#Too busy to improve image Square Wheels

[artemis-entreri]

[[ Sculptor: MD Dragons

I commissioned this awesome piece of art from MD Dragons/Maga in October 2019. In less than a month, she’d finished it, and sent me pictures for approval. I was astounded by the quality -- I already knew she does great work as I’d been following her for some time, in fact I’d originally planned to commission her for an Artemis and Jarlaxle sculpture back in 2017 after seeing her Drizzt and Artemis sculpture for a different client. Unfortunately, I couldn’t decide on the commission details back then, so I ended up relinquished my slot.

Although it was totally serendipitous, I’m glad that I waited, because the improvement in her skill really shows. Maga’s work has always been impressive. Her sculptures are almost always made entirely from different colored clay, with no usage of paint. Her attention to detail is nothing short of superb. Yet, what I received now I believe has greater, finer and more details than what she would’ve made me two years ago.

Maga makes several different styles of sculptures. I think dragons are definitely her specialty, with how each of their scales are individually sculpted and carefully put into place. As this piece shows, she’s no less adept with humanoid subjects. I ordered my commission in what she calls the “big nose chibi” style. She worked from both reference images and descriptions. For Artemis’ outfit, I provided Todd Lockwood’s paintings, but for Artemis’ weapons and Jarlaxle Maga had to rely primarily on text descriptions. The information I gave her for Charon’s Claw was a direct quote from the novel’s text. For Jarlaxle, I did show her the Waterdeep: Dragon Heist official art of him, but I wanted him to look like how he does in the novels, with his high-cut vest that shows off his abdomen and his rainbow cloak. I did want his fancy Dragon Heist rapier however, but since that, just as Artemis’ dagger, lacked specific description, I left them to Maga’s artistic interpretation. I actually left a lot to her artistic interpretation, and she blew me away, even noticing aspects that I hadn’t noticed of Artemis, a character whom I am extremely particular about. 

Without further ado, here are some closer looks at this masterpiece.

While Jarlaxle’s cloak doesn’t contain all the colors of the rainbow in a gaudy way, Maga went with iridescent clay to achieve a classy effect that’s still true to the concept of a cloak with shifting multi-hues.

It’s a bit hard to see Charon Claw’s pelvis-shaped crosspiece here, but the way the two little skeletal legs curves down the pommel is visible.

The dagger bears a characteristic emerald. Blurry in the background can be seen the black blood trough that runs down the middle of Claw. Also note Artemis’ lips; the scowl is more than a simple line drawn through the clay, there is just enough shape to his mouth to accentuate the expression. 

I normally depict Artemis with two belts running down along his cuirass, but I don’t mind Maga’s interpretation because of the sheer amount of detail on his body. I don’t even miss Artemis’ unique triangular belt buckles as depicted by Lockwood because of how much else is going on here. There’s so much life to it too, with how the ends of the belt curves off and away from his body.

I should point out here that Artemis’ stubble is entirely sculpted on as well. At first, I thought it was painted on, but no, it’s actually a very fine layer of gray clay sculpted onto his face. 

What’s also really neat is that Maga gave Artemis and Jarlaxle different head/face shapes. Artemis has a more square jaw, while Jarlaxle’s is slimmer. 

I can’t imagine how long it must’ve taken to shape and place each stand of Artemis’ hair. Note also the vanes of Jarlaxle’s feather and the texture on the flap of his hat. 

For the background, all I’d requested was “city setting”. It was entirely Maga’s decision to do the barrel, the wheel, the shattered crates and the spilled fruit.

The environment really adds to the dynamism of the piece, as though the two figures were caught in an unexpected confrontation in the streets of a busy medieval-esque city. In other words, perfect to the setting.   

Another cool feature is that Jarlaxle’s boots are shiny, while Artemis’ are not.

There was only one thing that I’d asked Maga to change, namely, her rendition of Artemis’ earrings. Originally, she had him with only earrings on his left ear and in silver.

I asked her to add another pair of earrings to Artemis’ right ear and to change the original ones to gold. That was the only bit of paint that I’m aware of, as the sculpture was already baked and removing the silver ones risked damaging Artemis’ ear. It took her less than a day to make the change, and then the sculpture was on its way to me.

Unfortunately, due to the timing of the shipment, the parcel spent more time in transit than it would’ve normally, and as a result of being subjected to shipping longer, it arrived like this:

Ouch, talk about a bad breakup! >_>

Thankfully, Maga was there to provide support. She gave me detailed instructions to repair the damage, even offering for me to ship it back to her to fix if I wasn’t satisfied with the results. I didn’t think it was really feasible to ship it back as I didn’t want more breakages to happen, so I did my best to repair it. Unfortunately, due to the compromised structural integrity to Jarlaxle’s body from his head falling off, his entire collar broke off as I was trying to glue back the pieces. That was delicate work, but it was nothing compared to trying to glue back the tip of one of Artemis’ hair spikes. My hand just couldn’t stop shaking as I was holding the tiny point in place, and once again I was awed by how Maga had apparently done this but many many more times to shape Artemis’ hair.

All’s well that ends well though, and the chibis are ready for combat once more. I even ordered a display case for them, but...

Hopefully the new one will come in soon. >_> ]]

[sariahsue]

The Open Line - Chapter Nine, Claws and Bugs

Ladybug knows that if it weren’t for Adrien, she would have fallen for Cat Noir, hard and fast. And when Oblivio takes her memory, she does just that. Able to keep her memory after the Oblivio incident but still unaware of Cat Noir’s real identity, Ladybug must deal with her growing feelings for her partner, who is desperately trying to win her over. (Rated PG.)

Read Chapter One Here Reach Chapter Eight Here

***

Adrien was normally quick to hop out of bed in the morning, eager for school and to see his friends, but today he laid in bed for nearly twenty minutes, staring at the picture Ladybug had sent him. (He'd printed it and kept it under his pillow all night. Plagg had made fun of him.) Adrien was determined to have it memorized by the time he left for school.

Ladybug had made sure to hide personal details and belongings from view. There were no hints to her identity, but she hadn't been able to hide the pink wall she'd taped the picture to. Pink. Her room was painted pink. Was that her favorite color? Should he get her pink flowers? She also hadn't hidden her pink bedspread. Her bed! Not only had she hung up his picture, but she'd put it next to her BED. Was it the first thing she saw that morning? Had she been staring at it as she'd fallen asleep last night?

A loud knock on the door gave him a half-second warning to hide the picture under his blanket before Nathalie came marching in. She didn't even look at him before she began listing off his schedule for the day, which was packed. "Your father expects you downstairs promptly. You both will be very busy today, and he doesn't want any delays."

"Yes, Nathalie. I'll be right down." As soon as she left the room, he lunged for the photo. Breakfast could wait, so he sank into his pillows and forgot about Nathalie and her schedules, holding the photo high above his head this time, to get a new angle.

There was light shining directly onto Ladybug's bedroom wall, though he couldn't see its source. That probably meant she had a lamp close by. Did she read before falling asleep? What was her favorite book?

The best part of her message last night was definitely the caption she'd added. "Got to have a picture of my favorite partner on display!" It was silly. It shouldn't make him so happy. He was her only partner, but he had never been called anyone's favorite anything before. He repeated her words to himself as he finally got ready for the day.

He skipped down the stairs, ten minutes late for breakfast, only to be greeted by a scowl.

"Did Nathalie tell you I expected your punctuality?" his father asked. Even from Gabriel's spot at the far end of the table, Adrien could feel the open disappointment, almost anger. But Ladybug's words kept him insulated and safe.

"Yes," Adrien said. "But I didn't know-"

"And you chose to disrespect her direction and my time because?"

"Uh..." Because Ladybug said he was her favorite! She didn't push him away when he kissed her! "I guess I was... tired?"

"I see," Gabriel said, picking up his plate has he rose from the table. "I had hoped to spend some time with my son, but as he places such a low value on me, I will be finishing my meal in my office." Gabriel swept past him and was gone.

"If he'd told me he was going to be here..."

"His loss," Plagg said from his pocket. "Hey, we could always go back to bed. I think there's a certain wheel of cheese calling my name and a certain picture calling yours."

"Nice try." Adrien grabbed his plate and walked toward the front door. It was odd, how bad he didn't feel about his father's behavior. It was unfortunate, but it couldn't damage his good mood. He was Ladybug's favorite! She'd let him kiss her hand like six times last night!

Remembering that got him through a grueling day. Nathalie hadn't been exaggerating when she said he'd be busy. School was full of tests and Chloe's drama, all made harder by his sleep deprivation. Double fencing left him exhausted. Then there was a photoshoot. And finally, piano lessons, where he was berated for his "obvious lack of practice and respect for the piano as an instrument and an art form."

"I'd like to see him work in practicing around all the akumas I have to fight."

"Or all the daydreaming about Ladybug," Plagg added. It was amazing how much of Adrien's pillow he was taking up. Plagg was spread out, basking in a square of sunshine. One eye was cracked open, so he could see what kind of effect his teasing had.

"I'm not that bad."

"You sure?"

"Scoot over." Adrien flopped face-first onto his bed, already reaching for the photo. It was a relief to have his room to himself again. He was nearing his physical limits, and he had past his people limit a long time ago. Well, people that weren't Ladybug. He wished there was a patrol scheduled tonight. Having pictures of her was nice, but nothing could compare to the comfort of her presence.

The door swung open, and Plagg dove out of sight while Adrien scrambled to his feet to face his visitor. Seeing Gabriel twice on the same day was a rare occurrence, and normally Adrien would have been glad for the attention, but his father's face was even more sour than it had been that morning.

"The photographer sent me the raw images of today's shoot, Adrien. Your work was subpar."

Adrien's mouth twitched. He did not have the energy for this. "It's just the raws," Adrien said. "They're going to Photoshop it anyway."

"You can't airbrush failure. Your performance was unacceptable."

"Maybe it shouldn't have been scheduled after two hours of fencing, then. I was tired." His words hung in the air between them, but Adrien wouldn't have taken them back even if he could have. He was too tired. Too tired of being pushed around today, too tired of being everyone's disappointment.

"You will not be practicing with your band on Saturday."

"But they're counting on me to be there! I've missed the last four-"

Gabriel steamrolled over him. "You will be spending your newly freed time to practice your piano. I met your teacher on his way out, and he tells me your skill is quickly deteriorating."

Adrien folded his arms and looked away.

"I can see this is getting too much for you," Gabriel said softly.

Adrien dared to hope that his father was finally understanding him, that he would be removing some of his burdensome lessons or shoots, but he should have known better. It made Gabriel's next words cut deeper.

"If your performance – and your attitude – do not improve, we will be returning to homeschooling."

Even as he left the room, it felt like Gabriel's claws closed in around Adrien. No band on Saturday. That was expected. It seemed like his father would use any excuse to keep him from going. But no school? The last time he'd threatened that had been ages ago. And if he were being monitored by a tutor at home all day, it would be so much harder to slip away if an akuma attacked. No band, no school, no Cat Noir.

Adrien threw himself on the piano bench in frustration and started playing. Let his father hear him practice. Let him think that his son was cooperative and submissive.

"Ah, don't worry," Plagg said, floating over. He'd retrieved Ladybug's picture from underneath the pillow, and it dangled between his paws. "He'll forget about everything in a few days. Just watch." He set the photo on top of Adrien's music.

"Just let me play," Adrien said, shifting the picture aside to see the music. "I want him to think he's won." Plagg was trying to be helpful, and he appreciated the gesture, but he needed to see the real thing. A photo wasn't enough anymore.

"Why?"

"So he won't check on me again." Don't think. Just play. Then see Ladybug.

Don't feel.

This plan only lasted fifteen minutes until Adrien couldn't stand to be in his own house any longer. It would have to be enough. He was jumping through the window before he'd even finished transforming, into the first truly cold night of October. The city was misty and dreary, which didn't match his mood. He wanted a thunderstorm.

Sixteen blocks away from his house, he finally stopped to contact Ladybug. It rang, and rang and rang, until it went to her inbox. Even though he knew there was no point, that she wasn't transformed, he tried again. And again. The weather turned menacing.

When he finally gave up - without leaving a message - he wasn't sure what to do next. There was nowhere he could really go. There was no one who really wanted him around. So he wandered, buffeted by the wind and getting soaked to the bone, trying not to remind himself that because he was Ladybug's only partner, he was also her least favorite.

"She never said that," he told himself firmly. "That wasn't what she meant." Alone and abandoned in the rain, it was hard to believe he'd had a reason to be happy that morning.

Water and wind eventually drove him to find shelter. The Notre Dame was big enough to hide him, tall enough that he wouldn't be able to hear the people and cars below him. The enormous roof was made out of wood and had many eaves and ledges he where he could sit and be alone, but when he sat down, he found that the spot was already taken.

"Figures," he said. A swarm of ladybugs huddled there for warmth. "You're not the one I want right now." He settled down anyway and stayed there, unmoving, for he didn't know how long. Long enough that tourists returned to their hotels and street lights flickered on. Long enough for the bugs to realize he was a much better heat source than the wooden rafters and start to crawl over him instead. His only friends.

"It's a sign," he said, looking down at himself. "Soon she'll want me just as much as you all do."

"Who are you talking to?"

"Ladybug!" She'd come! And just like that, his heart hurt a little less. "Would you like to meet my friends?" He motioned to the little insects crawling over his knees.

Droplets of water hit his legs as she wrung out her hair. "They can't get enough of you," she noted, sitting down next to him. The ledge was wide and sheltered from the wind, just big enough for the both of them.

"So you were jealous and came to get a piece of the action?"

"Ha. Funny. I checked the Ladyblog a few minutes ago and saw reports that you've been up here for hours, sulking."

"Oh, uh..." Should he tell her? Should he try to cover it up? Play it off? He didn't want her to think he couldn't handle something as stupid as a bad day. She would be disappointed in him too, just like everyone else, and he would do anything to avoid that.

But Ladybug saw through his hesitation. "Your dad again?"

Cat Noir sighed and then nodded. "Today's been kind of awful." It was a relief to tell the truth. And an even bigger relief that he didn't have to say it himself.

"I'm sorry," she said, leaning against him, lending him her support with her presence.

They didn't talk much. Ladybug brushed bugs off his shoulders and hands, and stroked his hair whenever she thought he needed a distraction from the gloom that waited for him beyond their island of tranquility.

"I wish I'd gotten here sooner," she said over an hour later. "We're partners. I hate the idea of you facing tough stuff by yourself, even if it's not an akuma."

"You could always give me your number, Bugaboo," he joked. "I tried calling your yoyo earlier, but you weren't transformed."

