Last Thursday my daughter turned two. We took her to the Washington Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust to see the birds, because she loves birds. I thought she’d love the Flamingos in particular because they are pink (she likes pink), but they were really boring. They just stood about looking prawn-coloured and hauty, not living up to our expectations. They weren’t coming to see us or to sing happy birthday to our little girl, and actually she would have had a job seeing them in the first place as the grass bank sloped upwards. The Hawaiian Geese were much more interesting, eating out of our hands and following us about, very friendly with really interesting feathers. They were worth going for alone.
Is your business a Flamingo or a Goose?
Does your business look interesting but fail to deliver? Or is your business attractive (but not in a garish way), friendly and worth talking about later? Is your business a disappointment or a breath of fresh air? Do people recommend you or recommend against you? (OK, the Flamingos weren’t THAT bad!) My job is to ensure that a business looks fantastic, to create materials which effectively communicate the message and values of the business whilst appealing to the target audience. I can’t make the business fantastic, that’s out of my hands*.
If you have beautiful communication materials, what are you doing to make sure that your business is just as fantastic as they are?
*I’ve not felt that a client wasn’t up to scratch yet.
My mum’s just bought a fantastic book as a Christmas present for someone (someone who I hope doesn’t read this blog!) Naturally, I had to pinch it as the pictures are great! It’s called ‘Painting the Toon’ by John Coatsworth.
John Coatsworth grew up in Byker and started drawing on huge sheets of card from the Domestos factory. He worked at Turners, a photographers, learning about colour, before taking a full time art foundation course. When he’d finished there he worked at the Hancock Museum designing displays before moving on to work at the Evening Chronicle. Then he started to paint full time, painting soldiers and ships. In 1997 he developed his style, known as curvation and these are the images which form the bulk of this book. These are some of my favourites:
When the Tall Ships took place I went down very early in the morning to sketch the ships one day before work – I didn’t do as well as this.
Doesn’t this take you right there? Won’t be long ’til I’m drinking mulled wine with my Dad at the Christmas market while we do his Christmas shopping for my Mam!
Did you know that your profile as you know it is very soon to change to a new timeline? This is VERY different and could take some getting used to. To help you out, Whiteacres Design and Chatterbox Social Media have created a comprehensive social media workshop targeted at regular Facebook users who wish to get bang up to speed with all the new features and functionality of Facebook’s new timeline.
At the end of this interactive workshop, attendees will have gained an in-depth understanding of how to use elements such as the new ‘subscribe button’ ‘audience selector’ ‘smart lists’ ‘ticker feed’ and ‘activity log’ features together with the roles they play and the relevance these have to business pages, as well as privacy, which is a MASSIVE subject and definitely worth getting right.
The workshop will hold a maximum of 14 people. If you have any questions please email me: amy@whiteacresdesign.co.uk or call: 07731 582 379
The workshop costs £25 (inc VAT) and includes refreshments and personal copies of all the presentation.
You can book tickets here. It’d be great to see you there!