Last week I was ‘papped’ for the street style section of a local newspaper.  Yes, it’s a paper that I work for but I’m not letting that bring me down.  It turns out that in my alternating dress styles of wearing exclusively navy clothing or a mish-mash of patterns I’ve accidentally managed to be ‘on trend’.  Go me.

This ‘ensemble’ is mostly me wearing my favourite items of clothing with no regard for co-ordination or taste.  The jacket is the lightest, warmest and most expensive thing I own (but it still cost less than one hundred so don’t be hating).  It’s supposed to be ski-wear but it’s so cold and wet in Bristol I think I can get away with it.  The jumper has stags printed all over it.  I clearly have a problem.

photo edited to protect identity/embarrassment

That’s what makes John Willshire‘s quotation (the picture to the right now) so great.  Money and sales have always been at the heart of advertising, sometimes explicitly, sometimes not quite so much.  It may be called brand loyalty but companies essentially want sales, and repeat sales at that.  It’s the ‘making people want thing’ part and it was kind of a big deal.  Until now.

Luckily, brands are getting smarter.  And that’s because consumer’s are smarter too.  We’ve been advertised to for so long that once we feel even vaguely targeted  our defence goes up and our interest goes down.  That’s why brands (well some of them) have clocked on to making things people want (look up this time). The aim? To create a presence to and connection with consumers.  If there’s a sale from that, well, great.

I wanted to keep this short, so I’ll stop.  I’ve inevitably not done the quotation justice but it’s the best I can do for now.  More content to follow soon along a similar vein on branded utility (aren’t buzzwords fun?).

Thanks University.

Thanks to my family for the sick gifts and thanks to the Sun for providing the background paper.

What I like the most about Timeline is how graphic and visual it is.  The timeline itself is aesthetically appealing and the staggered posting is really quite beautiful.  I particularly like that favouriting photo uploads increases their size so if you’re a visually minded person you can really ramp up the impact.  Even more exciting is the new cover photo feature.  I’ve seen some amazingly designed cover photo/profile picture interactions online and I’m keen to try something like that myself.  I currently have a quickly knocked together picture of my mariachi self playing along to a cover photo music score.  With any luck I’ll have something more interesting, and professional, soon.

My only complaint, and it’s a fairly general one, is that they’re just too much going on.  At standard settings there’s already an information overload.  This is a particular problem as fairly unimportant information becomes quite a large block, and that’s a literal block, right at the top of your timeline.  The current setup also makes it easier than ever for people to dredge up embarrassing status updates and pictures that you’d rather forget. 

Once you go into the customisable options it becomes even more OTT.  You can add events to your timeline to update, and backdate, your Timeline.  These include such life changers such as ‘new tattoo/piercing’ or ‘new pet’ which completely undermine the importance of ‘real’ events like the ‘death of a loved one’ though god knows why you’d want to make that part of your newsfeed.  It’s already embarrassing enough when your relationship status changes to ‘single’.

EDIT: just updating.  much happier with this.  self-deprecation ftw

In order to embarrass myself to the fullest extent the items are (from top left to bottom right):

- my birth tag (?) – I have no idea what that should really be called but I’m going to call it my birth tag.

- Pokemon Blue – nuff said

-  a badly extracted print ad about Venice – pretty isn’t it?

- Teach Yourself German – I can’t speak German.  Unless I’m trying to speak French.  In that case all I can speak is German.

- special edition Plains card – I paid for this.  I can’t remember how much but probably a lot.  It’s got the Great Wall of China in it.

- Final Fantasy VII – The best of one of the least Final Fantasies.

- ‘retro’ Puma tshirt – I just plain like this.

Why?  Just, why?

I was expecting to have much more to say, and show, but unfortunately I was kind of underwhelmed.  It’s not that it wasn’t good (it was!) I was just expecting something different and my expectations were very high given the quality of pop-ups I’ve been to before in Bristol.  Their website is here is you want to see a differently subjective take on the whole thing.  The ‘collection’ is split up into four shops. Which I’ll give a really quick rundown of with some pictures.

The first, that I went into at least, was definitely the most ‘crafty’ and closest to what I was expecting.  It had what I would say was the best gift potential and I was hoping that I’d get something for my sisters there.  It wasn’t meant to be.  There was a lot of great stuff but I found the pricing to be a bit off.  It wasn’t that the stuff was too expensive but it just wasn’t at a price that I was willing to pay.  They have an amazing dinosaur lamp which I don’t have a picture for but it was definitely a winner.  Some pictures from stop one are below:

My second stop was by far my favourite and much more of a guerilla gallery than anything else.  Everything was reasonably priced but still quite a bit out of my price range.  I actually saw too many amazing things to go into too much detail here.  This shop definitely had the best content and layout in my opinion.  Really engaging and interesting.  I particularly liked the stuff by Data/Robb Wass and didn’t see a piece of his there that I didn’t like.  His butterly/stained glass mashup is incredible.  General pictures here:

Third stop was Antlers (with an upside down A).  It was cool but nothing new to me.  Antlers (with an upside down A) are a cool bunch and I saw some nice tees that I’d never seen before.  This was my third time at an Antler (with an upside down A) gallery and I’m impressed how good they are at keeping each new location fresh.  It can’t be easy being a ‘nomadic gallery’ to use their own terminology.  Nice things included the porcelain tea sets and tees.  The animal bones are what stole the show for me though.  Again, pictures below:

I don’t really have much to say about the final location and have no pictures at all.  Best thing about it was seeing some Susan Taylor prints especially the Rome one which I’d never seen before.  She’s on the much more affordable end and if you like striking, graphic typography type artwork then you’ll love her.  Definitely worth checking out her website as I’m not doing her justice.  Pay particular attention to her city prints.  They’re great.

I really recommend that you go down and check it out for yourself.  My problem was my high expectations that realistically were never going to be fulfilled.  I especially recommend you go it you’ve read the whole review.  Maybe after seeing this you’ll absolutely love it!

I like this.  I like this a lot.