. There are advantages to static HTML websites. First is simplicity. You have an HTML file for every page and a series of CSS files that style them. Once finished, you upload to your preferred hosting service and you are good to go. Also, static HTML websites tend to have faster load times. Another advantage is that static HTML pages can offer more SEO (search engine optimization) flexibility.

There is a significant downside, however, and that is, interestingly enough, content management. A CMS, like WordPress, is built to do just that, manage content. You can write and upload to a page through an easy-to-use text editor as well as upload photos using any number of photo gallery plugins available. Static HTML requires you to directly edit the HTML of the page and then upload that page via FTP to replace the old with the new. It is pretty archaic when compared to WordPress or other CMS systems. If you’re constantly adding new content, this is not exactly ideal.

Weighing the advantages and disadvantages of both WordPress and static HTML, I went with static HTML. In an environment where modern websites have a tendency to be feature heavy, I was looking for speed and simplicity. Static HTML/CSS offers both.

HTML/CSS Boilerplates

I don’t have much experience with web development. I have managed websites using a CMS, but not coding a website from scratch. My familiarity with HTML/CSS is basic; enough to know some of the terminologies and not a whole lot else. The one piece of information that I was aware of is HTML/CSS boilerplates.

Boilerplates, or skeletons as they are sometimes called, provide the basic foundation for developing and designing a website. Since all HTML pages have a required page structure, boilerplates include this structure as well as other common features that help speed along the website development process. These boilerplates usually include a CSS file (cascading style sheet) that normalizes your webpage to help keep it consistent between web browsers (typically called normalize.css).

Each web browser has the potential to style web pages differently. Including a normalized CSS file will help keep your website looking the same across all browsers. Speaking of web browsers, boilerplates will also include functionality that will make your website mobile-ready. The key is to be able to have your webpage viewed easily across any device; whether it is a cell phone, tablet, or full desktop computer.

Like everything up to this point, choosing a boilerplate required some decisions. For myself, there were two important factors. First, the boilerplate could not be large in size. Boilerplates have a tendency to be quite large depending on the features that are packaged in them. Secondly, the boilerplate had to be user-friendly. At the end of the day, all I needed was the bare minimum. Enter Skeleton.

Skeleton is billed as ‘a dead simple, responsive boilerplate’, which is no joke. The entire download is no more than 26KB. Skeleton also includes some nice, simple stylized features like buttons and forms if you choose to use them. A criticism that I have seen online is that it is not as consistently updated as other boilerplates and not as feature rich, but neither of that mattered for me. As my website is largely driven by photos and text, there isn’t much need for any additional overhead by way of user-experience functionality. Simple is all I needed and Skeleton more than fits that bill. Highly recommended.

Photo Gallery

I knew that putting together a photo gallery wouldn’t be as straightforward if I had opted to use a CMS like WordPress. Since this website is more hands-on, I knew that a photo gallery would require a little more work. I wanted to minimize not only the amount of potential work/coding but also keep with my theme of simple and lightweight. It took a solid evening but I came across the photo gallery utility called Fresco. It is fast, easy to implement, and provides plenty of customizability to suit most photo gallery needs.

Part 3

Design Philosophy

Although design should probably be the first thing that you consider and sketch out rather than the last, it is Part 3 in this series for reason. From using Squarespace for a number of years, I kept mental notes about things that I wish I could have changed but could not because of the limitations of the templates.

The Squarespace templates are nicely designed that generally follow many of today’s most popular web design trends: screen spanning images, large, blocky text and fading transitions between elements. While pleasing, they were personally irritating. I had a long-standing mental vision of how I would arrange my own website, so I did not have to spend much time sketching out the details. My ultimate design philosophy for this website was pretty simple; lightweight and fast, clean and neat.

Layout

I chose to go with a pretty standard layout. The container (the part of the website that you are reading now) is 960 pixels wide and centered. Using Skeleton as my boilerplate made this simple as this is the default layout. This 960-pixel working space can be further divided into columns to help support arranging elements on the page. For example, my Home, Blog, and About pages use 100% width of the container (all 960 pixels), or one column.

My photo galleries, on the other hand, are split into thirds so that I can have my photos arranged in a three-column grid.

A single page can have columns of various widths to help accommodate multiple layouts depending on content. Best of all everything is kept responsive so content will scale proportionally.

