Retouching Parody by Metra Bruno and Laurence Jeanson
Metra Bruno and Laurence Jeanson decided to poke fun at the retouching industry. I’m sure you’re fully aware, or at least have a clue about the mass Photoshop retouching that goes on after photo shoots. This creative experiment was concluded to show a notion of identity. The portraits are accompanied by magazine cutouts, which are then taped to the models faces. I think the overall message is that beauty is no longer natural, but rather socially conditioned.
40 Clever Things Constructed From Wood
Wood is a carbon-neutral resource, which makes it an eco-friendly source of renewable energy. Wood has been used for hundreds of thousands of years as both fuel and construction material. Depending on the type of tree, wood can be light and heavy, stiff and flexible, soft and hard. Today our society uses wood mostly for furniture and building construction. Wood can be pressed, carved, steamed, and shaped in any way you desire. Your imagination is the limit.
Today we collected unique wood products for your inspiration. This roundup will open your eyes to the forgotten use of wood in tools, utensils, and contemporary designs. We hope that you will get inspired to create or purchase wood based products in the future to ensure a healthier environment. We fully understand that modern substances like metals and plastics are superior, and at times much cheaper that wood. Nevertheless, wood outputs much less, if any, toxic waste or harmful chemical during manufacturing process.
Wooden Lego Man
Carved Wood LEAF Swing
Holly Wood Mario by Tony & Emmanuelle
Invigorating Narrow House by Fujiwaramuro Architects
Fujiwaramuro Architects recently finished the Narrow House, a residential downtown house measuring just 36.95 sqm in Nada, Kobe, Japan. This incredible residence demonstrates that you don’t need a vast amount of space for cozy comfort. The home contains two bedrooms, kitchen, a garage, a living and dining room, and an additional storage room. All are spread across three floors with an opening in the middle. Fujiwaramuro Architects have been working on challenging projects since 2002, if you wish to check out more of their work be sure to visit: aplan.jp
Epic Illustrations by Justin Mezzell
Justin Mezzell is an illustrator and designer currently based in Orlando, Florida. A graduate of the University of Central Florida, he specializes in illustration, digital art, and UI/UX design. Additional samples from other bodies of work can be found below. His stunning retro style make us feel like we’re traveling back in time. His main source of inspiration is Sciencefictitious.com
Authors, Listen Up: You Have Rights When It Comes to Your Work
Copyright laws aren’t easy to understand, especially when they’re quite similar to trademark and patent laws. If you have something that you’ve authored, whether it’s a short story, a piece of art, a photograph or a new song, you have an automatic copyright. As long as something that you’ve created is tangible, it can’t legally be used or taken by any other parties. That doesn’t mean that other people won’t use your work, though. Make sure you have a good understanding of copyright law should you ever need it in the future.
What the Difference Between Copyrights, Trademarks and Patents?
The main difference between copyrights, trademarks and patents is the specific creation that’s being protected:
A copyright protects any type of authorship. Poems, song lyrics, memoirs and paintings, for example, all fall under copyright law. Basically, anything that’s a physical expression of an idea has a copyright.
Trademarks protect identifying marks. A company logo, for example, would fall under trademark law.
Patents protect inventions.
What Does a Copyright Include?
There are three main components of a copyright:
The copyright owner is the only person with exclusive rights to the work.
The owner of the copyright is the only person who can distribute the work.
The owner can, if they want to, allow other people to distribute or sell the work.
What is Copyright Infringement?
When a work that’s been recorded in some physical form, there are several ways that other people can use the work illegally, including:
Creating derivative materials
Display the material in a public area
Distributing copies of the work
Performing the material in a public setting
Reproducing the work
Transmitting the audio of the work digitally
Mind Read: What Your Customers Wish You Knew About Them
Large corporations spend millions of dollars analyzing customers in a bid to understand what motivates them to buy their products. Typically, that analysis involves a third-party marketing company, one that that attempts to gauge, analyze and develop one or more reports extrapolated from that data.
However, when it comes down to it, your customers really are not interested in providing detailed information as part of a marketing analysis. Instead, if you are really interested in what your customers were thinking, you’d find out directly what they are thinking about your business.
1. Be honest. Your customers do not expect you to be perfect, but they do expect you to be truthful. If you cannot deliver or make good on something, then say so.
2. Say thank you. The difference between so-so customer service and stellar service may be two words: thank you. You can be doing all the right things, but if your staff is not thanking your customers, then your rating plummets despite serving up otherwise superior service.
3. Look me in the eye. You want to frustrate your customers? Then never look them in the eye. Eye contact demonstrates two things: that you are listening and that you care.
4. Make phone calls secondary. When customers are on line and getting ready to make payment, there may be nothing worse than a cashier that stops what he is doing to respond to a phone call from a customer outside of the store. Customers ready to buy should take priority over those calling in from outside.
3 Things that Should Motivate You to Have an Emergency Fund
First, let’s go over a quick definition of an emergency fund. When I use those words, I’m simply referring to an amount of money that you’ve set aside in the amount of somewhere between $3,000 and $10,000 dollars.
