I designed this advertisement for a charity fun day event and tried to give it a fun look. Image is important for events, places and people. Even this website has an image and I try to make it colourful.
I wrote an job application letter this week for a graduate. Application letters used to be very business-like and formal, but we are in the 21st century and things are less formal and more relaxed. The days when senior staff were officious jobsworths are mostly over. There are courses now to help people learn how to be more friendly and engage customers and other businesses. This isn’t new and it uses multiple media. In the US, the ‘have a nice day’ cliché is almost obligatory, but it engages customers. I used two supermarkets this week, the checkout of the one has trained it’s staff to be quick and efficient but also to be ‘nice’ and friendly to customers. Sales are increasing, but at the second supermarket I had a 10 minutes wait and the check out girl asked if I would like the goods bagged, but wasn’t very enthusiastic about it. Those images of service have obviously stayed with me.
Even music can be incorporated into an image. Supermarkets playing relaxing music will have shoppers, slowly browsing goods, rather than rushing around just buying the essentials.
When I write fiction, I don’t give a list of events; I try to describe scenes and create images. We can take people to other worlds and travel through time with fictional descriptions. Charles Dickens can take you back to Victorian England and the same applies when you visit a Victorian park, a museum or a classic art gallery.
These days images of ourselves are presented to people through social media. People can judge us on our profile picture and know a lot about our lives and we should be careful about the image we present. The same is true of Twitter and other social networks such as LinkedIn.
We have a personal image associated with grooming and dress too. We are judged on our behaviour and our manners. We can even be judged on the type of car that we drive or the house we live in. All these things are part of our personal image. We can have a relaxed attitude to personal image or we can create an image that gives us a social advantage.
That’s all for today, why not think a little about the images you have created? In the meantime, you can follow this blog by entering your email address at the top of the sidebar or follow me on Twitter for updates.