Fonts

Choosing the right font is a big deal. I would say it is up there as one of the most important decisions you will have to make design-wise. It does not help that there are thousands of fonts available. A few key considerations will help considerably narrow the field of choices. Regardless of whether a font will be used for a heading or body text, you want a font that will be easily readable and stay consistent between browsers. Thankfully, repositories like Google Fonts offer dynamically hosted fonts that will display regardless of platform and browser.

Another plus one for Google Fonts is that they are free. Not all fonts are free and often require a license to be purchased. As convenient as Google Fonts is, my thoughts are is that you are better off choosing a web safe font.

A web safe font will typically display regardless of what browser you are using. I wanted to use a sans-serif font and Arial is a web-safe font available for display on all browsers. Since Arial is considered a system font I did not have to rely on Google Fonts to serve the styling. Arial is used for both the body text and the headings of this website. While Arial may not have a lot of design wow-factor, it is one of those fonts that goes with almost anything; kind of like the neutral color equivalent of fonts.

Photos

I realize that high-resolution, screen-filling photos are hugely popular on websites, but this can also equal slower rendering and possibly expensive downloads. Google has several excellent resources that cover image optimization that are well worth the read. They can be found here and here. The images on this website average a size of 200KB, which strikes a nice balance between size, quality, and speed.

There are a number of programs that can help compress JPEGS without sacrificing too much in terms of quality. Some of them include online utilities such as TinyJPG and Compressor as well as desktop programs such as imageOptim (Mac only. I’m not too familiar with what options are available for Window users). While I have used these, Adobe Photoshop covers all of my image compression needs. If you already have a Creative Cloud account then there is little need to add anything else to your workflow. If not, the utilities mentioned above will work well.

Part 4

Workflow

I will use this last part to cover the workflow and applications that I use to maintain and update this website. There are numerous alternatives to what I will cover below but, for now, this is my current setup (may change depending on circumstances. If so, updates will be posted here).

HTML/CSS Editor

There are numerous HTML/CSS editors available and I don’t really have any specific advice to give for one over another. Unless you are a hardcore developer with very specific needs, there is little reason to purchase HTML/CSS editing software. The only advice I do have is to find one that has robust HTML/CSS autocomplete and Live Preview.

Autocomplete HTML/CSS is extremely useful and helps take the guesswork out of coding while Live Preview lets you view your webpage as if it were live and up on the web. This is useful when reviewing the content of a page before you upload it to your website. I chose to go with Brackets. Mostly because of its simplicity and uncomplicated feature set, as well as the inclusion of autocomplete HTML/CSS and Live Preview. It also allows for extensions of which there are many. I use Beautify which helps organize the HTML/CSS code in a more readable manner.

FTP Client

Since this is a static website, that means that I replace the old HTML files with the new HTML files along with uploading other website content. While hosting services offer online portals to access your FTP site, the easiest route is via an FTP client. FTP clients allow you to store your log-in credentials for later use so once logged in, you can simply reconnect. Like HTML/CSS editors there are many FTP clients to choose from, but I use Filezilla, which is available for both Mac and Windows. It is free and gets the job done.

Word Processing

For word processing, I will use both TextEdit and Brackets. TextEdit (the Mac equivalent of Notepad) is mainly to write the rough draft. Once I have the rough draft complete, I will copy that into Brackets to arrange into sections on the HTML page and then complete the final review. Live Preview is especially useful here as I’m able to get a better sense of the page layout before that page is made live.

Conclusion

In light of the many options available to individuals who want to create and maintain a website, this whole effort seems a little archaic. I am not leveraging any of the automated features of a more robust framework through a CMS or any server-side distribution of pages. On the other hand, though, I have found that I highly enjoy this hands-on management of my content. It is certainly not for everyone, but I would not rule all of this out completely.

About the author: Matthew Nordhagen is a hobbyist photographer based in Alexandria, Virginia. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author. You can find more of his work on his website. This article was also published here and here.

Source: https://petapixel.com/2018/08/09/i-gave-up-on-squarespace-and-built-my-own-photo-website-from-scratch/

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katiezstorey93 · 6 years

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from network 8 http://www.nsorchidsociety.com/a-collection-of-people-wordpress-themes-and-20-best-society/

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nsorchidsociety · 6 years

Text

A Collection of People WordPress Themes and 20 Best Society

Don’t forget that with the distinctive promocode wpfreeware15 you are able to purchase any TemplateMonster’s template or theme with 15% reduction!

