Black White

Black and white photographs have remained popular since their inception roughly 150 years ago. The ability of black and white images to fit many decorating styles has contributed to their increased popularity. As such, people have become more open to alternative, more sophisticated framing designs for these items.

How to best frame a black and white photograph is a subject for much conjecture. Plain and simple to take nothing from the art, or more ornate to complement the subject matter? Add colour in the frame design to help draw the eye to the picture, or stick with a rigid two-tone approach to ensure dramatic elegance?

So where does that leave us? Well to be honest somewhere in the middle. The fact is that there is as much variety in black and white photography as in any other art form. Think of it this way, if we asked everyone to dress in the same way the look would suit a few but be terrible for most. However, there are some simple rules and techniques you should keep in mind when framing black and white photographs.

- Some framers believe a pristine white mount is best for all black and white images, on the basis that it does not detract from the picture itself. However, for pictures with a white focal point, a pristine white mount can be too bright and will compete with the image for attention.

- Another common mistake is to try to 'lighten' dark art by surrounding it with a light mount. In reality, a light mount border causes the dark colours in the photo to look even darker.

- Mounts should be black, white or grey. Any other colour adds an element that isn't present in the picture. If you have a customer who insists on a colourful mount, a common suggestion is to go for a white mat with a small accent of colour as a second mount. However, this accent actually pulls the eye away from the photo. A better solution is to use the colour as the predominant top mount and place the accent of black or grey below it to work as a transition into the photo. With all that colour surrounding the photo it isolates the image, in affect, drawing attention to it.

4 (Four) Principles of Career Distinction

I would like to talk about the four principles of career distinction. When we are researching our book we wanted to see what are the things that make some people exceptional in the workplace. There is a lot of people who doing great things but the small percentage of people- they are just absolutely exceptional. What is it that they have in common and we determine that there are four things they have in common that helped them to be so exceptional.

01. Stand out. Stand for something

One of the things we learned is, people who are wildly successful are willing to stick their neck out little bit. They are willing to stand for something knowing that not everybody is going to agree with them. And that is a great key in branding. Sometimes we repel as many people as we attract. If you are willing to take a stand, if u convicted, if u have thought a leadership position that’s really important to your brand. You want to able to stand out, so that people recognize you and understand what is that you stand for.

02. Be your own boss

Hit back 20-30 years ago, when you worked for a company, you pretty much there for life. They would manage a career for you. Sounds he didn’t make too many ways, you leave who you were at the door, you go in, you conform, that’s what they want to form you. They would manage your career move you around, take a review, you retire with pension at the end of thirty years.
That’s not the way of the world anymore. And it certainly not the way of the work world.
Today you need to be your own boss. That means managing your own career. So you have to think about what are you want to go next? I have a career a discussion with you and what are the things that have to accomplish this year that will help me get to the next step in my career. These are the things that are going to make you successful you cannot wait for somebody else to manage your career, you can’t look to HR, you can’t look to manager, you need to take these upon yourself and proactively manage your career.

03. Forget the ladder

We all know the ladder metaphor, climbing the rungs of the ladder and when we are seeking the next rung- all we things is about our career. We update our resume, we start reaching out to professional networking contacts and so forth. Everything’s focused on getting to that wrong.
And what happened when we get to the wrong? We forget all about managing our career which very binary. When I am managing a career anymore we have reached that wrong. So we get caught up in voice mails, emails and meeting and so forth and we don’t think about our careers again until it’s time to reach the next rung.
That doesn’t work in the new world of work either. What you want to do is manage your career every single day with everything you do. You want to ask yourself what I am doing today that going to advance me to where I want to go. So instead of the ladder you need to think about your career as a ramp. That ramp means it with every step you take your advancing toward your goals. So you have to ask yourself, how is this meeting today is going to help me to advance my career, how is this phone call is going to advance my career, how is everything on my to-do list today going to help me take the next step by adding value in demonstrating that value in everything I am doing today.

04. Build your brand

We have seen the people, who are wildly successful, have integrated branding strategies into everything they do. Every day they are asking themselves is it helping to add value to my brand or is it distracting from my brand? And they make decisions based on those things are going to help them increase their visibility with their target audience demonstrate what makes an exceptional and so forth. So you want to be thinking about everything you do is helping me or is it distracting from brand value and make sure you are putting your mark on everything you do-every agenda you write, every meeting you attend, every phone call you have. When you do this branding becomes a natural part of how you manage your career or how you add value to your employer and those around you.