He expected an eye roll and a lecture on keeping civilian and super lives separate, so he wasn't quite sure what to make of it when she looped her arm through his and hummed thoughtfully. Was she actually considering it? He'd said it as a joke!

But she lapsed back into silence without really answering, and the hope her reaction had ignited was quickly extinguished in the gloom that engulfed the rest of the city. Of course she wasn't going to give him her number. She was more willing to spend time with him, more generous with her touches because she knew he was upset, but that was it. There was no indication that it would ever be more than that, and he shouldn't get his hopes up.

They spent another half hour in silence, until Ladybug got up with a grimace. "We can't stay out late two nights in a row."

"Yeah, I should get back. Before someone misses me." Miss him? Ha. Like that would happen.

"I have an idea," she said, holding a hand out to help him up. "And I think you'll really like it."

"What's that?" Once on his feet, Cat Noir didn't let her hand go. Neither, he noticed, did she.

"I'll tell you tomorrow, if I can figure out the details."

"We don't have patrol tomorrow, though."

"Oh, well, we could- that is..."

She paused and looked shyly away, and Cat Noir felt his feeble hope burn back to life. This was something new. Scheduling to meet up outside of patrols? It was unprecedented. It couldn't be...

"Would you meet me anyway?"

"Of course, LB. I would love to."

"Ten at the Tower?"

"Sure."

It was happening. It was honestly, truly happening. They were planning to meet, not because the city needed them, or because he was having a bad day, or on accident. Just because she wanted to spend time with him.

Ladybug beamed, then pushed herself up on her toes and kissed his cheek before saying in a rush, "Hope you feel better. See you tomorrow. Bye!"

As soon as she was out of sight, Cat Noir did a little dance on the ledge. But the ledge wasn't big enough, and on his second pirouette, he lost his balance and fell off. Laughing, he waited until the very last second to save himself, but even that rush couldn't compare to the high his Lady had just given him.

Read Chapter Ten Here

***

Author's note: This story is officially a "Notre Dame Cathedral Didn't Burn Down" AU. I'm a writer. I can make reality whatever I want, and I want that building to not have burned.

I had a lot of obstacles to getting this chapter done for tonight, and I wasn't sure I was going to be able to. I had to push myself to get this done in time, but I'm happy that I did! Next week, back to Marinette. Let's see what SHE makes out of her own behavior!

[sumayyahwrites]

Fashion in the time of COVID

WILL THE PANDEMIC LEAD TO A MORE ETHICAL, SUSTAINABLE INDUSTRY?

"We went way too far. Our reckless actions have burned the house we live in. We conceived of ourselves as separated from nature, we felt cunning and almighty. We usurped nature, we dominated and wounded it."  

Alessandro Michele, Creative Director of Gucci

Gucci's creative director Alessandro Michele posted 1,200 words of poetic, impassioned diary excerpts on Instagram, making one thing abundantly clear, Gucci, and possibly the fashion industry as a whole would never be the same again.

The COVID-19 pandemic hit the fashion world hard, gravely impacting all of its global capitals. Even before the virus struck, the industry was ailing. What happens now that no one's compelled to dress up from the waist down? And with our precarious place in the world coming into sharp relief, shopping for season “must-haves” seemed not only frivolous but immoral.

In March, Vogue partnered with the Council of Fashion Designers of America to set up A Common Thread, a pandemic-relief initiative that has raised $4.9 million to date. By May, more than 1,000 companies applied for aid, with even the biggest names on the precipice of an uncertain future.

In the interest of damage control, there has been industry talk of pushing the unreleased 2020 collections to 2021. It's curious that this requires we literally disavow the concept of fashion itself; that amorphous behemoth that tells us whether midi skirts are in or out this season.

With no end in sight to this state of flux, could this be an opportunity for the industry to ask itself some serious existential questions?

THE PROBLEM WITH FASHION

"We didn't respect the planet until now and in a way this [pandemic] is a message and unfortunately it's a very, very heavy message. Change had to be done. Everyone thought that the change would happen gradually, but that's not the case. Change has to be done now, and done quickly."

Sara Maino, Deputy Editor in Chief of Vogue Italia  

Before the fashion world spiralled out of control, you had four seasons in the four major fashion capitals - London, Paris, New York and Milan. But the emergence of fast fashion accelerated the situation to a dizzying degree. Brands were sucked into the vortex of insatiable consumer demand. The pressure on luxury and high-street alike to drop new trends at higher speeds and lower costs had designers in a hamster wheel trying to outpace the copycats. "We were out of breath", admits Gucci’s Alessandro Michele, referring to fashion's unrelenting schedule of up to eight collections per year.

In her book, 'Fashionopolis: The Price Of Fast Fashion And The Future Of Clothes', Dana Thomas takes an unflinching look at the catastrophic environmental and human cost of this obsession with newness. Fast fashion refers to the production of masses of cheap, trendy clothes at breakneck speeds. Thomas refers to this as "a dirty, unscrupulous business that exploited humans and Earth alike".

Fashion is one of our biggest global polluters, "responsible for nearly 20 per cent of all industrial pollution annually" and "10 per cent of the carbon emissions in our air". Deep down, we knew our clothes often were made by desperate people in unthinkably dire situations; how could we forget the Rana Plaza disaster in Bangladesh that took the lives of more than a thousand factory workers? Meanwhile, the COVID-19 pandemic has made the human cost of fast fashion devastatingly clear. Crowded, unhygienic environments coupled with exploitative employment and a shady supply chain left brands with no accountability and employees with no pay.

According to Thomas, we buy five times more clothes than the previous generation, with the average garment being worn only seven times before being thrown on the scrap heap. There's no escaping the pangs of guilt that many of us experience with these suspiciously cheap garments. However, there is also no denying that slow fashion can be prohibitively expensive.

Should caring about the environment be a privilege afforded only to the haves, with the blame being placed squarely on the have-nots? And should the onus fall on the consumer to fix the deep-seated problems in the fashion industry or should corporations take responsibility for their exploitative behaviour?

THE SEASON OF DISCONTENT

"At a certain level, most of us were forced to make what the industry told us to make, but it's already proven that the industry is broken. We will now concentrate more on making what we want to make and how we want to make it."

Sonia Carrasco, Fashion Designer and Brand Owner

There are calls for reform, with designer Dries Van Noten urging leading industry figures to sign an open letter setting out some demands. Van Noten wants to reduce the number of runway shows, and the preposterous volume of clothing produced, and sell collections in real-time. That is: bikinis in S/S and coats in A/W. Have you ever been shopping for summer staples, only to find all the season's rejects already relegated to the sales rack? Fashion moves at its own pace darling, a pace at odds with customers' needs. Van Noten says this is about making collections "more environmentally and socially sustainable" with a move towards sustainability throughout the supply chain with less product, less waste and less travel.

Not that Chanel is paying attention, taking customers and press to Capri for its Cruise 2021 pre-collection in June, in the midst of the COVID pandemic. The French fashion house is resolutely old guard, announcing it will stick to six shows: two ready-to-wear, two couture, as well as cruise and Métiers d'Art. Chanel is not alone, with Dior also showcasing its cruise collection physically in Southern Italy.

In response to COVID-19, the British Fashion Council and the Council of Fashion Designers of America released a joint statement, echoing many of Van Noten's concerns. It urges brands, designers and retailers to slow down, with appeals for changes that will benefit customers, improve the wellbeing of the industry and have a positive effect on the environment.

FASHION IN THE TIME OF PANDEMIC

"I try to ask myself what is the meaning of my actions. It's a vital and urgent questioning for me, which demands a careful pause and a delicate listening."

Alessandro Michele, Creative Director of Gucci

The big players in luxury fashion produce between six and eight collections per year, spending an eye-watering amount of money on each show. But is fashion week, with all its excesses and spectacles, gone for good?

The pandemic has led to a cascade of reflection and introspection, and fashion's big players were not unaffected. Saint Laurent announced plans to '"take control of its pace and reshape its schedule". Alessandro Michele has reduced the number of Gucci shows from five to two, nixing both seasons and gender. He writes: "I will abandon the worn-out ritual of seasonalities and shows to regain a new cadence, closer to my expressive call. We will meet just twice a year, to share the chapters of a new story".

After the cancelling of June's men's fashion week in Paris, Louis Vuitton disregarded both the industry's European home-base and its calendar, taking its latest men's show to Shanghai, a big change that signals a significant move towards a consumer-first approach. Which makes perfect sense with shoppers from Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America accounting for the bulk of luxury sales. Is it time to admit that Eurocentric fashion shows are so last season?

Many brands have gone "phygital", which is the somewhat awkward portmanteau describing the hybrid of physical space and digital technologies. With Shanghai and Moscow both fully embracing digital for their fashion weeks in March and April, and Helsinki adopting a purely digital format with innovations such as 3D shows. If more fashion houses go off-piste with localised, digitally amplified events, this could be the death knell for fashion week as we know it.

Another big IRL fashion event on the calendar is the Met Gala, an annual fundraising gala for the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute in New York City, and the most-watched fashion/society event of the year. It's usually an occasion for a (very) select few to dress-up in response to the year's theme, in a grand display of fashion as art, with the results ranging from the sublime to the ludicrous. This year it was postponed.

The show must go on, as they say, and it was a group of Gen-Z internet kids known as High Fashion Twitter (or 'hf twitter', because they're too cool for CAPS) hosting the biggest fashion party of the year. On May 4th, instead of the exclusive, highly branded, extremely profitable, marketing opportunity the Met Gala has become, hf twitter brought us an inclusive online celebration of self-expression and diversity. Whether dressing themselves, collaging or using other visual means, the guests shared their 'looks' on Twitter with the hashtag #HFMetGala2020, taking fashion out of the hands of the establishment, if only for a day.

High Fashion Twitter is a loosely structured mix of fashion fans and aficionados, who share inspiration and knowledge while being vocal about industry issues such as representation, sustainability and accountability. And for the event, they purposefully excluded any brands they deemed problematic, such as those known for cultural appropriation.  

FASHION AND SOCIETY

"I understand that, for many, the purpose of a fashion magazine is about escapism, about providing beautiful images of beautiful people in beautiful clothes […] But there are moments when this feels weird. And this is one of those moments."

Emanuele Farneti, editor-in-chief of Vogue Italia

The effects of a global disaster of this magnitude amplified many social justice issues, notably resulting in the backlash over tone-deaf comments from fashion brands about the Black Lives Matter Movement, or their conspicuous, deafening silence. There was nowhere for the industry to hide.

While taking any political stance wasn't de rigueur for most major fashion houses, it's now not only accepted but expected to be in touch with issues facing the wider community. In fact, for some, this out-of-touchness is seen as impossibly callous in a world confronted by human tragedy and economic devastation.

There have been attempts to meet the moment, with efforts such as Vogue's new web series "Good Morning Vogue", fashion's self-proclaimed "wake up call". If the last decade has shifted the discourse around issues such as racism and climate change, then the global pandemic has accelerated it.

FASHION GOING FORWARD

"Through the creation of less product, with higher levels of creativity and quality, products will be valued and their shelf life will increase. The focus on creativity and quality of products, reduction in travel and focus on sustainability […] will increase the consumer's respect and ultimately their greater enjoyment in the products that we create."

The British Fashion Council

Driven by a new generation of socially and environmentally conscious consumers who care where the things they buy come from and where they'll end up, brands have upped their sustainability game. And with the threat of this pandemic acting as a call to action for the fashion industry to slow down and scale down before we find our selves facing a much bigger existential threat.

COVID-19 has caused a significant shift in the mindsets of both brand and consumer, teaching us all to slow down and reset. And should this pass, the things we learnt to value, such as our health, our freedom and hopefully our planet, may eclipse our desire for any conveyor belt of trends.

[webcricket]

Winter’s Eye

Pairing: AU!CastielXReader Word Count: 1525 (Ch. V) Story Summary: Season 13 canon tells you how AU!Castiel’s story ends, this is how it begins. The deranged and damaged iteration of Castiel we met in the apocalypse universe - an obedient soldier to Michael’s cause barely in control of his vessel’s frayed and erratically firing nerves whose inherent kindness toward humankind appeared entirely obliterated - wasn’t always an unfeeling angelic weapon of interrogation. Once, he sympathized with the plight of humans; one, he loved. Chapter Summary: Coffee and a conversation - neither the reader or the angel suspects how a sweetly simple start will lead to heartbreaking complications.

Series Masterlist

V.

Castiel notices the alteration of a week’s long routine immediately upon entering the cabin; his final armload of tinder teeters when he perceives in his preliminary survey of the space he expects to see you occupying the you-sized void located beside the stove.

Every morning prior you huddled as a human pillow fort there; blanket draping your bulwark frame, despotic frown armoring your aspect, you dwelt near the heat source prepared to catch his eye as soon as he sought for yours to commence his daily plea for armistice to end that siege of silence.

The composure ruffled for a moment by the dread of a renewed isolation returns to the angel in the galvanizing sound of a heartbeat resonant somewhere within; casting his focus backward along the wall, he hones in on the owner of that soothing pulse.

On this morning, you sit at a rustic stout log-legged table constructed from the lacquered cross-section of a hundreds of years old oak not unlike the one you nearly perished under; the rings signifying the tree’s longevity multiply like ripples of a stone tossed in a stream, so tightly stacked as to be indiscernible from infinity itself. Situated beneath a square western facing window, gauzy gingham curtains pinned aside permit both a wash of light and the wintry view an entrance.

You seem lost in the vista; outward gaze unperturbed, your lips purse to cool the coffee raised to them. The dimmed gold diffusion that suffices for a sunrise these days radiates in halo effect around your profile.

Of secondary - albeit curious - concern to the relief he feels in what appears to him to be a positive and heavenly amendment of attitude in a heretofore dourly resigned disposition, a second untouched mug occupies the tabletop. Dwelling out of your easy reach, the significance of the surplus cup puzzles him.

Even more so unnerving to him is the enigma of the chair opposite you shifting suddenly asunder the table; in his distraction, he perceives the movement as occurring seemingly of its own volition rather than relating to the slide of your socked foot inviting him to fill the seat.

“I made you a cup of coffee,” is all you say, outward glance through the glass unbroken.

Balancing the heaped wood long enough to pivot and let it loose in a controlled, but raucous, roll from his arms onto the stack adjacent the door, he mostly manages to stifle the shock subverting his angelically stoic sensibilities over the scene.

When he wheels round, your focus is fixed on him; amusement hints in laugh lines skirting your mouth and a glint of mischief in your gaze.

He doesn’t drink coffee, but he’s astute enough to understand the gesture is more than just a cup of coffee - it’s an olive branch. He brushes off the bits of bark and incorporeal clumsiness clinging to his vessel and crosses the room in a brisk stride.