TheBallot — Deadly Candidate WordPress Theme

Maisha — Charity & Donation WordPress Theme

AppyTimes — Summer Camp WordPress Theme

Maryville — City Portal WordPress Theme

Final Trail — Funeral Services WordPress Theme

Cared4 — Medical and Senior Care WordPress Theme

The Legal Way — Lawyer & Attorney Services WordPress Theme

Akhamada — Deadly Center WordPress Theme

Guillermo — Personal & Business Coach WordPress Theme

Nutrie — Health Life Coach WordPress Theme

Fastlek — Jogging and Coaching Club WordPress Theme

Duncan — Specialist Lawyer Services WordPress Theme

LifeHealth — Personal Life Coach WordPress Theme

LegalAlien — Immigration Lawyer Services WordPress Theme

Callista — Charity and Contribution Non-Profit Organization WordPress Theme

ArmyAcademy — Military School WordPress Theme

Mike Bridge — Private Homework WordPress Theme

BitNews- City Magazine & News Portal WordPress Theme

SiliconBlogger — Clean Private Blog WordPress Theme

Ashton — Funeral Services WordPress Theme

from Society http://www.nsorchidsociety.com/a-collection-of-people-wordpress-themes-and-20-best-society/

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sparklyzephirdesign-blog · 7 years

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Louis Vuitton’s Creative Director Nicolas Ghesquière Looks to the Past to See the Future

By Nick Vogelson

The power of image, from an in-person first impression to an Instagram post shared with millions of followers, has now been commercialized and politicized, for better or for worse. The role that fashion plays in this is an increasingly important one, something of which Louis Vuitton’s artistic director Nicolas Ghesquière is ever mindful. Empowering legions of women with his designs, Ghesquière continually looks for ways to reinvent and reinvigorate, often turning to the hypothetical utopian environments of science fiction and video games as inspiration. Days before his Spring/Summer 2018 show in Paris, Ghesquière spoke with Document’s editor-in-chief, Nick Vogelson, to debate the question that is on everyone’s mind given the current political climate: where are we headed?

Nick Vogelson—Your references are very often drawn from science fiction, for instance the film "2046" to the anime series "Evangelion"—why do you gravitate towards the genre?

Nicolas Ghesquière—It’s the strange and unknown that fascinates me, whether it’s cult futurism or underground sci-fi. I’m always attracted to new territories, I don’t know why.

Nick—Would you say that science fiction particularly aids your creative process as a designer? What else inspires you?

Nicolas—It’s the dynamic between curiosity and seduction. The digital world is so precise, it’s the world of the zoom. We can enlarge everything, all must be perfect, and nothing is hidden, which is perfectly linked to my thinking. I’m also very inspired by other forms of art and design, and often circle back to brutalism or the work of Japanese designer Shiro Kuramata, for example.

Nick—Your cruise show was held at an I.M. Pei building, and you’ve previously held shows against the backdrop of structures by Lautner and Pierre Paulin. Would you say that architecture is also an important inspiration to you? Or is it more, as you mentioned, an interest in new environments?

Nicolas—I.M. Pei’s Miho Museum inspired me right away. After the desert and Palm Springs, the ocean and Rio, I wanted to introduce people to another landscape, to immerse them in a sea of green. With the Miho Museum we are continuing an architectural voyage that suits the maison Louis Vuitton perfectly. For our 2018 Cruise fashion show we were transported into a tangled web of nature, geographical greatness and a unique architectural vision. The spirit of travel and the discovery of extraordinary natural environments, architectural masterpieces and art are intrinsically connected to Louis Vuitton.

“Can people really absorb that much information in three months? Luxury needs time to develop, and it needs time to produce. I think waiting is something of a luxury now.”

Tweet Me

Nick—Understanding what is, or isn’t, intrinsic to a brand’s DNA seems like a particularly important problem facing contemporary designers, with more and more heritage brands being revived. You’ve worked at Balenciaga and now Louis Vuitton, which are both legacy labels. In your opinion, how much of a house’s DNA should be carried forward in each collection?

Nicolas—At Balenciaga, it was a transmission; I was carrying on for someone. I probably underestimated how difficult it was. You just go for it at age 25, and the context allowed my determination to work. I am proud of it. I take responsibility for having put Balenciaga back on the map, with integrity. I understand that fashion, in essence, is about pushing forward, while not breaking away from the initial mold of a brand. There are many designers that succumb to a wistful affection for the past, and stay there. Then there are others that are constantly looking for the next best thing, and they forget about their core customer. To be truly successful, one has to look back to move forward. The exploration has to go a bit further; there’s still a certain respect for the patrimony, but also of technology, which is what I like.

Nick—What are some of the challenges you’ve faced with fusing heritage together with your own aesthetic?