This money usually stays in a savings account and is left alone for unexpected expenses or a truly “rainy day” where you’re in a situation that requires you pay a large sum of money. The “emergency” tag doesn’t necessarily mean life-threatening or disastrous, but rather an unforeseen interruption in your cash flow.
Now, being able to establish one does take, discipline, careful planning and above all, time. Being able to save close to $10,000 dollars might seem impossible for some people, but know that it can be done.
Understanding some of the benefits of having an emergency fund are important motivating factors when and if you decide to start establishing one.
What I want to do here is cover the three most prevalent and basic elements of an emergency fund, that will give you the beginning push and incentive to start setting money aside. Building up your savings this much takes time, but knowing the importance of it will definitely motivate you to start the process.
An emergency fund fireproofs your cash flow. — Having an emergency fund that is even just $5,000 dollars means you’ll have enough money set aside to be sure that even large unforeseen expenses will have little or no effect on your weekly cash flow.
Say for instance that you have a several thousand dollar repair on your car that you weren’t anticipating. With the money to pay that out of pocket set aside, your weekly cash flow will go on uninterrupted, and after the car is paid for, you can simply pay back your emergency savings over time, interest free.
The Successful Schedule: How Flourishing Professionals Plan Their Day
The Power Hour
High school students have it made – the first thing they do when they get to school is hang out in homeroom for a few minutes. Joking around with friends about the weekend and checking the day’s class schedule is a good precursor for what every adult should do as well: prepare for the day ahead without diving into tedious work right away. In Adult World, “homeroom” should last for longer than eight minutes and it won’t necessarily include our best buddies. The first real hour of the workday – the “Power Hour” – plays a huge part in setting up the day for success.
E-mail Can Wait. It Really Can.
Busy people, especially those who run their own business, know that “I need to check e-mail right this second” feeling. It usually kicks in shortly after the alarm clock rings and it doesn’t end until way into the evening. The truth is, though, that if you don’t check your e-mail first thing in the morning, you’re actually getting off on the right foot. Here’s why:
If something is truly urgent, you’ll get a phone call or a text. Otherwise, “urgent” e-mails can wait a few more hours.
Once you open your inbox, it’s hard to close it. Constantly looking for and responding to new e-mails takes focus away from other projects, even if the only “project” that’s currently being tackled is making coffee.
Aggravating e-mails will cause worry and be a distraction right up until it’s actually time to deal with them.
Checking work e-mail outside of the office, even if it’s a home office, just doesn’t feel good. Instead, it’s like the morning and personal time were skipped over for work tasks that could have waited.
Need more convincing? David Karp, the Founder of Tumblr, doesn’t check his e-mail until 9:30 a.m. or even a little later if he can help it. Author Julie Morgenstern also wrote about the tactic in her book Never Check Email In the Morning. Plus, not responding to an e-mail the second you get it helps prepare your contacts to not expect a note back right away.
Google+ Communities Meant to ‘Plus’ the Visitor Base
Google+ recently introduced a new feature in the form of community similar to Orkut. These Google+ communities are forums where people join and share a lot of stuff with each other. Google has once again bounced back with new features with two types of communities in the form of Public & Private. But before that it is important to understand how a Google+ community is created.
How to Start your Own Google+ Community?
Just login to your Google+ account.
Click on the Google+ Community tab.
Click on the button “Create community”.
Select whether you want your community to be public or private. Then after add name, permission should be given, and finally click the “Create community” button.
Add a description and also an image before finally moving on to the “Done editing” button.
The community is finally created with a popup window coming up and asking you to invite your friends or mail contacts. You can either add everybody or skip this step.
Brand Promotion through Google Community
Being actively using Google+ communities for a while now, I can offer people some good practices and tips which can help them to use these communities in order to promote their brand by utilizing this thing to their full advantage.
Brand Page Owned Communities should be Built
There might be several topics or subjects related to your products or services. Build a community for each one of them so that whenever people think anything related to your offerings, they will always find a community for it. Invite the followers so that they can interact on topics of interest linked to your brand.
Topic Wise as Well as Marketing Based Content should be Posted Regularly
When a brand leads the community, people expect to get a taste of the insights and expertise related to the products or services being offered. This means relevant content should be stuffed effectively. It is similar to a community led by an individual where the independent post does the talking. Such types of communities resemble that of a list of targeted prospects and emails.
An Expert’s View on How to Make Your Blogs More Attractive
Blogging definitely has become one of the most effective SEO strategies that help in boosting the online reputation of your website. The immense competition in the market makes it utterly difficult for an entrepreneur to flourish their business. Now, blogging isn’t just about pouring your heart out on a certain topic or offering the best of tips on something.
I mean it is, but you need to have a constructive approach and the right tone to make sure that the things you say connects with the audience or the reader. In this article we will discuss certain tips on blogging that will help you to get the best results.
It should be informative – Do not just write just for the sake of writing, make sure that your writing is good and it is packed with relevant information. A good informative article is what people look for. How would you feel if you are searching for something for long and eventually find it only to be irrelevant or too dull? That will certainly not make you feel too good. So make sure that each and every topic that you choose to write is well researched and known to you.