Sinking onto the seat, spine rigid, he clasps his fingers on the glossy ringed surface in an effort to affect an appearance of relaxation; fidgeting in their ill-feeling fitment, he ultimately relegates the difficulty of the calloused and uncalm digits into his lap and out of your sight.

“Um-” peering into the mirrored surface of the murky brown drink, bright block of window light shimmering your reflection thereon, he recalls the human proclivity for niceties in lieu of satisfying outright an inquisitiveness to know what caused your reconsideration of his charity- “thank you.”

You wince a little at that; the judder of the table undulates your image in his cup. It’s you who should be thanking him. You wouldn’t even have coffee if he hadn’t resupplied the cupboard a few days ago from God knows what resource he found in his wanderings.

All subtle trace of gaiety flees from your features; your chin bobs once under the burden of the guilt-ridden acknowledgement. Bringing the rim of the mug to your mouth, you sip, swallow hard against the throat thickening reminder of your boorish behavior, and permit a sliver of apologetic humility to emerge as a quiet murmur. “It’s the least I could do.”

Following your cue, glad to give one of his hands a useful purpose, he takes a tentative sip from his cup. The heat and acidity of the molecular explosion tickles his vessels tongue. While the impression is by no means a pleasant one, it’s one he bears out by forcing a compact semblance of gratitude into the curvature of his standard pout.

“It’s-” he clears the cough contracting his lungs- “uh-”

“It’s terrible.” You chuckle, allaying his stuttered struggle to maintain diplomacy. “Trust me, the taste improves with cream and couple pumps of cinnamon dolce and vanilla syrup, but even the Starbucks on every corner business model couldn’t survive in the present market climate.”

Your attempt at levity face plants in the slow-motion tilt of Castiel’s head and introspective tapering of his lashes that tell you he doesn’t get that particular reference.

He watches you endure another self-deprecatory gulp of the scalding stuff. “I’ll take your word for it,” he determines, although the doubt deepening his tone insinuates he’s not at all convinced.

No longer able to mince matters of caffeine with those regarding his celestial origin - the elephant in the room trumpeting caution in affront to your humanity - you set your mug and elbows before you to put his intent, once again, to the test.

Intensity shines in your irises as you lean forward on your seat, asking, “What’s really your deal anyway?”

He doesn’t so much as blink those blues at the rapid difference of direction from the realm of the mundane to more mortal concerns. He also misconstrues your meaning by offering a curt correction that, “Deals are for demons.”

You clarify. “I mean, what’s an angel doing patrolling out in the middle of no man’s land?”

The drop of his gaze and slouching of shoulders betray his discomfort, yet no immediate reason springs to his mind to evade providing an honest answer. “It’s a punishment.”

“For what?”

Pain dampens the countenance that rises to resolve on yours. “Pride.”

Your brow quirks, “Pride?”

He nods; hesitance to speak aloud for the first time about his past and how much to share stymies his tongue. He runs a broad fingertip along the outline of a blackened ring on the tabletop, relaying the outermost layers of his remorse as he absentmindedly follows the ashy line.

“When I realized angels were purposely abetting the breaking of apocalyptic seals, I rebelled. It was already too late to stop that seizure of power which was set so precipitously in motion, but I thought absolute disaster might be mitigated. Many of my brothers and sisters died because they followed me believing we had a chance to save this world for humanity. We– I- failed. And now-” He averts lashes wetly damned by sorrow to the window and all the barren ‘and now’ plainly evidenced beyond it.

You slump backward into the chair, astonished by the unguarded anguish of a being whose species as a whole you lately considered as incapable of feeling genuine emotion. “This … this isn’t what I expected.” The muffled acknowledgement of his outstripping your expectations isn’t one you necessarily meant to utter aloud.

He sniffs against the well of tears he thought long ran dry and looks once more at you. “I don’t think this is what any of us expected.” He judges the confusion contorting your forehead at his restatement as a want of further elucidation rather than his misunderstanding yet again what you’ve said. “That is to say except maybe the Apostle John, but he always was something of a catastrophic thinker. None of us could have guessed the Book of Revelation would prove so, well-” he pauses to exhale a sigh redolent of regret at not heeding the warning- “prophetic.”

“I meant you. You’re not who I expected you to be,” you add fuel to the foray of misperceived meanings hovering in the air between you. “That’s a good thing,” you reassure the fret of his brow; a small smile brews on your lips as you raise your cup. “So what happens now? I know you said angels don’t do the whole deal thing, but this seems a little unfair, you taking care of me. What do you get out of it?”

Mimicking the casualness of your sip, he picks up his mug and swirls a mouthful; there’s a subtle sweetness he could grow accustomed to underlying the molecules this time. Adams apple bobbing as the coffee trickles down his gullet, he says, “More of this, I hope.”

“Stale coffee?” you tease; sloshing the grainy dregs around the bottom of your emptied cup, the porcelain emits a hollow thud when you set it on the table.

Tone softened by a sincerity of want toward your continued company, he corrects, “Conversation.”

“I think I can do that.” You accept terms that, despite their being undemanding on his part in exchange for his invaluable protection, leave the angel feeling he’s gotten the better end of the bargain.

Next Chapter: VI

[scottsimmerman]

Too Busy to Improve?

Too Busy to Improve?

There is a lot of background around this new poster, and a few different versions of things. But the basic idea is about how ideas are handled.

Here, a person (an outsider, an employee, another wagon puller?) is trying to share a Best Practice, the idea of using a ROUND wheel. But, the wagon puller is simply too busy to listen, much less to stop.

HOW do we get organizations to understand the…

[villagreys]

Range rover evoque

The mapping on this website is provided by external mapping providers and is for general information purposes only. Please contact your local retailer for local availability and prices. Find new & used Land Rover Range Rover Evoque cars for sale on South Africas leading car marketplace with the largest selection of Land Rover Range Rover. Some vehicles are shown with optional equipment and retailer-fit accessories that may not be available in all markets. The information, specification, engines and colour on this website are based on European specification and may vary from market to market and are subject to change without notice. Some features may vary between optional and standard for different model years. Jaguar Land Rover Limited is constantly seeking ways to improve the specification, design and production of its vehicles, parts and accessories and alterations take place continually, and we reserve the right to change without notice. Customers are urged to consult your local Retailer for detailed 22 model year specifications and do not base an order on marketing imagery and specification alone. Features, options, trim and colour schemes will differ from many images. Until this unique event settles, please note that many images cannot be updated to 22 model year specifications. Now the global impact of micro-chip shortages is further affecting build specifications, options and launch timings. Due to the Covid pandemic we have been prevented or delayed in the creation of new images of current model years. It won our Car of the Year award during its debut year, while its impressive engineering has meant even older models still look modern and fresh today.Important note on imagery & specification. Range Rover Evoque history Range Rover Evoque Mk1: 2011-2018īased on the 2008 Land Rover LRX Concept, the first generation Evoque was launched in 2011 with three- and five-door models available. It may not be the most practical SUV and reliability can sometimes be an issue, but it offers tremendous kerb appeal and will suit families who want a comfortable cruiser with a little added sophistication. Stylish and good to drive, the compact SUV ably represents the Land Rover brand, offering a more affordable entry point into ownership than many of its bigger, more luxurious siblings. The Evoque is Land Rover's best-selling model, so buyers looking for a decent used example should be spoilt for choice. The top-spec Autobiography trim is only available in combination with the higher-powered petrol or diesel versions, and also with the plug-in hybrid variant. There are five basic equipment levels – Evoque, Evoque S, R-Dynamic, Edition, HST and Autobiography. The Range Rover Evoque is available with a choice of two diesel engines, three petrols and a plug-in hybrid unit, all coming with four-wheel drive and a nine-speed automatic gearbox - although the entry diesel model is offered in front-wheel-drive form, too. The Evoque is the smallest Range Rover model that Land Rover produces and in its original form – introduced in 2011 – it was a car that set a precedent as a small yet luxurious SUV aimed squarely at a niche in the market. And while it’s likely that Evoques will be sold on looks alone, it’s encouraging that the car once again represents a viable alternative to favourites like the Audi Q3, Volvo XC40 and even JLR’s own Jaguar E-Pace. While SUV rivals including the BMW X2 offer a more engaging driving experience, the Evoque provides a focus on luxury and comfort that most buyers will prefer. But, the it's the Benefit-in-Kind savings for business users that will make the plug-in hybrid version particularly appealing. The standard equipment list is generous, while higher-spec models bring full-fat Range Rover appointments. The latest Range Rover Evoque has taken a big leap forward over the old model, adding fresh styling, up-to-date technology, a range of more efficient mild- and plug-in hybrid engines and extra touches of luxury and refinement inside.

[architectnews]

ILOW Housing, Nanterre

ILOW Housing, Parisian Apartment Development, Building Design Photos, French Architecture

ILOW Housing in Nanterre, Paris

21 Jan 2021

ILOW Housing

Architects: CRA for Bouygues Immobilier

Location: Nanterre, Paris, France

CRA and Bouygues Immobilier file permits for a new building in Paris, located in-between La Défense financial district and the 1970s iconic Tours Nuages social housing complex. The project serves as an experiment to mediate between different social worlds.

International design and innovation office CRA-Carlo Ratti Associati and Bouygues Immobilier have unveiled the design of ILOW Housing, a new building in Paris that aims to act as a bridge between La Défense, the French capital’s financial powerhouse, and the nearby Tours Nuages (Cloud Towers), one of the most iconic social housing projects of the postwar era. The building, designed in collaboration with Agence d’Architecture Willerval et Associés, is shaped like two open arms connecting two different socio-economic neighborhoods. Moreover, it leverages parametric design to generate a facade that reinterprets the Tours Nuages. CRA has filed building permits to the local municipal authority.

ILOW (pronounced EE-LOW) is located on the margin of La Défense, Europe’s largest business district, in the western part of the Parisian metropolitan area. The building edges towards a neighborhood in the municipality of Nanterre, which is home to the mimetic, soft-shaped “Cloud Towers” designed by architect Émile Aillaud between 1973 and 1981. The Tours Nuages are a bold, pioneering social housing experiment. Pulitzer Prize critic Ada Louise Huxtable defined the towers with their multi-color cloud patterns as “surprisingly beautiful buildings,” while leading art curator Robert Hughes included them in his famous “Shock of the New” 1980 BBC documentary.

CRA’s design aims to bring together two adjacent neighborhoods that have long been socially separated from each other. The building is structured around two wings – like two open arms – with a central green courtyard unfolding between them, connecting ILOW with the neighboring public park. The design provides 12,500 square meters (134,550 square feet) of mixed-function spaces, including offices, a restaurant, and a café. The ground floor is transparent and open to the public, promoting the mixing of different communities, while the top of the building features a roof garden. In short, ILOW strives to create a physical “common ground” that extends on different levels while creating visual connections with the surrounding areas.

“We are trying to use design promote social encounters – between different people, cultures and social groups,” says Carlo Ratti, founding partner of CRA and director of the Senseable City Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology: “This is what is unique about physical — as opposed to digital — space, something which the pandemic made us all too aware of. We can use architecture to bridge across different social worlds.”

With ILOW, CRA pays tribute to Aillaud’s radical visions, reinterpreting them to develop a contemporary “atmospheric architecture.” The building’s curvaceous façade uses a parametric approach – by which a form unfolds following a mathematical model conceived to satisfy a set of specific, ever-evolving targets or “parameters.” Prefabricated modules of various sizes are arranged to create a curved surface that is designed to follow the sun’s trajectory, guaranteeing the optimum lighting conditions indoors while reducing energy consumption. The focus on environmental sustainability also inspires the project’s name. ILOW is a pun on the French word for “small island” – often used in the turn of phrase un îlot de verdure (an island of greenery) – that hints at the building’s low energy consumption.

ILOW is the latest project by CRA to experiment with office design. The 280-meter-high CapitaSpring under construction in Singapore’s Central Business District, designed jointly by CRA and BIG, features both residences and a tropical forest at its core. When completed later this year, it will be the second-tallest skyscraper in the country. CRA also recently developed the interior design for the headquarters of biotech company Zambon, and just unveiled the design for Sella Group’s Open Innovation Center in Turin. The project leverages digital technologies to encourage social interactions and serendipity in the work environment while opening the buildings towards the surrounding city.

The Wood House in Paris, France – Building Information

Design: Carlo Ratti Associati for Bouygues Immobilier Location: Nanterre, France Creative Consultancy: Italo Rota CRA Team: Carlo Ratti, Andrea Cassi (Project manager), Anna Morani,Mario Daudo, Matteo Zerbi, Alberto Benetti, Andrea Fasolo, Valentina Grasso,Federico Riches, Oliver Kazimir, Galla Vallée CRA Graphic Team: Gary di Silvio, Pasquale Milieri, Gianluca Zimbard

Collaborators: Agence d’Architecture Willerval et Associés (Associate Project Management) Auris (Research Coordinator) VP & Green Engineering (Structural and Façade Engineering) Alto Ingenierie (MEP Engineering) Acoustique & Conseil (Acoustic Engineering) Green Soluce (Haute Qualité Environnementale Consultant) BTP Consultants – Agence Tertiaire (Building Technical Control) Iliade Ingenierie (Economist) Systal (Food and Services Consultant)

About CRA: CRA-Carlo Ratti Associati is an international design and innovation practice based in Turin, Italy, and New York City. Drawing on Carlo Ratti’s research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the office is currently involved in many projects across the globe, embracing every scale of intervention from furniture to urban planning. Among recent designs are the Italian Pavilion at Expo Dubai 2020, CapitaSpring tower in Singapore, MEET Digital Arts Center in Milan, the Eyes of the City exhibition at the 2019 Bi-City Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism of Shenzhen, and the redesign of the Agnelli Foundation HQ in Turin.

In March 2020, CRA initiated CURA (Connected Units of Respiratory Ailments), a global open-source initiative to convert shipping containers into plug-in Intensive-Care Units for COVID-19 patients. It is also the only design firm whose works have been featured three times in TIME Magazine’s “Best Inventions of the Year” list – respectively with the Digital Water Pavilion in 2007, the Copenhagen Wheel in 2014, and Scribit in 2019. In the last years, the office has been involved in the launch of Makr Shakr, a startup producing the world’s first robotic bar system, and Scribit, the write&erase robot.

About Bouygues Immobilier: Bouygues Immobilier is a developer – urban designer, and benchmark player on the French market, which employs 1,900 people, with a turnover of 2.7 billion euros in 2019. For over sixty years, Bouygues Immobilier has been present across the entire real estate value chain with its core business, from development to operation and promotion.