Nicolas—It was quite confusing, to be honest with you. I got lost in that. Sometimes I thought the company was me, it was mine, it was not a heritage, we were the same object, we shared the same DNA. Then I realized I was wrong—it’s a marriage that can fail and that you have to work at to keep interesting and fresh. I feel very confident now in my current role at Louis Vuitton. It is an iconic house, rich in heritage and with a strong sense of patrimony, and today I’m still learning more and more about the house through the archives. What I like in this Maison is that my role is in constant evolution through the wealth of heritage and history which allows me to further my discovery and creativity. The teams at Louis Vuitton are very professional with a strong knowledge of savoir-faire which is very stimulating for product development. The Maison’s particularity is to always seek innovation, which I feel strongly about. For instance, when I designed the Petite Malle three years ago, I took an iconic symbol of Louis Vuitton, the trunk, a sacred piece of luggage steeped in years of travel and history and I turned it into a handbag. I put a modern twist on a heritage item and gave it new use and life to the new generation. The same could be said for the Eye-Trunk for iPhones which have been highly successful and was such a simple idea, yet no one had ever thought to develop it before. It reproduces the finishings and intricate details found on an original Louis Vuitton trunk, just like the Petite Malle. And above all it represents a new use of the trunk for the evolving fashions and evolving customers.

Nick—What about when it comes to silhouettes? Giving leather goods or other products new uses or applications is one thing, but evolving silhouettes must be an incredibly difficult task.

Nicolas—The most defining feature of the female silhouette in the 21st century so far has been in the way a woman wears sports clothes and mixes them with much more elaborate designer pieces. But this shift in the way women dress was driven by women themselves. Not by designers. And I think what’s most interesting is how we [as designers] react to that. It’s about movement also. I’m not saying people didn’t move before, but today the contours of the body have changed, there’s a new body consciousness about the way women dress.

Nicolas Ghesquière photographed by Zoe Ghertner in New York City.

Nick—Would you say then that technology is the driving force in changing silhouettes? Sportswear’s increased popularity can certainly be attributed to fabric innovation.

Nicolas—I’m fascinated by the way artificial fibers have become ennobled. A few years ago, if you were a Japanese designer you could use polyester in your collection and people would love it. If you were a European or an American designer, it would be seen as cheap. Today, textile development has become so strong and inventive that the integration of those fibers mixed with natural materials makes intelligent fabrics. I think today women dress for themselves. That’s changed a lot. They dress for men, but they dress for themselves first. This is why I think there is a greater desire for high fashion now, and a willingness to take more risks. It’s a proud moment for fashion.

Nick—Your work has always been synonymous with strong women. Your muses include Jennifer Connelly, Alicia Vikander, Michelle Williams, to name a few. What are the qualities you look for in a muse?

Nicolas—These women are not scared. They don’t just want to wear a boring dress on every red carpet. I look for people whose daring permits me to take the energy and the craft of old couture and make it new. A woman may be defined in ways that are unlimited, infinite, and sometimes paradoxical. What is fascinating about women is the way they can vary their weapons of seduction, the way they can adopt different styles yet make them reflect their personality. I like it when a woman interprets my designs, makes them hers, and even surprises me by the way she wears them. I like it when my designs become a part of a woman’s life and no longer belong to me. My viewpoint of femininity is above all that of a designer, and more specifically a male designer. But what I am constantly looking for, and what I am always happy to achieve, is when a certain idea I have of femininity corresponds to what a woman wants. That’s when everything comes together. There is nothing more inspiring for a designer than to have the feeling that you have found an answer.

Nick—And it’s much easier for a designer to be able to gauge the needs of their clients now, with social media providing instant feedback, as well as a glimpse into how your designs are being worn day to day.

Nicolas—I love social media. I love Instagram a lot, and I like Twitter a lot too. Instagram is very playful and it’s a wonderful tool for a designer. Louis Vuitton asked me to take over the Instagram account for a week. It was a little daunting when they first gave me the phone—the responsibility of 3.1 million followers and what to show, what not to show, what to suggest? I don’t like to filter and love that I can speak to many people very directly. The traditional barriers between designer and public have been broken and we now communicate freely and informally.

“The more you multiply an event, the less exceptional it is. It takes time to develop a proper collection, with commercial pieces and interesting pieces, it’s not something you can do in a week.”

Tweet Me

Nick—What do you think of shows transitioning from basic presentations to Instagrammable environments?