Special Thanks to William Arruda | Personal Branding Guru

10 (Ten) branding mistakes need to be avoid.

Having been in the world of personal branding for nearly a decade, I have seen a lot of branding mistakes. What I want to share with you now is the way to NOT build your personal branding. So you can avoid these mistakes.

One. Don’t be fake. Be genuine.

A lot of people think branding is all about creating an image for the outside world, when in fact branding is based on authenticity. So know, who you are and use that to build your brand.

Two. Don’t be wishy-washy. Take a stand.

Strong brands aren’t all things to all people they are willing to take a stand and helps him to stand out.

Three. Don’t act before thinking.

I see lots of people commutating, I think brand is all about visibility, let’s get as many messages out there as we possibly can, that’s going to work against you. Have a plan, know what it is you want to do before you start getting your communications out there.

Four. Don’t go for quantity over quality.

There is a lot of people giving you branding advice out there saying, just get as many videos you can up on youtube, just go create as much content as you can for your blog. That’s not what you want to do.
You want to make sure that you are using the right resources and you are building something of quality where when people see it, it has value. Otherwise you are actually detracting from your brand rather than adding to it.

Five. Avoid the quest for fame, choose to become selective famous.

Banding is not about everybody knowing you. It’s about just those people who need target audience knowing who you are and what you’re unique comes to evaluate it. So focus your messages and all your communications unjust those people who need to know you.

Six. Don’t run out of steam in the branding process. Slow and steady wins the race.

I know a lot of people when linkedin came in and they wanted to get this many contacts as they could and they had a bored with that, then facebook came along, they said okay, now we are going to friend everybody we know and got bored with that and moved to twitter. You want to have a slow steady methodical consistent approach to building your brand.

Seven. Don’t forget real world relationships.

Personal branding is not just the web activities. You want to make sure you are building your brand in the real and virtual world and you want to take the real world activities you doing and find ways to translate into them l virtual world. Just building a brand on the world wide web is not going to be effective.

Eight. Don’t go it alone. Bring in the right resources.

Personal branding strategies, resume writers, a video producer, you want to have the best people behind you so that you are producing is of high quality and you have other people in their prospective helping you to build your brand in the best possible way.

Nine. Don’t make it all about you. Branding is about giving.

It’s about giving value to your network. It’s building credibility by sharing your knowledge and expertise with others. It’s not about big promotions and taking from others. It’s really about giving.

Ten. Don’t forget to measure.

A lot of people go out there with the branding plan and they say all this is great and they just continue working on their brand without seeing if it’s working. It is not helping you reach your goals. Is it getting you to the next step? Are the right people getting to know you? So remember to measure.

-William Arruda.

Figure Out More »
01. Brand Postmortem
02. BLUE: your brand color
03. GREEN: your brand color

BLUE: your brand color

What’s the color of your brand? The BLUE Edition.

The question is not, what’s your favorite color? The question is what color best represent your personal brand attribute?
The complement to blue is ORANGE.

Use Blue, if your brand attributes communicate » Authority, Power, Truth, Intelligence, Confidence, Loyalty, Integrity, Wisdom, Trust.

Blue is one of the colors of nature – the sky and the sea. Light blue means peace, softness, healing. Dark blue represents stability, security and expertise.

Figure Out More »
01. Brand Postmortem
02. GREEN: your brand color
03. 10 (Ten) branding mistakes need to be avoid

GREEN: your brand color

What’s the color of your brand? The Green Edition.

The question is not, what’s your favorite color? The question is what color best represent your personal brand attribute?
The complement to green is RED.

Use GREEN, if your brand attributes communicate » Optimism, Fertility, Growth, Relaxation, Spring, Nature, Rebirth, Luck, Healing, Youth, Environment.

Green is the color of nature. We can see more shades of green than of any other color. Green means growth and rebirth. Green is calming. It helps us relax and renew. TV guests wait in green rooms. Operating rooms are often green.

Special Thanks to  William Arruda | Personal Branding Guru.

Figure Out More »
01. Brand Postmortem
02. BLUE: your brand color
03. 10 (Ten) branding mistakes need to be avoid