Bouygues Immobilier provides innovative and sustainable solutions to the needs of the territories and its customers thanks to its multi-product offer (social, intermediate, and free housing, office real estate, shops, managed residences, and hotels) and thanks to a powerful network of agencies in France and three international locations. Demanding when it comes to quality and committed when it comes to improving its employees’ well-being, Bouygues Immobilier is the first developer to be ISO 9001 certified in France and Top Employer France 2020 for seven years in a row.

About Agence D��architecture Willerval Et Associes: Registered architect (DPLG) since 1983, Bruno Willerval has been working for several years in association with his father, Jean Willerval (1st national architectural prize, died in 1996). He founded his own practice AGENCE D’ARCHITECTURE BRUNO WILLERVAL in 1994 and joined forces for several years with JP Bridot, who left the agency in 2018. In 2020, architects Pierre-Alexandre LAVAUT and Natalie SCHOETTLER formed the Agence D’architecture Willerval Et Associes as new partners after many years within the agency.

Today, team skills and human potential make it possible to respond to public or private projects, like offices, housing, equipment, shops, and hotels. Important projects, particularly tertiary ones, complete the agency’s portfolio. Among the main projects, there are three towers at La Défense and numerous international headquarters: the Prisma tower in 1998, the Exaltis Tower for Mazars headquarters in 2006, and the Athena Tower for Alliance One head office in 2015. Further projects are EOS Générali for Microsoft Europe head office in Issy Les Moulineaux in 2009, Galiléo for CGG Véritas headquarters in Massy in 2010, Eco campus of Orange in Chatillon in 2016, the Arenas, the head office of Crédit du Maroc, a subsidiary of Crédit Agricole SA in Casablanca in 2021. Furthermore, the agency is also working on housing projects mainly based in Ile de France.

The Wood House in Paris, France images / information received 210121

Location: Nanterre, Paris, France

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2024 Paris Olympics’ Aquatic Center Design: MAD Architects ; Jacques Rougerie Architecture ; Atelier Phileas Architecture ; Apma Architecture image courtesy of MIR 2024 Paris Olympics Aquatic Center Building

Public Condenser, Ile-de-France, new campus of Paris-Saclay, Gif-sur-Yvette, Ile-de-France Design: Muoto Architects photograph : Maxime Delvaux Public Condenser in Gif-sur-Yvette, Paris-Saclay

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Comments / photos for the The Wood House in Paris, France architecture page welcome

Website: Nanterre, France

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[georgecmatthews]

The Future of E-Commerce and Retail Will Be Written in China

We believe China is ground zero for the future of retail and the West will learn from and adapt the experiments that are already moving to scale in the East.

Consider Alibaba, the Chinese Internet giant whose wide-ranging businesses span e-commerce, offline retail, fintech, online video, maps and browsers, and artificial intelligence. By end of its latest fiscal year (March 2019), Alibaba’s business model appeared to have reached peak fruition, as the company took pole position as the world’s largest e-commerce platform with a GMV (gross merchandise value) of over US$850 billion (a factor of well over 2x Amazon, which moved some $300 billion of goods in calendar year 2018), but was also third in digital advertising, just behind Google and Facebook. What could possibly change?

Experiments in retail

A lot has been changing at Alibaba in the past two years, above and beyond the headline GMV metric. Alibaba’s experiments in what it calls “new retail” have gained a scale and urgency scarcely imagined a year ago. Over 1.3 million of China’s 6 million mom and pop stores have signed up for the company’s Lingshoutong initiative.1 Lingshoutong refits the shops, supplies them directly using Alibaba’s logistics channel, aggregates offline and online data, and extracts a monthly commitment of throughput in return.

Additionally, Alibaba’s high-tech food/grocery retail store concept, known as Hema, is expanding quickly. Figure 1. These outlets serve as walk-in restaurants, food and grocery purchase points, and warehouses for online delivery (within 30 minutes in a three-kilometer radius)–all at the same time. There are now 170 Hema stores in operation (as of September 2019), with two being added each week. Already, Hemastores in operation for over 18 months are reporting revenues of 50,000 renminbi per square meter, up to five times what traditional offline stores can generate. Sixty percent of Hema’s sales are through the online delivery channel, making the stores far more productive, for far more hours of the day, than pure offline stores.2

Figure 1: Hema’s footprint is expanding rapidly

Sources: Alibaba quarterly disclosures.

Unsurprisingly, China seems uniquely ready to adopt the Hema concept. Organized channels for groceries are currently underdeveloped compared to those in the United States, where over 90% of groceries already pass through established super/hypermarkets. In China, wet markets, the Asian equivalent of farmers markets that sell fresh meat and produce, still account for more than 70% of the country’s grocery sector. This signifies the boundless potential for Hema as it keeps on driving the new retail experience involving online and offline integration.  Figure 2.

Figure 2: How China shops for food versus the United States

Source: Alibaba presentations, 2018 Investor Day, Sep 17-18, 2018.

There is more. Alibaba’s online shopping Taobao platform is no longer content with making ad-based recommendations, which were driven by keyword bidding by merchants. Recommendation feeds driven by consumer opinions have gained priority, as have sharing, short-form videos, and live streams. Taobao claims a 58% improvement in conversions when users view short-form videos. Additionally, gross merchandise value (GMV) driven by live streaming rose nearly four times in the past year.3

Ambitions are also rising at the recently acquired Ele.me, an online food delivery platform. Not content with its over 200 million user base, Ele.me is now eyeing the nearly 800 million e-commerce user base of Taobao and Tmall, another Alibaba e-commerce platform, and the 900 million users of Alipay, Alibaba’s digital payments platform, to substantially expand its reach.4

Retail space owned by Intime Retail–now a part of Alibaba–is being used for experimental “Tmall pop-up stores,” which allows consumers to walk in, sample inventory, access a large apparel collection on giant touchscreens within the store, pay with Alipay, and choose self-pickup or home delivery. Alibaba also has a furniture store that uses augmented and virtual reality to show consumers how an item will look in their homes. And retail stores owned by Sun Art Retail, in which Alibaba has a 31% stake, are dedicating space to products directly sourced from Tmall. These products can be sampled with an eye to the online purchasing habits of people in the immediate vicinity of the store–tastes the offline store may not have been aware of before, but known to Alibaba via its ecommerce operations. Greasing the wheels of this transformation is a planned logistics investment of $15 billion over five years.5

The need for a retail transformation

Is there a method to this cornucopia of initiatives? Alibaba’s new long-term target to transition from working with 10 million small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to 10 million profitable SMEs provides a clue.6 As e-commerce penetration rises to nearly 20% in China,7 the existing silos of offline and online retail raise vital questions: Are brands and merchants more profitable, or less, as e-commerce grows larger? Does Alibaba’s rising “take rate”–the percentage of GMV that flows into revenues–come at the expense of its merchants’ profitability, or is everyone truly better off–do merchants enjoy better profitability even as Alibaba raises its own monetization?

These questions create a fundamental need to transform the way retail works. Analysis suggests that between 2011 and 2016, when e-commerce grew dramatically in China, selling, general, and administrative (SG&A) costs rose significantly for several retail categories as they tried to keep up. Figure 3. Specifically, consumer appliances saw their SG&A costs rise 340 basis points, apparel saw a near 500 basis point rise, and personal care spent 80 basis points more.8 These rising costs reflect the parallel universes that exist today: offline retail channels, demand management, space planning, supply chains, and consumer analytics have little in common with e-commerce. Increasingly, brands and merchants seem to be running two businesses for the same product, which unsurprisingly leads to cost inflation.

Exhibit 3: Across categories, SG&A costs have risen with sales

Source: Bernstein Research, as of 12/16. SG&A refers to sale, general, and administrative costs.

The true promise of omnichannel retail, or new retail, is a more profitable merchant. The future economics of giant e-commerce platforms will likely emerge from this promise, and the hope that these platforms will not simply maintain their share of a shrinking pie, but maintain or increase their share of an expanding one. Not content to be appropriators or gatekeepers of consumer demand, these platforms increasingly aim to help fundamentally change the way consumers shop.

Points of friction are likely

Not all will be smooth, of course. The real world possesses far more points of friction than online businesses traditionally encounter. Offline or omnichannel initiatives address a target market that is five times larger than online retail, but one-fifth as profitable, or even less so in the initial years after they’re introduced.9 Even as the strategic rationale for ongoing initiatives is inescapable, reported profitability is likely to head downward and stay volatile. Indeed, fundamental questions linger. What shall we consider GMV in an omnichannel world? Will walking into a Hema store be considered “offline,” while ordering the same food via the app be considered “online”?

Elsewhere, the expectations of consumers and merchants will remain fluid, exposing new threats and opportunities. Consider Pinduoduo (PDD). Founded in 2015, PDD has grown quickly to become China’s third largest e-commerce platform and has attracted 430 million annual active buyers to its unique model of social commerce, a group-buying model that weaponizes social networks such as Tencent’s WeChat to propagate offers. PDD’s rise offers inescapable proof that there are still unmet consumer needs, despite everything we have already seen in China. And merchants need more too–more analytics, higher returns on their ad spends, and more handholding with their supply chain and IT systems. There are companies seeking to address these needs: Meituan, for example, is not just China’s largest food delivery and restaurant booking platform, it also provides restaurant management software that is helping to cement its lead. Elsewhere, ByteDance–the owner of the vital Douyin short-video platform in China (known as Tik Tok internationally) does not seem contend with entertainment alone and the firm is rapidly moving into shopping. As of now, its short-video content synchronizes into shopping opportunities into Alibaba, JD and others, but it may expand its own marketplace too, if industry chatter is to be believed.

And thus, to the future of retail. What drives shopping? Needs, of course, but also habits, impulses and, increasingly, fun. Shoppers seek convenience, price, and experience, but also identity and social connection. In the future, will it really matter where we notice a product, where we try it, pay for it, or how it is delivered to us? These ideas are not new, but as e-commerce platforms and offline retail move into each other’s turf, they have acquired an immediacy not seen before. Theory is moving into financial forecasts, and extant silos of thought are beginning to be challenged–just earlier, and faster, in China.

Footnotes

Source: Alibaba presentations, 2019 Investor Day, Sep, 2019.

Source: Alibaba quarterly disclosures.

Source: Alibaba company reports.

Source: Alibaba company reports.

Source: Alibaba company reports.

Source: Alibaba company reports.

Source: China’s National Bureau of Statistics, 2017 penetration had reached the high teens.

Source: Bernstein analysis.

Note: Assuming a 5% offline retail profitability at scale.

Important Information

Blog header image: d3sign / Getty

An investment in emerging market countries carries greater risks compared to more developed economies.

The risks of investing in securities of foreign issuers, including emerging market issuers, can include fluctuations in foreign currencies, political and economic instability, and foreign taxation issues.

The mention of specific companies, industries, sectors or countries does not constitute a recommendation on behalf of Invesco.

from Expert Investment Views: Invesco Blog https://www.blog.invesco.us.com/the-future-of-e-commerce-and-retail-will-be-written-in-china/

[cleverwolfpoetry]

Psycho-pass Movie Novel Chapter 4 Part 2

It's been a while since the last translation...we left Akane on the plane. Now we'll see what happens when she sets foot on SEAUn's land.

Below, some lines from this translation together with images taken from the movie...

Old high-rise constructions, built in reinforced concrete in a time when the world was still a little more ordinary, were mixed with structures made of red rusted corrugated iron. All the buildings were full of holes like cheese because of gunshots and artillery fire.

They came in sight of the city on water “Shambala Float”* --- the organized capitol of SEAUn. 

Looking from afar, Shambala Float was too much like a fortress. The tower that looked down upon the people and the cold iron walls had an air that kept the unneeded away.

And now...the translation. 

Note before reading: sentences in italics represent the character’s thoughts.

3

  The transport jet plane entered SEAUn’s sky.

The view out of the window was enlarged and electronically corrected. An overwhelmingly larger number of wastelands and woods than in Japan. A scenery of plantations and rural country like in historical records --- . The dark red of the wasteland was oddly impressive. It looked like the colour of a ground dried after being painted with blood. Burning down woods, fields and towns would probably had resulted in such a colour. Unpaved roads ran in all directions like soil cracks.

Shortly after, the transport airplane passed over an urban area.

The slums, made of short shacks lined up, spread out endlessly.

Then, urban warfare.

A truck armed with a heavy machine gun --- the so-called technical vehicle --- was running around, also carrying a strengthening external skeleton of several generations before. In the window display that Tsunemori was watching, the technical vehicle and its external armor were shown encircled in red.

“…are they…amidst a fight?”   

“Speaking of civil war, it’s a civil war, but you can also call it simply a riot. In the suburbs, the organized crime fights as well using heavy machine guns. When civil war is everyday practice, it becomes ordinary. No one among the people of this country knows peace. The only things here are a chain of poverty and violence”

“Such a situation…is it more than 10 years?”  

“The Sibyl System is meant to change that. Anyway, you have to start with the ‘patient isolation’ firstly”

The transport jet airplane landed on the airstrip. It was taxied* to the apron. After stopping completely, the door opened.

“So, miss Ministry of Welfare, we landed safely!” she was greeted by Tanohata while leaving the plane and stepped foot on the foreign land.

The moment she had been brushed by the air, she felt the heat of it. She felt the moisture sticking to her skin. In Tōkyō --- at least in the business district, the air conditioning was controlled in every corner. She could tell to be in a different country through the skin sensation. She was aware of her entire body gradually sweating.

The drones started the handling operations of the goods stacked in the transport jet.

Heavily armed soldiers were lined up in front of the airport facility, located at a short distance from the plane. The man leading the soldiers was a colonel of the SEAUn National Military Police. Tsunemori turned on the translation function on her portable terminal immediately.

“I’m Colonel Nicholas Wong of the National Military Police. You are Inspector Tsunemori Akane from the Japanese Ministry of Welfare, right?”

“Yes”

“Welcome. We are glad to receive you and the Sibyl System”

Nicholas was a half-westerner man with long hair. This man was also perfectly dressed in a somewhat too gaudy uniform. A well-proportioned face --- facial surgery? In Japan, having plastic surgery has gotten easier from year to year together with the technique improvement, but I wonder how is the medical technology in this country.

Tsunemori got into a high mobility multipurpose wheeled vehicle* of the National Military Police together with Nicholas.

There were two types of wheeled vehicles there. One type of large size and one type with a machine gun loaded on the roof top. Tsunemori’s group got into the large sized one. The model carrying the machine gun was a security escort vehicle. Considering the roads were in bad condition, that vehicle was not so uncomfortable to ride in. From the airport, the queue of vehicles of the National Military Police headed for the metropolis center.