Nicolas—I love that the digital world and digital tools such as Instagram are inclusive. Digital communication allows us to show an aspect of what we do. And it’s enriching. I believe that people know what they want and know what they like, and the digital world is exciting and creates curiosity in people. But it’s also confused them. People see things on Instagram they can’t have right away—the digital platform is so immediate. As an industry, we have to make people understand that they have to wait for things they see on a screen. The see-now-buy-now model has had questionable results and that, again, is related to digital. Has it raised a new interpretation of luxury? Maybe. In the future, maybe the people who consume extreme luxury will be the people who understand that it needs time, while some of the collection will be more accessible and produced quicker. But it’s very, very complicated.

Nick—How do you handle the challenges of being a fashion designer today and creating numerous collections season after season, while also keeping up with the quickened pace that digital has created? For example, Gaultier bowed out of ready-to-wear in 2013 to concentrate on couture because he felt there are too many seasons in the fashion calendar. I think everyone agrees that the fashion week model needs to change. But where should it go?

Nicolas—The more you multiply an event, the less exceptional it is. It takes time to develop a proper collection, with commercial pieces and interesting pieces, it’s not something you can do in a week. We’ve made so many jumps in the last decade already. I used to do a collection every six months and today we have only two or three months. I was working simultaneously on collections; I had about six weeks in between to finish Cruise. Can people really absorb that many clothes and that much information in three months? For certain markets maybe, probably a more casual market or a market that is more immediate in its consumption but luxury needs time to develop, and it needs time to produce. I think waiting is something of a luxury now.

Nick—Who are the designers that excite you?

Nicolas—To pick young designers of today, I would highly recognize the work of Julien Dossena and will strongly support Natacha Ramsay-Levi with her new career as creative director of Chloé. I’m very excited to see her new collection during Paris Fashion Week.

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Nick—As publishing houses continue to look for new ways to stay innovative in the digital age, where do you think the fashion magazine is headed?

Nicolas—I hope paper magazines will never die, there is a luxury and reverence in touching and turning pages. Certain magazines are now considered as coffee table books. It will always be important to have strong content and the chance to discover fashion stories, which is not always the case in digital platforms where you often only see one beautiful image.

Nick—Both in terms of the design process and with print media, it’s so important to have the option to reflect before responding or vocalizing a viewpoint. Even more so now that the world is in such a chaotic time, with Trump, Brexit, rampant terrorism, migration, environmental catastrophes and more. How are these issues reflected in your collections?

Nicolas—The notion of frontiers is of fundamental importance. Ever since its founding in 1854, Louis Vuitton has also pushed the boundaries of know-how, innovation, design and travel. But what do frontiers mean in a globalized world that nonetheless seeks to redefine its boundaries? Today, when some people make us want to believe that the frontiers are stronger and stronger, I think fashion has always broken those frontiers. Especially in Paris—it’s the land of foreign designers; it’s so multicultural. Being in the Louvre where everyone is welcome, where there is no limit of culture, of nationality, is a strong message. Fear is the enemy. Fear of outsiders is the worst thing. Fear of the ‘other’ is what much of the world is saying today, but ... from the street, people are saying, ‘The world has to be mixed.’ A generation is saying that. I trust the yo

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elevatorupcompany · 7 years

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Design to 9th Graders

A few months back, a friend reached out and asked me to Skype with her ninth grade art classes about my job as a designer. I didn’t prepare myself. I figured, I do this for a living, how hard will it be to explain? To prepare for our Skype chat, my friend asked her students from both classes to write their questions on a whiteboard.The questions ranged from smile-inducing curiosities such as, the size of my desk to plenty of questions around how to find inspiration and how long projects took. As I looked at the questions and stared at the group of students in front of me, I realized answering their questions about inspiration or desk size would satisfy their curiosities, but it wouldn’t educate them on the breadth of what it means to be a designer or the amount of paths a career in design might take you.

After the realization that I did not do justice to explaining my job the first go round, I wanted to find a way to better articulate myself. I was inspired by a bit I read on explaining graphic design to 4th graders and began to think through a loose framework for how to talk with young creatives:

What is design and how it applies to everything

A high level look at the array of careers that exist in the creative field

Advice on pursuing a designer lifestyle

What is design?

In the same notion of teaching design to 4th graders, similar lessons in the basics apply to all ages. It’s important to understand what “design” means, regardless of context. At the core, design is often defined as a tool for understanding, communicating, and problem solving. Making the complex digestible. In the article previously referenced, he describes design to 4th graders as:

“Design is about making something easy to use, or easy to understand.”

It's important to find an example of design and tie it to something to which 9th graders can relate: Social media platforms. Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, were all created by a team containing all different types of designers, people who made decisions to make the apps easier and enjoyable to use. Industrial designers planned, designed, and tested snowboards so they can ride through deep snow or if you live in Michigan—cruise on ice. Graphic designers, illustrators and photographers came together to make the graphics on the board. The clothes you’re wearing—a team of fashion, textile, product, and graphic designers, all came together to decide how they’d look, how they’d fit and how they’d be made and produced.

This could go on for days, all coming back to the (sometimes overwhelming) notion that indeed, we live in a world that is designed and shaped by humans.

Opportunities to work creatively

Not always, but often, designers are associated with making cool resumes, killer business cards, and heaps of logos. While this is true for plenty of designers, it barely scratches the surface of what designers are doing now. If we are being broad, even within the term of graphic design, there are many different types of designers with focuses unknown to aspiring creatives.

Relate the variation in design careers like you would surgeons. There are general surgeons, neurological surgeons, plastic surgeons, the list goes on. They all went to med school, had a similar learning foundation, but have branched off into areas of speciality that suit their passion. With slightly less blood and guts, apply this idea to graphic design as a career, knowing the word, “graphic,” will be changed out depending on the work.

Factors to consider in choosing a creative path

Type of work The two high level distinctions of designers are typically print and digital designers.

Print designers work in a much more tangible world than web designers. Their work uses the building blocks of design such as typography and color theory to communicate to different audiences. The work done by print designers tend to have deliverables: posters, business systems, reports, billboards, invites, the list goes on. Often the work of a print designer overlaps with digital designers, creating web assets such as advertising for the web. They tend to work more in branding and often have a more keen eye for typographic details than digital designers. Print designers have a fine eye for print quality and paper quality and use texture and structure to better tell their story.

In short: Print designers use creative solutions and an understanding of design principles to efficiently communicate, tell stories, and solve problems.

Digital designers come with all different titles: user interface designer, user experience designer, interactive designer, product designer, the list goes on. For sake of a 9th grade audience and brevity, let’s talk about what it means to be a designer who works in the digital sphere. Digital designers work in a world of lots of moving pieces and the work itself is a living, ever changing, piece. Digital designers are designing interfaces for apps, websites, and software, but more so, they are making product decisions. They're ultimately designing what someone will experience and how those interfaces interact with the user and the overall product.The work of a digital designer often starts far before anything hits the screen. Wireframes, sitemaps, and user research are all tasks digital designers do to ensure their work is validated.

In short: Digital designers use their understanding of the user and the client’s business to create an experience that solves a problem and / or helps users accomplish their goals.

____

Type of environment Whether you're part of a small agency, a massive corporation as an in-house designer, or a freelance designer, your role and responsibilities will vary. A small agency and a freelancer will have more involvement at every stage of the process whereas a designer at a larger company may have a more targeted role. There is no right or wrong and trying out different types of work environments will help shape your preferred work style.

____

Different roles of designers This will come in time as you develop your skill-set and know what drives you as a designer. Some designers transition from being hands-on in production to being the lead in setting the direction and overseeing a team of designers. Some designers will focus on a company’s brand alone. Some designers design very little but focus on setting strategic direction and architecture of a product. If you can’t tell by now, as a designer, the world is truly your oyster.

____

Working creatively in another role You don’t have to be a designer to work in a creative environment. A team has many roles that are involved in the creative process. I’ve worked on teams with copywriters that use language to craft the story and build a brand. I’ve been alongside UX strategists who are integral to building and informing the foundation for the entirety of a project. Product managers make it happen by finding creative ways to keep everyone and everything aligned on a project. There are too many roles to name (and celebrate!). The short of it, if you’re inspired by design and being in a creative atmosphere, don’t feel discouraged if you don’t consider yourself creative.

The heart of being a designer

Beyond the complicated web of types of designers, varying environments and roles of a designer, there are a few points that resonate with me every day as a designer.

Know a career in design means you’re always learning. It’s fast paced and you’re going to learn a lot. Yes, you’ll learn a lot about design and bettering your practice, but you’re going to learn a lot about every client you work with and the industry it pertains to. It’s a part of your job as a designer to fully understand the user and the industry and to empathize with whoever your designs will impact.

Work where you’re happy and know you’re never alone. Good team dynamics are the real deal. Being able to jive, communicate, and share ideas freely makes for better days and far better outcomes. Collaboration and diversity of perspectives and skill-sets are what make for meaningful results. From college to the workforce, you realize you’re never alone on a project. You’re no longer responsible for every piece of the puzzle. In fact, you’re working with people who are better than you in different areas. It’s their skill-sets that heighten and make what you do validated and possible.