“Are you shocked at how bad the situation is here?” 

Nicholas addressed her.

“No…” Tsunemori shook her head vaguely.

“At the moment, it’s the same in every country. Except for Japan”

“…”

For some time travelling from the airport to the capital center they saw city slums. Old high-rise constructions, built in reinforced concrete in a time when the world was still a little more ordinary, were mixed with structures made of red rusted corrugated iron. All the buildings were full of holes like cheese because of gunshots and artillery fire. The vehicles troops were running at high speed through those slums with a maze-like appearance. The armored car had no windows but they could check the situation outside through the displays on the internal walls. Halfway, Tsunemori caught sight of a large sized crane truck. Many corpses were hanging on that crane, tied with ropes. 

“It’s a sight you can see frequently because of rivalry over the territory. A warning”      

Nicholas, who had noticed Tsunemori’s glance, explained her. 

The vehicle troops moved forward with the resounding deep noise of the engine, threatening the population further. Nicholas was paying attention to the holographic monitor appeared from the portable terminal on his wrist. He was checking the counter-mortar radar, the detection and ranging radar*, the electromagnetic waves probe device for detection of improvised explosive devices (IED)*, etc.

“…is it so much dangerous? Around here…”

“The situation has gotten better than it was before. The main military clan has been already repressed. The civil war is coming to an end”

“So by that you mean…that it’s not completely finished yet?”

“Exactly. The dissidents who revolt against the present regime still remain”

They came in sight of the city on water “Shambala Float”* --- the organized capitol of SEAUn. 

A colossal structure. Tsunemori unconsciously summoned up some data.  

A total area of approximately 100 square kilometers. 100.000 inhabitants.

Dvapara yuga in the lower stories, Treta Yuga in the upper stories, then the sky gardens of Krita Yuga* on the top, containing the Chairman’s official residence and a big heliport. Beside the Float, the offshore base of the National Military Police annexed to it. The external appearance of the high-rise tower which constitutes the center of the Krita Yuga resembles the Japanese Ministry of Welfare’s Nona Tower, if only a little. As the design concept is the same, it is only natural.

Looking from afar, Shambala Float was too much like a fortress. The tower that looked down upon the people and the cold iron walls had an air that kept the unneeded away.

Shambala Float was protected by the sea. The bridge and the gate were so well guarded by armed soldiers and military drones made in Japan that neither an ant could easily pass through them.

Fish-shaped security drones must have been swimming even in the sea.

“Here in Shambala special district, the Sibyl System is starting on an experimental basis. Only the people whose hue and crime coefficient are acknowledged as normal can enter…thanks to that country”

--- thanks to that “country”?

Tsunemori somehow felt that those words spoken by Nicholas were like irony. It shouldn’t have been so.

Isn’t it a very common talk? But even so ---

The country where Tsunemori Akane was born, the country where Tsunemori Akane was living. The overall perspective was hard to grasp. And when Japan had got to stretch its hands to different foreign countries, it had been hard to grasp even more. The highest organ of decision-making existed in a place that no citizen in the country knew and carried out operations so far as military aid to foreign countries in a way that no citizen in the country knew.  It was a turn of phrase but, as a Japanese citizen, did it mean that Tsunemori was cooperating with the SEAUn’s government forces too? 

In front of the gate that led to Shambala Float, the citizen who begged to get inside were checked by the National Military Police soldiers who were bringing with them security drones and scanners that judged the people hue. The ones with a particularly clear hue entered with a great joy but the others were repelled. It also happened that the ones with a clouded hue were disposed of on the spot.

By chance, beside the car that was carrying Tsunemori’s group, a mother holding an infant in her arms was being checked. The infant was clear. However, the mother was out. The soldiers separated parent and child and threatened the wailing mother with their guns.

“Isn’t it…too violent?”

“Don’t things like that happen in Japan?”

She had been answered a question with a question.

Tsunemori couldn’t retort more.

What the soldiers were holding was an improved model made in SEAUn of an assault rifle called SCAR* produced by the company FN. The micro fire-control system, the identification friend or foe (IFF)* system and so on had been added but the basic structure hadn’t change from the one of 100 years ago. In the countries besides Japan, there wasn’t enough technological power to develop and keep electromagnetic weaponry. Moreover, whatever weapon even of 100 years ago had no problem in fighting against the guerrilla and threatening a young mother. 

The car where Tsunemori’s group was travelling passed through the gate and entered more and more inside of Shambala Float.

It’s completely different from the outside --- the inner part was just another word, the image of peace. Families with smiling faces, couples who went shopping. Bustling crowded streets sparkling with hologram generating devices made in Japan. However, among them there were people wearing strange collars.

“Those collars…”

“Have you noticed? Those people are latent criminals”

“…!”

“As their psycho-pass is continuously monitored through that device, they are granted freedom of movement. If the hue gets clouded the crime coefficient is instantly measured. It’s a device that injects a sedative or a lethal poison depending on the points”

The latent criminals wearing the collars were busy with the city’s clean-up works.

The common citizens passed by as if the latent criminals didn’t exist. They neither met their gaze. For latent criminals and common citizens, even the buses they used had been strictly separated.

“Letting them have a life shared with common citizens this way is not advisable from the area stress point of view but…as we can’t still arrange large enough isolation facilities like in Japan, it’s a temporary measure. Even if they first enter in Shambala Float with a clear colour, it also turns out that the hue gets inevitably worse during life. Expelling them is good too but the truth is that there’s also a slight shortage of work force on the Float. And it’s not that we can’t use the latent criminals as the slave caste too”

Among the latent criminals wearing collars, there also were some wearing the uniform of the Military Police.

“Are there soldiers too?”

“Yes, they are enforcers, so to speak. All the people in the military caste have a clean hue. To fulfill the inspectors’ duties”

  NOTES TO TRANSLATION:

*taxied: taxiing, also sometimes written "taxying", is the movement of an aircraft on the ground, under its own power, in contrast to towing or push-back where the aircraft is moved by a tug. The aircraft usually moves on wheels, but the term also includes aircraft with skis or floats (for water-based travel).

An airplane uses taxiways to taxi from one place on an airport to another; for example, when moving from a terminal to the runway. The term "taxiing" is not used for the accelerating run along a runway prior to takeoff, or the decelerating run immediately after landing. (by Wikipedia)

* high mobility multipurpose wheeled vehicle: HMMWV or Humvee. The High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle (HMMWV), commonly known as the Humvee, is a four-wheel drive military light truck produced by AM General. (by Wikipedia)

In the pictures below, there are the two types described in the book…and I would add this humvee is just my ideal car!!! (the left one, I don’t need the model with the machine gun despite the unnerving city traffic)

  *counter-mortar radar, the detection and ranging radar: radar systems that detects artillery projectiles fired by one or more guns, howitzers, mortars or rocket launchers and, from their trajectories, locates the position on the ground of the weapon that fired it.

*probe device for detection of improvised explosive devices (IED): Counter-IED equipment are created primarily for military and law enforcement. They are used for standoff detection of explosives and explosive precursor components and defeating the Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) devices themselves as part of a broader counter-terrorism, counter-insurgency, or law enforcement effort.

An improvised explosive device (IED) is a bomb constructed and deployed in ways other than in conventional military action. It may be constructed of conventional military explosives, such as an artillery round, attached to a detonating mechanism. IEDs are commonly used as roadside bombs.

IEDs are generally seen in heavy terrorist actions or in asymmetric unconventional warfare by guerrillas or commando forces in a theater of operations. (by Wikipedia)

*Shambala Float: if someone asked himself about Shambala’s name just at this point (like I did) here some things I found on the net.

Shambhala, which is a Sanskrit word meaning “place of peace” or “place of silence”, is a mythical paradise spoken of in ancient texts, including the Kalachakra Tantra and the ancient scriptures of the Zhang Zhung culture which predated Tibetan Buddhism in western Tibet. According to legend, it is a land where only the pure of heart can live, a place where love and wisdom reigns and where people are immune to suffering, want or old age.

Shambhala is said to be the land of a thousand names. It has been called the Forbidden Land, the Land of White Waters, Land of Radiant Spirits, Land of Living Fire, Land of the Living Gods and Land of Wonders. The Hindus call it Aryavartha (‘The Land of the Worthy Ones); the Chinese know it as Hsi Tien, the Western Paradise of Hsi Wang Mu; and to the Russian Old Believers, it is known as Belovoyde.  But throughout Asia, it is best known by its Sanskrit name, Shambhala, Shamballa, or Shangri-la.

http://www.ancient-origins.net/ancient-places-asia/mysteries-kingdom-shambhala-001529

*Dvapara yuga in the lower stories, Treta Yuga in the upper stories: Dvapara and Treta are two of the Yugas in Induism.  the mankind ages

Yuga in Hinduism is an epoch or era within a four-age cycle. A complete Yuga starts with the Satya Yuga, via Treta Yuga and Dvapara Yuga into a Kali Yuga.

There are four Yugas in one cycle:

Satya Yuga (also known as Krita Yuga "Golden Age"): The first and best Yuga. It was the age of truth and perfection. The Krita Yuga was so named because there was but one religion, and all men were saintly: therefore they were not required to perform religious ceremonies. Humans were gigantic, powerfully built, honest, youthful, vigorous, erudite and virtuous. The Vedas were one. All mankind could attain to supreme blessedness. Thee was no agriculture or mining as the earth yielded those riches on its own. Weather was pleasant and everyone was happy. There were no religious sects. There was no disease, decrepitude or fear of anything. Human lifespan was 100,000 years and humans tended to have hundreds or thousands of sons or daughters. People had to perform penances for thousands of years to acquire Samadhi and die.

Treta Yuga: Is considered to be the second Yuga in order, however Treta means the "Third". In this age, virtue diminishes slightly. At the beginning of the age, many emperors rise to dominance and conquer the world. Wars become frequent and weather begins to change to extremities. Oceans and deserts are formed. People become slightly diminished compared to their predecessors. Agriculture, labour and mining become existent. Average lifespan of humans is around 1000-10,000 years.

Dvapara Yuga: Is considered to be the third Yuga in order. Dvapara means "two pair" or "after two". In this age, people become tainted with Tamasic qualities and aren't as strong as their ancestors. Diseases become rampant. Humans are discontent and fight each other. Vedas are divided into four parts. People still possess characteristics of youth in old age. Average lifespan of humans is around a few centuries.

Kali Yuga: The final age. It is the age of darkness and ignorance. People become sinners and lack virtue. They become slaves to their passions and are barely as powerful as their earliest ancestors in the Satya Yuga. Society falls into disuse and people become liars and hypocrites. Knowledge is lost and scriptures are diminished. Humans eat forbidden and dirty food. The environment is polluted, water and food become scarce. Wealth is heavily diminished. Families become non-existent. Average lifespan of people is barely 100 years, though, by the end of the Yuga, it will be as low as 20 years.

(from Wikipedia)

*SCAR assault rifle: The FN SCAR (Special Operations Forces Combat Assault Rifle) is a gas-operated (short-stroke gas piston) self-loading rifle with a rotating bolt. It is constructed to be extremely modular, including barrel change to switch between calibers. The rifle was developed by FN Herstal (FNH) for the United States Special Operations Command (SOCOM) to satisfy the requirements of the SCAR competition. This family of rifles consist of two main types. The SCAR-L, for "light", is chambered in 5.56×45mm NATO cartridge and the SCAR-H, for "heavy", is chambered in 7.62×51mm NATO. Both are available in Close Quarters Combat (CQC), Standard (STD) and Long Barrel (LB) variants. As of early 2015, the FN SCAR is in service in over 20 countries. (from Wikipedia)

  *IFF system: Identification, friend or foe (IFF) is an identification system designed for command and control. It enables military and national (civilian air traffic control) interrogation systems to identify aircraft, vehicles or forces as friendly and to determine their bearing and range from the interrogator. IFF may be used by both military and civilian aircraft.

IFF was first developed during the Second World War, with the arrival of radar, and early friendly fire incidents.

Despite the name, IFF can only positively identify friendly targets, not hostile ones. If an IFF interrogation receives no reply or an invalid reply, the object cannot be identified as friendly, but is not positively identified as foe. There are in addition many reasons that friendly aircraft may not properly reply to IFF. (from Wikipedia)

[gyrlversion]

Charmin Made A Giant “Forever Roll” For Millennial Poops. Its Incredible.

Kate Bubacz / BuzzFeed News; prop styling: Shawn O’Connor

Archimedes, the ancient Greek scientist, was taking a bath when he had his eureka! moment, discovering a physics principle using water displacement to measure density. Rob Reinerman, lead of the innovation team at Procter & Gamble, was taking a dump when genius struck, leading to the creation of Charmin’s Forever Roll, a massive roll of toilet paper for millennial asses.

Reinerman, a 14-year veteran of P&G, had been pulled off his job as brand manager of Bounty paper towels and assigned to lead a newly formed innovation team within the toilet paper division. Along with his partner Kevin Mitchell, the bigwigs had tasked them with a singular purpose. “Never run out of toilet paper is the mission,” Reinerman said.

“I was at home, I think on a weekend. I was finishing up my business and faced the age-old question of whether to replace the roll or leave that last square for the next person,” Reinerman told BuzzFeed News. Ultimately, he knew the next person to use the bathroom would be his wife, who would be annoyed to find a nearly kicked roll.

But the germ of an idea was planted: What if they made a toilet paper roll that was…UNIMAGINABLY HUGE.

Kate Bubacz / BuzzFeed News

The Forever Roll is 12 inches in diameter and is equivalent to 24 rolls of regular-size Charmin Ultra Soft.

Charmin pinched off its Forever Roll to consumers in April. It’s basically one of those industrial-size rolls you’d find at a rest stop, but so very soft. A few weeks ago, the Forever Roll caught a second wave of internet buzz when it was mentioned in a Wall Street Journal article about new household products designed for adults who live alone. Reinerman crowed at the time about how it alleviates the storage problem for urban apartment dwellers (a bigger roll means less TP to store under the sink) and how the huge rolls can last a single person up to two months.

The response online was divided. Some thought this was a sad indicator of the state of the millennials: delaying marriage and children, unable to buy homes with ample bathroom storage like their parents, stuck in tiny apartments with nowhere to stuff extra rolls of toilet paper, and suffering from such burnout that the simple task of remembering to buy toilet paper once a week was too hard. Also, it’s a giant roll of paper for going doody, which is inherently funny.

sorry im late to this but imagine being single and having a date over to your house for the first time and then they walk into your bathroom and see a rock of Gibraltar-sized roll of toilet paper next to the shitter

08:23 PM – 04 Jun 2019

Dear @Charmin please consider sponsoring me because the “forever” roll is the only thing I will be talking about with friends, family and strangers for the next forever (About 1 month) I accept merchandise, Venmo and Cash app or hell I’d take a check.