Learn to step away. The creative process isn’t science or clockwork and accessing the creative part of your brain can’t be forced. Luckily, this is celebrated in most creative environments, but it takes self awareness, control, and intention to step back and to get out. There is power in stepping away from it all. Many great ideas and moments of “ah-ha!” are born out of the mind’s stillness. In an article based off the book, Too Fast To Think, the author talks about our society's growing obsession with our devices and the distraction of it all. The more we’re taking in the more our brain starts to filter, for better or worse. The more our brain is busy filtering and taking in the content, the less time our subconscious has to solve problems and bubble up with epiphanies. Learning to be aware and take control over these distractions is important. Make time for yourself to be still, relax, and let your brain do what it does best. From the author of Too Fast To Think:

“Stop staring at your phone and stare into space. You might be hit with something far more valuable”.

Armed with a better framework in mind, I’m filled with excitement for the next time I chat with young students looking to be creative for a living. To give them a better idea of what design means and broaden their awareness for design that is all around them. It wasn’t until college I understood the breadth of opportunities in a creative career, and it wasn't until I was working as a professional that I understood what it meant to be part of a team. With much to learn, much to practice, and much to celebrate, it’s an ever interesting career to have and to share.

~Emily, Designer

#designcareers #students #teaching #emily

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euro3plast-fr · 7 years

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How and why you should use Email Marketing Automation

Marketing Automation was one of the top trends of 2016, here is how to use it in 2017

Anyone who has run an online business, even for a short time, knows that digital marketing offers a wide range of possibilities. A survey of marketers by Regalix tells us that website and email are the most effective channel of online communication. For every retailer email is the primary tool for bolstering sales, however sending generic newsletter campaigns tends to be less and less appealing to subscribers. FreshMail’s research shows that highly personalized campaigns achieve better results and that’s our subject here.

It’s important to get to know the real needs of your customers and to send interesting, engaging content based on advanced personalization and optimization of email marketing campaigns. The potential of Email Marketing Automation (EMA) helps marketers send effective messages suited to the needs of subscribers in a defined contact or communications strategy like a welcome or nurture sequence. With offers tailored specifically to their interests the achievement of your sales goals is just a matter of defining them and allocating the resource to set them up and optimise.

Download Expert Member resource – Email sequence template

Quickly define a contact strategy for a welcome or nurture sequence to help brief designers or copywriters.

Access the Email sequence contact strategy template

What is Email Marketing Automation?

Email Marketing Automation is an ecosystem of tools and mechanisms that helps to automate ongoing conversations with customers and maintains delivery of a high degree of personalized content. This allows you to make sure that subscribers receive tailored content they simply want to read.

An important element of EMA is integration of your email marketing system and website with Google Analytics or other proprietary tracking analytics system. For the purpose of this article we will be using the free to use Google Analytics as a working example. This enables marketers to gather information about subscribers beyond the standard metrics that are part of email campaigns. All you have to do after integration is set specific goals in Google Analytics. While monitoring traffic to your site, Google Analytics pairs the email addresses with cookies in the subscriber’s browser. Later, the data of identified recipients is available in the email marketing platform. The information collected this way allows you to create more effective campaigns that are targeted on the basis of user behavior and the preferences of individual customers.

Campaigns based on GA data can be sent using specially designed autoresponders or a dedicated mailing prepared specifically for subscribers who have completed an established goal or set of goals. Both methods are highly effective in supporting the sales process. You can achieve a similar effect through the use of tracking codes - small pieces of code script that you place on an internet page. This enables you to see whether a particular page has been visited and helps to evaluate the conversion rate of email marketing campaigns.

Using data from email marketing campaigns, user behavior on web pages and individual purchase histories, marketers can plan fully personalized communication. They can identify groups of subscribers with common characteristics and target them with messages that appeal directly to their needs. Functionalities of EMA allows you to run a highly effective lead nurturing programs. You can, for example, design a newsletter with a special structure that contains one part with the main offer for all subscribers. Also an additional offer with dynamic content, which is entered automatically according to sales data ascribed to particular personas and email addresses. This way you can be certain that every newsletter contains something interesting for a particular recipient.

How to use Email Marketing Automation:

Campaigns based on behavioral data from your website

Why do visitors spend time on your website? It’s not always to buy something or to contact a company. They often simply want to see what’s new, gather information about a products and services or check a price. The lead nurturing process of turning interest into a sale can last for a few days or many months. Information gained from the use of data from Google Analytics and tracking codes lets marketers craft targeted, tailored messages that match the interests and page view history of individual customers. This makes cross-selling and up-selling much more effective.

Let’s say, for example, that particular subscriber visits your page from time to time to look at televisions, although he didn't buy anything yet. You can send him a special campaign that specifically promotes televisions at a discounted price, larger televisions at the same price, top seller from this category or highly recommended models. You can employ the same strategy in your regular newsletter as well by dedicating part of it to dynamic content that features discounts or rebates on televisions. Remember to carefully monitor your results and to stop this kind of targeted promotion after a conversion.

Autoresponders and automatic follow-ups

One of the best and simplest examples of EMA is the creation of welcoming emails. This is a cycle of messages sent at different time intervals to new subscribers to your newsletter. The goal of the campaign is to encourage recipients to complete their first purchase with unique, dedicated offers. This kind of gradual process not only leads to conversions but allows you to gain knowledge about the preferences of your customers.

Abandoned carts

Abandoned carts are something we all have to deal with and there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Each customer is different therefore you have to create personalized, automatic reminder messages that can later be expanded into a sequence of messages. Since price is often the issue with abandoned carts, some kind of discount can be an effective solution for enticing a customer to complete transactions. You can use a static code for all customers or dynamic codes to generate one for each customer.

Product recommendations

Using behavioral data from your website, you can easily create 4 kinds of personalized messages -

“Customers who purchased this product also purchased these products.” Remember not to display products that have already been purchased by the customer.

“Other customers bought this product together with….”. This allows you present related products.

“The most frequently purchased products in this catergory are…”. Show what’s popular and in demand.

Messages dedicated to abandoned carts and recommended products. These are based on products that have been discarded. Customers are presented with top products from the abandoned category together with the product they left behind.

Such recommendations can also be used in cyclical newsletters as a second primary message. It’s important to remember to rotate your dynamic content so that recipients don’t feel that they receive the same offers over and over.

Who should use EMA?

Every business with an online presence needs to automate their promotions with highly personalized product offers to match individual customer profiles. This is absolutely essential to succeed in online sales. You can only reach your sales potential by sending the right offer to the right person at the right time. Regular email marketing lets you personalize your message and your offer to a fairly high degree but using behavioral data about the activities of users on your site makes more precise customer profiles possible and drives conversion rates even higher.

The sales process is multidimensional and implementing as many of the tools and strategies listed here as possible in order to maximize the flow of information between them is ideal. Good email marketing systems offer dedicated integrations with CRM platforms and ecommerce by sharing API codes. Apart from these integrations, you can also sync multiple apps via Zapier through an easy drag and drop interface that doesn’t require advanced technical knowledge.

Thanks to Pawel Sala for sharing their advice and opinions in this post. He is Co-founder and Managing Director of FreshMail, a platform specializing in complex service delivery in email marketing. Also an Email marketing expert, trainer, manager and consultant. He is the author of multiple publications as well as a lecturer at a number of academic institutions.

from Blog – Smart Insights http://www.smartinsights.com/lead-generation/marketing-automation/use-email-marketing-automation/

#Blog – Smart Insights

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unixcommerce · 6 years

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The Art Of Crafting More Powerful Content: 5 Top Tactics from the Experts

Crafting Powerful Content

Tactic 1: Incorporate Appropriate, Effective, and Engaging Visuals

Tactic 2: Make it Easy For Readers to Share Your Content in the Ways They Prefer

Tactic 3: Harness the Power of Gamification

Tactic 4: Run With Traditional On-Page SEO Tactics

Tactic 5: Creativity Is Key For Making Best-Answer Content That Stands Out

Tying It All Together — What Next?

Pubcon Las Vegas 2018 on October 17 in Las Vegas — “5 Secrets to Growing Influence in Marketing”

ITSMA Marketing Vision 2018 on November 7 in Cambridge, MA. — “Influence the Influencers – How B2B technology companies can build brand awareness with content and influence ”

MarketingProfs 2018 Marketing B2B Forum on November 15 in San Francisco — “The Confluence Equation: How Content & Influencers Drive B2B Marketing Success”

The post The Art Of Crafting More Powerful Content: 5 Top Tactics from the Experts appeared first on Online Marketing Blog – TopRank®.

http://www.toprankblog.com/

The post The Art Of Crafting More Powerful Content: 5 Top Tactics from the Experts appeared first on Unix Commerce.

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