09:01 PM – 21 Jun 2019

Webster’s dictionary defines “forever” as “a limitless time.” Charmin defines it as about one month, possibly two if you’re single, which is how long a single Forever Roll — 12 inches in diameter and equivalent to 24 rolls — will last you. Due to the girth and heft of the roll, it won’t fit standard toilet paper roll holders, so they created special freestanding and adhesive wall holders (for millennials who will never own a home and can’t drill into their landlord’s walls). A starter kit of three rolls and a stand costs $30, and a single roll is $10.

The (tiny) TP-in-a-roll format that we know now was popularized around 1890 by the Scott Paper Company — lots of people were wiping with the Sears Roebuck catalog before that. The Hoberg Paper Company of Green Bay, Wisconsin, launched the Charmin brand in 1928 and soon offered the classic four-pack.

For the next few decades, the physical form of the roll didn’t change much. It took until 1994 for Charmin to make the double roll. They then created a “Mega Roll,” equivalent to four rolls.

Yet aside from tweaks to texture, prints, or even scents (Angel Soft has two new scented core options), the general shape and concept of toilet paper for home use hasn’t changed in our lifetime. The biggest development of late has been wet wipes — including varieties targeted at men: Dude Wipes, Dollar Shave Club’s One Wipe Charlies, or Mangroomer’s Biz Wipes in “Executive scent” — and that’s not going well. Because wipes don’t break down as well as regular TP, they create massive, clogging “fatbergs” in sewer systems.

What happened to the American spirit of ingenuity? We put a man on the moon, and we still use basically the same dinky TP rolls as president Taft. Sure, we brought giant-size rolls to public restrooms, but that industrial stuff is thin, rough, hole-ripping. An ass war crime. Only a stone-cold psychopath would consider bringing home that giant wheel of rough paper, encased in a rugged dispenser to protect it from thieves. Why had no one, in over 100 years, thought, Hey, what if we made a GIGUNDOUS roll of soft toilet paper?

No wonder the feedback on the Forever Roll on Charmin’s site so far has been disproportionately positive: 4.7 stars out of 5 from more than 2,800 reviewers. They compared the magnitude of the invention to sliced bread (!), touted the roll as successful Father’s Day and birthday gifts (?), and remarked on how smoothly it glides on the Forever Roll stand. Of the complaints that were filed, a large share revolved around the roll not lasting long enough: “This thing just screams ‘use more!! MORE!!’ and my kids comply,” one user griped. But bottom line, folks: “Huge and soft.”

Could this signal a future in which all consumer goods are enormous? In which our houses are just Willy Wonka wonderlands of monstrously oversize paper products and fountains of soap? Is this a sign of the excesses of peak capitalism, or a sad sign of the state of the millennial condition?

“You could produce the biggest roll in history and it still wouldn’t clean an anus properly.”

Of course, toilet paper is not without its controversies. If you, a millennial who poops a lot (and who isn’t? avocado toast is chock-full of fiber) and are also concerned about the environmental impact of the Big Ass Roll, you’re not alone. And it’s not just that it encourages people to use more paper per wipe.

Shelley Vinyard, of the nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council, said Charmin is made from 100% virgin paper, no recycled fibers, just pure trees. “It’s an easy place to make a difference and vote with your dollars for a more sustainable option,” said Vinyard. NRDC notes that competitors like Marcal use recycled materials.

Loren Fanroy, a representative for Charmin, told BuzzFeed News, “100% of our wood fiber supply is third-party certified with responsible forestry certification systems, like the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), and come from sustainably-managed forests. We do not participate in any deforestation practices, and for every tree we use, at least one is re-grown.” And Reinerman points out that since each Forever Roll equals 24 regular rolls, you use fewer cardboard tubes, and there’s no plastic wrap packaging.

Still, destroying forests to wipe our butts can keep you up at night, and it calls into question the merits of toilet paper altogether. If you take it one step further, perhaps it’s time for Americans to embrace the bidet and end this cycle of deforestation and waste once and for all.

“[Toilet paper] is totally unhygienic and you could produce the biggest roll in history and it still wouldn’t clean an anus properly,” said Rose George, the author of The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters. “We use water to wash everything from our bodies to our cars, and yet for the dirtiest part of our body, we choose to use a dry substance that really only moves, and doesn’t remove dirt. It’s crazy. It’s like choosing to have a shower with a dry towel. Half the world uses water to cleanse their butts, and they think those of us who have paper cultures are dirty, and they’re right.”

“I can’t believe nobody thought of this before.”

After Reinerman and Mitchell recruited a few other people to work on their experimental team, prototyped the giant roll, pitched it to the big bosses (who were receptive), and started testing it and running a small ad campaign on Facebook, they were ready to go public in April 2019.

“We were consistently hearing the comment, ‘I can’t believe nobody thought of this before.’ And that’s when you realize that you have something that’s improving somebody’s experience,” said Reinerman.

So they hired more people to run an e-commerce site (the Forever Roll is only sold on the Charmin website, for now), and unlike other P&G brands, they do the marketing and social media themselves. “We have a small, mighty team that is running the whole operation,” said Reinerman.

Even Charmin’s competitor had to hand it to them for coming up with the Big Roll. “If you talk to folks in the bath tissue category, the one thing we never want to happen is to run out of toilet paper in a critical moment,” said Kim Sackey, consumer knowledge lead for retail at Georgia-Pacific, the Koch Industries–owned company that makes Angel Soft and Quilted Northern. Still, she isn’t too jealous. “The Forever Roll is one potential solution; in my mind, there’s other potential ones,” she told BuzzFeed News. Subscriptions, like the kind Amazon offers, are one option, and she’s interested in optimizing the timing and quantities of subscriptions so you don’t end up with too much or too little.

Other manufacturers, including Marcal, Scott, and Cottonelle, did not return requests for comment.

To me, Rob Reinerman’s invention was a stroke of genius, a gift to the human race and all our diverse and tender holes. But as a journalist, I needed to dig deeper. Trust, but verify; wipe till it feels clean, but still look at the paper afterward. So I tested out a Forever Roll here in BuzzFeed’s office.

The stand came with a screw and its own set of mini Allen wrenches to install (pretty easy). It had a heavy base to prevent it from toppling over and felt solid.

Katie Notopoulos

The Forever Roll inside the BuzzFeed offices.

I set up a Forever Roll in a single-use bathroom in our office, and after lunch, gave it a full test myself. It was…fine? The strangest part was that it was hard to tell how far to turn the roll to get the right amount of paper — I ended up with a little more than I needed.

Then I set up a notepad and pen in the bathroom explaining what the Forever Roll was, that I was writing an article about it, and wanted my colleagues’ feedback.

It turns out asking my coworkers to describe their toilet paper–wiping experience was perhaps a bad idea. Not a single person wrote anything down on my public notepad (I’d like to take this opportunity to apologize to my coworkers and also let HR know I’ve definitely learned my lesson here). But I did get two personal notes.

“Way too big. If you drop it on the floor and it gets wet you are losing SO MUCH toilet paper,” said one coworker. “My bathroom is small, and it would 100% get wet somehow. Too much surface area.”

My editor said while she was impressed with how smoothly the Forever Roll glided on the stand, she would be mortified for guests to see a massive roll of toilet paper in her small apartment bathroom.

To that I say, what is the price of dignity? Is it $30 for the Forever Roll starter kit? Is it never having to waddle across the bathroom, pants around ankles, to get a replacement roll from under the sink? Is it not having guests see an aggressively large toilet paper roll in your bathroom? Don’t ask me, I’m the person who just wrote a long article (which is not sponsored by Charmin, btw, BuzzFeed is literally losing money paying me a salary to do this) about toilet paper. I have no dignity, but boy am I clean. ●

Kate Bubacz / BuzzFeed News

The post Charmin Made A Giant “Forever Roll” For Millennial Poops. Its Incredible. appeared first on Gyrlversion.

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[closetofanxiety]

Show review: THE ULTIMATE THRILL RIDE

Epic clashes on the grandest stage of them all! Surprise returns from beloved figures! Title changes! And VIDEO PACKAGE AFTER VIDEO PACKAGE AFTER VIDEO PACKAGE! Let’s look back at Wrestlemania 33: Orlando Furioso!

Neville def. Austin Aries via pinfall

I didn’t see this match. I missed most of the pre-show, to be honest. I really watched too much wrestling over the long weekend. I went for a walk instead, actually three separate walks on Sunday. It’s the first nice day we’ve had all year here in southern New England, and I took full advantage of it. I mean, it fucking snowed on Friday and Saturday. So, anyway, Neville won. The cruiserweight division is full of talented men with almost zero connection to the audience. It’s only a matter of time before there’s another Swoggle winning the title and it gets retired again. There will be a lot of blame to hand out then, but I’ll blame Vince. It’s usually a safe bet.

Mojo Rawley wins the Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal

Rawley joins Cesaro, Big Show, and Baron Corbin in the winners’ circle of this particular honor, although unlike them, he needed an assist from New England Patriots tight end and human game of beer pong Rob Gronkowski in order to win. I missed almost all of this, because after my third walk of the day I went to Starbucks. You have to give yourself little gifts. It helps keep you normal. That’s my advice, although why anyone would take life advice from me is a mystery. I mean, I’m not living in a refrigerator carton or anything, but I’m exactly the kind of person who might as well not exist at all. Much like this battle royal, in fact, crowded as it was with wrestlers for whom no storyline or narrative currently exists: Sami Zayn and Dolph Ziggler tossed in among lower-midcard-for-lifers like Curtis Axel and Epico. What a fate. What a bleak way to further the preshow, which is really just “the show” when you think about it. 

Dean Ambrose (c) defeats Baron Corbin via pinfall to retain the WWE Intercontinental Championship

I did watch this perfectly serviceable matchup that wouldn’t have looked out of place in the first hour of a fair-to-middling Smackdown episode. The Intercontinental Championship is almost an insult at this point. The WWE giving you this belt is like your boss putting you on a performance improvement plan at work. It’s to “enhance your capabilities” but it’s like a dunce cap. This was defended on the pre-show, on free TV: the USA Network broadcast it before the start of Wrestlemania proper. Honestly, Epico had a less humiliating day. Rating: Two Ultimate Thrill Rides.

AJ Styles defeats Shane McMahon via pinfall

This was a pretty good match, I guess, although the thing I liked best was the ref bump: AJ Styles really looked like he kicked Mike Chioda square in the fucking head. That was beautiful. Occasionally you’ll see a ref bump where the official basically gets lightly jostled and then pretends to be out cold for two minutes, but this was a ref bump you could put your full faith and credit in. Good ref bump. Anyway, a good match. I saw people online saying “Match of the Year,” which I guess is indicative of the environment of Plaudit Inflation in which we’re currently living. This will almost certainly be the best match of the year to feature Shane McMahon. But I’m tired of the McMahon family in general, and sick of seeing them on TV. AJ Styles should have been in the main event, not the curtain-jerker. Still. At least they haven’t put the Intercontinental Championship on him yet. Kiss of death. Rating: Three Ultimate Thrill Rides.

Kevin Owens defeats Chris Jericho (c) by pinfall to win the United States Championship

A solid match here, although it lacked the raw emotion of Owens’ best matches, and the extra spark of brutality you’d expect from a match that was ostensibly the culmination of a bitter falling out between two “best friends.” This story was all about the buildup, with the blowoff leaving a little something to be desired. A fine match, though, perfectly acceptable as a Raw main event. If that’s damning with faint praise, it’s because I expect a lot from these guys, who are two of the very best. This was better than Jericho’s lackluster match with AJ Styles at last year’s Wrestlemania. Faint praise again, I guess. Rating: Two and a half Ultimate Thrill Rides.

Fatal Four-Way Elimination Match: Bayley (c) defeats Nia Jax, Charlotte Flair, and Sasha Banks to retain the Raw Women’s Championship

They got rid of Nia early, which was crucial. Nia can’t do very much inside a wrestling ring. From that point, the big expectation was for Sasha Banks to turn heel and betray her weird hug-prone friend Bayley, a possibility they had been advancing on commentary for weeks, but it didn’t happen. Instead, Charlotte pinned Sasha, somewhat unexpectedly, sucking the air out of the arena. Bayley won with a flying elbow from the top rope in tribute to Macho Man. I buy that Sasha was a huge Eddie Guerrero fan as a kid, but Bayley’s supposed childhood love of Randy Savage is puzzling to me. She was born in 1989, how much Macho Madness was there really from the mid-1990s onward? Were there a lot of kids in like the year 2000 saying “I want to be just like ‘Macho Man’ Randy Savage”? Maybe there were. I was not a kid by then, so I didn’t spend a lot of time talking to kids about their favorite wrestlers. But when I was a kid I liked Savage a lot. I seem to have wandered from this match, which had its moments but was kind of lackluster. Rating: Two Ultimate Thrill Rides.

Fatal Four-Way Ladders Match: The Hardy Boys defeat The Club (c), Enzo Amore & Big Cass, and Sheamus and Cesaro to win the Raw Tag Team Championships

Big surprise return from Team Extreme! Listen, I’m never going to adopt the WWE spelling convention that insists we identify them as the Hardy “Boyz.” First of all, the mid-1990s are over. Second of all, they are grizzled middle-aged men. It was fun to see them back. Genuine pop from everyone watching at my house. I’m not sure how much of the “Broken” gimmick they’re going to be able to do; Kevin Dunn hurriedly cut the cameras away from Matt as he was doing the “delete” thing, but that could be standard Kevin Dunn incompetence. Anyway, this match was fun, with a truly insane Jeff Hardy Swanton Bomb from the top of the ladder capping it off. Astonishing to think they had a ladder match for the Ring of Honor tag team belts just the night before this. Them North Carolina boys are tough, I’ll tell you what. I have gripes and grimaces to share about this kind of thing overall, but for now it’s fun to see these dudes back in the WWE for the first time since 2009. And I’m relieved Enzo and Cass didn’t win the titles. God, I am tired of them. Rating: Three and a half Ultimate Thrill Rides. 

John Cena and Nikki Bella defeat the Miz and Maryse via pinfall

This was a weirdly lowkey match, most of it focused on the Miz working over Cena with brawling-type offense, until the Queen of Strong Style Nikki Bella got the hot tag AND CLEANED FUCKING HOUSE, hitting a sick tope suicida on the Miz and whaling on Maryse. Maryse basically did nothing in this match. Mike Chioda took more bumps than Maryse during Wrestlemania. Anyway, the real winners of this match were you and I, because we got to see John Cena propose to Nikki Bella (he used her real name, EXPOSING THE BUSINESS!!!) in the ring. Cena actually sounded like a human being during this segment; it was very sweet and came across well. Some people booed. You’re going to boo love, my friends? If so, for what will you cheer? Rating: Three Ultimate Thrill Rides for the match, Seven Ultimate Thrill Rides for the proposal.

Non-Sanctioned Match: Seth Rollins defeats Triple H via pinfall

I love a good non-sanctioned match. What a weird holdover term from the territory days. What body are we to believe “sanctions” matches, and is it different from the body that permits a “non-sanctioned” match to be televised to a worldwide audience? This was also very old school in terms of the match itself, which was focused almost entirely on Seth Rollins’ ailing knee. The crowd was very quiet for this perhaps, despite the insistence of Jim Cornette et al, people don’t really want to watch old-school wrestling matches in 2017. It was OK, but it felt very slow. Rollins won, which was the right decision. Stephanie got knocked through a table, prompting the biggest pop of the match. The best part for me was Triple H’s hilarious entrance, where he came down the ramp AS A BAD-ASS BIKER ON HIS BAD-ASS THREE-WHEELED MOTORCYCLE surrounded by indie wrestlers dressed as highway patrolmen, also riding motorcycles. One of the great visual flourishes of the territory days was the spectacle of the hated villain being led to the ring by a phalanx of stone-faced Southern cops protecting the wrestler from enraged fans, a scene that sent the unmistakable message This Is For Real (even though it was obviously not), one of those sweaty, smoky aspects of wrestling that’s lost forever. Triple H, weirdly sentimental about wrestling history, tried to revive that aura of county civic center danger, and it came across like a campy musical version of “CHIPs.” I loved it. Rating: Two and a half Ultimate Thrill Rides. 

Randy Orton defeats Bray Wyatt (c) via pinfall to win the WWE Championship

I had been pretty excited for this match, but it felt weirdly truncated, with a truly abrupt finish. They were running long (the goddamn show ended at midnight) so maybe these guys were told to keep it short. One thing that kept happening is that every time Bray would do his Exorcist bend-over-backwards thing, the lights would dim and images of giant worms, maggots, and cockroaches would appear on the ring canvas, apparently because Bray was possessed by his late sister, Abigail. “He’s channeling the full power of Sister Abigail now!” JBL yelled, referring to an imaginary ghost. Even the power of an imaginary ghost was not enough to prevent Randy Orton from hitting his finisher “out of nowhere,” but actually out of somewhere: out of the midst of a rushed, unsatisfying match. Rating: Two Ultimate Thrill Rides.

Brock Lesnar defeats Goldberg (c) via pinfall to win the Universal Championship

This was a fucking blast. I was a total skeptic coming into this, but they did it just right: five minutes of these two big boys pulling out the crowd-pleasingest parts of their arsenals, German suplay after German suplay after German suplay from Brock, verses spear upon spear from Big Bill. It was like watching two rhinoceroses collide on the savanna and fight over rights to a watering hole. Magnificent and brutal. Big Bill threw himself around that ring with abandon, including maybe the best “Oops I missed the spear now I’m hitting the ring post” spot I’ve ever seen on a WWE show. Good for Big Bill. Good for Bork, who is now the indifferent holder of a championship belt. This was fun. I have not liked much of the Goldberg stuff, but this was fun. Rating: Four Ultimate Thrill Rides.

Naomi defeats Alexa Bliss (c), Carmella w/James Ellsworth, Becky Lynch, Mickie James, and Natalya to win the Smackdown Women’s Championship

This was in the Death Spot between the Bork-Bill showdown and the main event, and the crowd was not overly hyped. There was also an abortive Pittbull concert at some point. Maybe prior to Bork-Bill? Anyway, this match was kind of a cluster, with a lot of disconnected action and a vibe of being made up on the fly. My favorite part was when Becky Lynch - sporting truly abominable dreadlocks for some reason - hit Ellsworth with an exploder suplex. The rest was meh. Mickie James had #Problematic ring gear, unless she’s Native American (she may be). Alexa Bliss was good in her role as despicable brat-fetish heel. Naomi, the hometown girl, won via submission. Rating: Two Ultimate Thrill Rides. 

Main Event: Roman Reigns defeats the Undertaker via pinfall

Maybe the best part of this match is that they brought Jim Ross down to do commentary on it, indicating it was almost certainly the last Undertaker match. The match itself was about as good as it was going to be: Roman is a really good wrestler, but the Undertaker is 52 years old and long past the point of keeping up in a wrestling ring. He tried hard. Lots of kickouts of finishers, etc. The drama felt forced, honestly, as did the whole buildup, like at some point in February they just decided they were going to have the Undertaker fight Reigns and then even later said, “Hey, this is it for ol’ Taker.” After he lost, Taker took an extended curtain call, which was nice. I have never been a fan of the Undertaker as a performer, but his popularity and contributions are undeniable. Rating: Two Ultimate Thrill Rides.

[biofunmy]

Charmin Made A Giant “Forever Roll” For Millennial Poops. It’s Incredible.

Kate Bubacz / BuzzFeed News; prop styling: Shawn O’Connor

Archimedes, the ancient Greek scientist, was taking a bath when he had his eureka! moment, discovering a physics principle using water displacement to measure density. Rob Reinerman, lead of the innovation team at Procter & Gamble, was taking a dump when genius struck, leading to the creation of Charmin’s Forever Roll, a massive roll of toilet paper for millennial asses.

Reinerman, a 14-year veteran of P&G, had been pulled off his job as brand manager of Bounty paper towels and assigned to lead a newly formed innovation team within the toilet paper division. Along with his partner Kevin Mitchell, the bigwigs had tasked them with a singular purpose. “Never run out of toilet paper is the mission,” Reinerman said.

“I was at home, I think on a weekend. I was finishing up my business and faced the age-old question of whether to replace the roll or leave that last square for the next person,” Reinerman told BuzzFeed News. Ultimately, he knew the next person to use the bathroom would be his wife, who would be annoyed to find a nearly kicked roll.

But the germ of an idea was planted: What if they made a toilet paper roll that was…UNIMAGINABLY HUGE.

Kate Bubacz / BuzzFeed News

The Forever Roll is 12 inches in diameter and is equivalent to 24 rolls of regular-size Charmin Ultra Soft.

Charmin pinched off its Forever Roll to consumers in April. It’s basically one of those industrial-size rolls you’d find at a rest stop, but so very soft. A few weeks ago, the Forever Roll caught a second wave of internet buzz when it was mentioned in a Wall Street Journal article about new household products designed for adults who live alone. Reinerman crowed at the time about how it alleviates the storage problem for urban apartment dwellers (a bigger roll means less TP to store under the sink) and how the huge rolls can last a single person up to two months.

The response online was divided. Some thought this was a sad indicator of the state of the millennials: delaying marriage and children, unable to buy homes with ample bathroom storage like their parents, stuck in tiny apartments with nowhere to stuff extra rolls of toilet paper, and suffering from such burnout that the simple task of remembering to buy toilet paper once a week was too hard. Also, it’s a giant roll of paper for going doody, which is inherently funny.

sorry im late to this but imagine being single and having a date over to your house for the first time and then they walk into your bathroom and see a rock of Gibraltar-sized roll of toilet paper next to the shitter

08:23 PM – 04 Jun 2019

Dear @Charmin please consider sponsoring me because the “forever” roll is the only thing I will be talking about with friends, family and strangers for the next forever (About 1 month) I accept merchandise, Venmo and Cash app or hell I’d take a check.

09:01 PM – 21 Jun 2019

Webster’s dictionary defines “forever” as “a limitless time.” Charmin defines it as about one month, possibly two if you’re single, which is how long a single Forever Roll — 12 inches in diameter and equivalent to 24 rolls — will last you. Due to the girth and heft of the roll, it won’t fit standard toilet paper roll holders, so they created special freestanding and adhesive wall holders (for millennials who will never own a home and can’t drill into their landlord’s walls). A starter kit of three rolls and a stand costs $30, and a single roll is $10.

The (tiny) TP-in-a-roll format that we know now was popularized around 1890 by the Scott Paper Company — lots of people were wiping with the Sears Roebuck catalog before that. The Hoberg Paper Company of Green Bay, Wisconsin, launched the Charmin brand in 1928 and soon offered the classic four-pack.

For the next few decades, the physical form of the roll didn’t change much. It took until 1994 for Charmin to make the double roll. They then created a “Mega Roll,” equivalent to four rolls.

Yet aside from tweaks to texture, prints, or even scents (Angel Soft has two new scented core options), the general shape and concept of toilet paper for home use hasn’t changed in our lifetime. The biggest development of late has been wet wipes — including varieties targeted at men: Dude Wipes, Dollar Shave Club’s One Wipe Charlies, or Mangroomer’s Biz Wipes in “Executive scent” — and that’s not going well. Because wipes don’t break down as well as regular TP, they create massive, clogging “fatbergs” in sewer systems.

What happened to the American spirit of ingenuity? We put a man on the moon, and we still use basically the same dinky TP rolls as president Taft. Sure, we brought giant-size rolls to public restrooms, but that industrial stuff is thin, rough, hole-ripping. An ass war crime. Only a stone-cold psychopath would consider bringing home that giant wheel of rough paper, encased in a rugged dispenser to protect it from thieves. Why had no one, in over 100 years, thought, Hey, what if we made a GIGUNDOUS roll of soft toilet paper?

No wonder the feedback on the Forever Roll on Charmin’s site so far has been disproportionately positive: 4.7 stars out of 5 from more than 2,800 reviewers. They compared the magnitude of the invention to sliced bread (!), touted the roll as successful Father’s Day and birthday gifts (?), and remarked on how smoothly it glides on the Forever Roll stand. Of the complaints that were filed, a large share revolved around the roll not lasting long enough: “This thing just screams ‘use more!! MORE!!’ and my kids comply,” one user griped. But bottom line, folks: “Huge and soft.”

Could this signal a future in which all consumer goods are enormous? In which our houses are just Willy Wonka wonderlands of monstrously oversize paper products and fountains of soap? Is this a sign of the excesses of peak capitalism, or a sad sign of the state of the millennial condition?

“You could produce the biggest roll in history and it still wouldn’t clean an anus properly.”

Of course, toilet paper is not without its controversies. If you, a millennial who poops a lot (and who isn’t? avocado toast is chock-full of fiber) and are also concerned about the environmental impact of the Big Ass Roll, you’re not alone. And it’s not just that it encourages people to use more paper per wipe.

Shelley Vinyard, of the nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council, said Charmin is made from 100% virgin paper, no recycled fibers, just pure trees. “It’s an easy place to make a difference and vote with your dollars for a more sustainable option,” said Vinyard. NRDC notes that competitors like Marcal use recycled materials.

Loren Fanroy, a representative for Charmin, told BuzzFeed News, “100% of our wood fiber supply is third-party certified with responsible forestry certification systems, like the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), and come from sustainably-managed forests. We do not participate in any deforestation practices, and for every tree we use, at least one is re-grown.” And Reinerman points out that since each Forever Roll equals 24 regular rolls, you use fewer cardboard tubes, and there’s no plastic wrap packaging.

Still, destroying forests to wipe our butts can keep you up at night, and it calls into question the merits of toilet paper altogether. If you take it one step further, perhaps it’s time for Americans to embrace the bidet and end this cycle of deforestation and waste once and for all.

“[Toilet paper] is totally unhygienic and you could produce the biggest roll in history and it still wouldn’t clean an anus properly,” said Rose George, the author of The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters. “We use water to wash everything from our bodies to our cars, and yet for the dirtiest part of our body, we choose to use a dry substance that really only moves, and doesn’t remove dirt. It’s crazy. It’s like choosing to have a shower with a dry towel. Half the world uses water to cleanse their butts, and they think those of us who have paper cultures are dirty, and they’re right.”

“I can’t believe nobody thought of this before.”

After Reinerman and Mitchell recruited a few other people to work on their experimental team, prototyped the giant roll, pitched it to the big bosses (who were receptive), and started testing it and running a small ad campaign on Facebook, they were ready to go public in April 2019.

“We were consistently hearing the comment, ‘I can’t believe nobody thought of this before.’ And that’s when you realize that you have something that’s improving somebody’s experience,” said Reinerman.

So they hired more people to run an e-commerce site (the Forever Roll is only sold on the Charmin website, for now), and unlike other P&G brands, they do the marketing and social media themselves. “We have a small, mighty team that is running the whole operation,” said Reinerman.

Even Charmin’s competitor had to hand it to them for coming up with the Big Roll. “If you talk to folks in the bath tissue category, the one thing we never want to happen is to run out of toilet paper in a critical moment,” said Kim Sackey, consumer knowledge lead for retail at Georgia-Pacific, the Koch Industries–owned company that makes Angel Soft and Quilted Northern. Still, she isn’t too jealous. “The Forever Roll is one potential solution; in my mind, there’s other potential ones,” she told BuzzFeed News. Subscriptions, like the kind Amazon offers, are one option, and she’s interested in optimizing the timing and quantities of subscriptions so you don’t end up with too much or too little.

Other manufacturers, including Marcal, Scott, and Cottonelle, did not return requests for comment.

To me, Rob Reinerman’s invention was a stroke of genius, a gift to the human race and all our diverse and tender holes. But as a journalist, I needed to dig deeper. Trust, but verify; wipe till it feels clean, but still look at the paper afterward. So I tested out a Forever Roll here in BuzzFeed’s office.

The stand came with a screw and its own set of mini Allen wrenches to install (pretty easy). It had a heavy base to prevent it from toppling over and felt solid.

Katie Notopoulos

The Forever Roll inside the BuzzFeed offices.

I set up a Forever Roll in a single-use bathroom in our office, and after lunch, gave it a full test myself. It was…fine? The strangest part was that it was hard to tell how far to turn the roll to get the right amount of paper — I ended up with a little more than I needed.

Then I set up a notepad and pen in the bathroom explaining what the Forever Roll was, that I was writing an article about it, and wanted my colleagues’ feedback.

It turns out asking my coworkers to describe their toilet paper–wiping experience was perhaps a bad idea. Not a single person wrote anything down on my public notepad (I’d like to take this opportunity to apologize to my coworkers and also let HR know I’ve definitely learned my lesson here). But I did get two personal notes.

“Way too big. If you drop it on the floor and it gets wet you are losing SO MUCH toilet paper,” said one coworker. “My bathroom is small, and it would 100% get wet somehow. Too much surface area.”

My editor said while she was impressed with how smoothly the Forever Roll glided on the stand, she would be mortified for guests to see a massive roll of toilet paper in her small apartment bathroom.

To that I say, what is the price of dignity? Is it $30 for the Forever Roll starter kit? Is it never having to waddle across the bathroom, pants around ankles, to get a replacement roll from under the sink? Is it not having guests see an aggressively large toilet paper roll in your bathroom? Don’t ask me, I’m the person who just wrote a long article (which is not sponsored by Charmin, btw, BuzzFeed is literally losing money paying me a salary to do this) about toilet paper. I have no dignity, but boy am I clean. ●

Kate Bubacz / BuzzFeed News

Sahred From Source link Technology

from WordPress http://bit.ly/2RyLZtq via IFTTT

[sailorrrvenus]

The Art of Seeing as a Photographer

When I look back at my journey as a wildlife photographer especially as I scroll through my images on my editing screen a few things become apparent. Firstly, most of my pictures were either action or close up portrait, and secondly, the editing was awful.

Editing is an essential skill for a photographer, and you must be equally as good as editing as you are in capturing the image. I am still learning and improving my editing skills. Action images and close up portraits in wildlife photography — why do I have a problem with those images? Well, they needed little or no ability, action images with today’s technological advance focusing systems. It is just a matter of point and shoot. Close up portraits, requires a good lens a willing subject and then you fill your frame up and release the shutter.

Okay, maybe I am oversimplifying, but my point remains the same, little creative effort went into those images.

Wildlife photography, in my opinion, is one of the most challenging genres, why? We are reliant on all the elements that make a successful wildlife photograph. Timing, place, light, and subject matter are generally all unknowns for a wildlife photographer on safari.

That’s why we wildlife photographers on safari head straight for the waterhole especially in the dry season as that is the best place to capture wildlife action photography. But what do we do when all is quiet at the waterhole, and there is no action to photograph. How do we create a compelling photograph? The most important thing to remember is that we are crafting a picture.

We all know that a successful photograph needs a good composition. Some rules and guides can help you create an image. But it is your “vision” that will make it unique and compelling. That is what we all want from our photography no matter what genre — to stand out from the crowd to be different and for people to recognize our style.

Firstly I will talk about the guides and rules that are important in creating a composition. Then I will discuss how you can improve your “vision”, your unique way of seeing.

Ask any photographer about rules of composition and the Rule of Thirds will slip off their tongue. For some photographers it is all they will ever use.

There are numerous rules of compositions that can aid you to be more creative with your photographs. I have often heard, and I am sure you have too, that “there are no rules in photography,” or “learn the rules and forget them.” There may be some merit in these statements, I will leave that discussion to others, but for me and my photographic journey, increasing knowledge of my craft every day has helped me make better photographs. I want to discuss just a few rules, guides, and tips that I use most when out photographing.

Zebra Stallion Standing Guard

Negative space is one of my favorite rules of composition. I place the subject in the frame using either the golden ratio or rule of thirds; mostly I go with what feels right. Remember rules are only guides. For “negative space” to work in a composition, it is essential that there are no distracting elements within the scene.

This kind of image works best with a solitary subject with a clean background in an open space. I try and not include clouds as this will give the image a different feel and distract from the subject. Negative space creates a sense of calm and allows the image to breathe.

Shape, lines, form, and textures are essential elements of successful landscape black and white photograph. But we can make beautiful compositions in nature photography with these elements too.

Look for interesting patterns in clouds and include them with your wildlife subjects. Clouds give you shapes and textures which create a sense of depth, a three-dimensional feel.

An essential tip to creating a unique image is your viewpoint or angle of view. Always try and vary your perspective, go low, go high, if you are using a wide angle lens, tilt your camera and get exaggerated sky, adding impact to your photograph.

Lines create feelings within us; vertical lines give a sense of power; horizontal lines suggest a feeling of calm; diagonal lines a sense of movement; soft curved lines, which is probably the best known and used in photography, create gentle and soothing feelings.

The “background” of a photograph is not a “compositional rule”, but it is undoubtedly one of the most critical elements within a successful photograph.

A busy background is very distracting and will take the viewers eye away from the subject of the image and create a visual sense of unease.

Street photographers have favorite locations with beautiful backgrounds, and they wait till a subject walks pass and then press the shutter and create a photograph.

We can do the same with wildlife photography although it can be a lot more difficult to achieve.

In my last article, I talked about a recent safari. I had never been to this location before, and upon my arrival, I notice the distant mountains were magnificent, and immediately I set about finding a waterhole with the mountains as a backdrop and then it was a matter of waiting. Elephants arrived, within a few minutes, the elephants began their usual ritual of bonding. I press the shutter capturing an intimate moment between elephants with a beautiful backdrop to complete a compelling composition.

Another useful and effective backdrop is to use the “subject” as a background, for example, photographing a young animal against the side of its parent, zebras are the most common ones that come to mind.

When you find the backdrop for an image, be it beautiful mountains or something uniform, you can then go about creating a series of pictures with different animals or the same animal in various poses.

Rules of symmetry and rhythm are two essential guides that will help you become more creative in your photography. Symmetry is achieved when one side mirrors or balances with the other. Best-known use of symmetry in nature photography is the reflection.

In the image below with elephants on the horizon, I tried to create balance and symmetry with the elephants at either end. I included the clouds for shape, form, and texture this adds a sense of depth, the line created by the horizon gives a feeling of calm.

When photographing try and include as many compositional elements as you can to create an engaging photograph.

Using patterns in your photographs help create rhythm. Patterns appear everywhere in nature, try and photograph a pattern that has a repeated shape as in the image below of lines in the dunes, these repeated patterns will add rhythm that the viewer will easily follow. In this image, I used a low angle of view and tilted the wide angle lens to create diagonal lines and exaggerated the stormy sky which adds mood.

Framing your subject is a very nice way to lead the viewers to your subject, in wildlife especially with adults and young, the young will always try and shelter underneath the parents for protection, giving us opportunities to use the adults as frames as we focus on the young.

Depth of field is another useful aid to isolate your subject from a distracting background. I love to use DOF with the rule of rhythm, finding similar subjects as in the image below of the baby zebra, I focused wide open on the foals eye creating a pleasing blur of the stripes in the foreground, which form a pattern and sense of rhythm.

The Rule of Odds is not a well-known rule of composition and one that I struggle to accomplish in my wildlife photography. The theory behind the rule of odds is that the viewer’s eyes are drawn to photographs with odd numbers, and within the odd numbers the eye will be drawn to the subject in the center. It sounds easy enough, but in practice it’s not so, or at least for me.

I have only managed to capture one photograph that I am happy with, the lion and zebra image below, for balance I have cropped the image to square with the horizon in the middle. The three subjects, the two zebras and lion accomplish not just the rule of odds, but the rule of balance and symmetry too. The dust gives a sense of action and movement and creates a mood within the image.

Color theory is an essential part of a successful color image, as I tend to favor black and white photos over color images, this something that I want to learn about in more depth. What is color theory? You are using specific colors in a way that are harmonious. My favorite one I love to use for wildlife photography is using complementary colors — shades of cool blues and warm/orange tones, which are opposite on the color wheel.

I have briefly explained some of my favorite rules of composition which will help you in the “Art Of Seeing.” But the most critical part of creating or crafting a compelling photograph is your vision — that is what is going to separate your portfolio from somebody else. We can all learn to know and understand the rules of compositions. But how can you create that unique vision, the “x” factor, in your work? The only person that can do this is you!

Every time you look or scroll through your images, be your own harshest critic. I have heard photographers say they are unable to choose their best photo. If you are not able to recognize your best image, how are you going to know an excellent compositional photograph in the field?

Be selective in what you photograph. Do not shoot for the sake of shooting. A feeling should overcome you, an inner voice shouting at you. Then ask yourself what is it that draws to you this scene? How can you successfully capture this feeling? What kind of mood or emotion do you want to create in this photograph? Then shoot the subject from every angle possible, use different focal lengths, different shutter speeds, and remember to check your frame, what you leave out is just as important as what you leave in.

There is nothing as frustrating getting home, downloading your images, and wishing that you had shot the subject with a different lens, aperture, or angle. Cover all the bases when you come across a subject that connects with you. And remember to try and convey that connection, mood or feeling as you edit the image. Your images must connect on an emotional level with the viewer.

When I photograph it is a balance between my mind and heart; my brain looks after the technicals while my heart looks after the emotion within the photograph. Too much of one will leave an emotionless image or a poorly executed image. To sum up, I think the words from one of my favorite songs, “Reverence” by Faithless:

“You don’t need eyes to see… you need vision.”

About the author: Peter Delaney is an award-winning wildlife, architecture, and landscape photographer based in George, South Africa. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author. You can find more of his work on his website, fine art site, Facebook, Twitter, 500px, and Instagram. This article was also published here.

source https://petapixel.com/2019/03/21/the-art-of-seeing-as-a-photographer/

[pauldeckerus]

The Art of Seeing as a Photographer

When I look back at my journey as a wildlife photographer especially as I scroll through my images on my editing screen a few things become apparent. Firstly, most of my pictures were either action or close up portrait, and secondly, the editing was awful.

Editing is an essential skill for a photographer, and you must be equally as good as editing as you are in capturing the image. I am still learning and improving my editing skills. Action images and close up portraits in wildlife photography — why do I have a problem with those images? Well, they needed little or no ability, action images with today’s technological advance focusing systems. It is just a matter of point and shoot. Close up portraits, requires a good lens a willing subject and then you fill your frame up and release the shutter.

Okay, maybe I am oversimplifying, but my point remains the same, little creative effort went into those images.

Wildlife photography, in my opinion, is one of the most challenging genres, why? We are reliant on all the elements that make a successful wildlife photograph. Timing, place, light, and subject matter are generally all unknowns for a wildlife photographer on safari.

That’s why we wildlife photographers on safari head straight for the waterhole especially in the dry season as that is the best place to capture wildlife action photography. But what do we do when all is quiet at the waterhole, and there is no action to photograph. How do we create a compelling photograph? The most important thing to remember is that we are crafting a picture.

We all know that a successful photograph needs a good composition. Some rules and guides can help you create an image. But it is your “vision” that will make it unique and compelling. That is what we all want from our photography no matter what genre — to stand out from the crowd to be different and for people to recognize our style.

Firstly I will talk about the guides and rules that are important in creating a composition. Then I will discuss how you can improve your “vision” your unique way of seeing.

Ask any photographer about rules of composition and the Rule of Thirds will slip off their tongue. For some photographers it is all they will ever use.

There are numerous rules of compositions that can aid you to be more creative with your photographs. I have often heard, and I am sure you have too, that “there are no rules in photography,” or “learn the rules and forget them.” There may be some merit in these statements, I will leave that discussion to others, but for me and my photographic journey, increasing knowledge of my craft every day has helped me make better photographs. I want to discuss just a few rules, guides, and tips that I use most when out photographing.

Zebra Stallion Standing Guard

Negative space is one of my favorite rules of composition. I place the subject in the frame using either the golden ratio or rule of thirds; mostly I go with what feels right. Remember rules are only guides. For “negative space” to work in a composition, it is essential that there are no distracting elements within the scene.

This kind of image works best with a solitary subject with a clean background in an open space. I try and not include clouds as this will give the image a different feel and distract from the subject. Negative space creates a sense of calm and allows the image to breathe.

Shape, lines, form, and textures are essential elements of successful landscape black and white photograph. But we can make beautiful compositions in nature photography with these elements too.

Look for interesting patterns in clouds and include them with your wildlife subjects. Clouds give you shapes and textures which create a sense of depth, a three-dimensional feel.

An essential tip to creating a unique image is your viewpoint or angle of view. Always try and vary your perspective, go low, go high, if you are using a wide angle lens, tilt your camera and get exaggerated sky, adding impact to your photograph.

Lines create feelings within us; vertical lines give a sense of power; horizontal lines suggest a feeling of calm; diagonal lines a sense of movement; soft curved lines, which is probably the best known and used in photography, create gentle and soothing feelings.

The “background” of a photograph is not a “compositional rule”, but it is undoubtedly one of the most critical elements within a successful photograph.

A busy background is very distracting and will take the viewers eye away from the subject of the image and create a visual sense of unease.

Street photographers have favorite locations with beautiful backgrounds, and they wait till a subject walks pass and then press the shutter and create a photograph.

We can do the same with wildlife photography although it can be a lot more difficult to achieve.

In my last article, I talked about a recent safari. I had never been to this location before, and upon my arrival, I notice the distant mountains were magnificent, and immediately I set about finding a waterhole with the mountains as a backdrop and then it was a matter of waiting. Elephants arrived, within a few minutes, the elephants began their usual ritual of bonding. I press the shutter capturing an intimate moment between elephants with a beautiful backdrop to complete a compelling composition.

Another useful and effective backdrop is to use the “subject” as a background, for example, photographing a young animal against the side of its parent, zebras are the most common ones that come to mind.

When you find the backdrop for an image, be it beautiful mountains or something uniform, you can then go about creating a series of pictures with different animals or the same animal in various poses.

Rules of symmetry and rhythm are two essential guides that will help you become more creative in your photography. Symmetry is achieved when one side mirrors or balances with the other. Best-known use of symmetry in nature photography is the reflection.

In the image below with elephants on the horizon, I tried to create balance and symmetry with the elephants at either end. I included the clouds for shape, form, and texture this adds a sense of depth, the line created by the horizon gives a feeling of calm.

When photographing try and include as many compositional elements as you can to create an engaging photograph.

Using patterns in your photographs help create rhythm. Patterns appear everywhere in nature, try and photograph a pattern that has a repeated shape as in the image below of lines in the dunes, these repeated patterns will add rhythm that the viewer will easily follow. In this image, I used a low angle of view and tilted the wide angle lens to create diagonal lines and exaggerated the stormy sky which adds mood.

Framing your subject is a very nice way to lead the viewers to your subject, in wildlife especially with adults and young, the young will always try and shelter underneath the parents for protection, giving us opportunities to use the adults as frames as we focus on the young.

Depth of field is another useful aid to isolate your subject from a distracting background. I love to use DOF with the rule of rhythm, finding similar subjects as in the image below of the baby zebra, I focused wide open on the foals eye creating a pleasing blur of the stripes in the foreground, which form a pattern and sense of rhythm.

The Rule of Odds is not a well-known rule of composition and one that I struggle to accomplish in my wildlife photography. The theory behind the rule of odds is that the viewer’s eyes are drawn to photographs with odd numbers, and within the odd numbers the eye will be drawn to the subject in the center. It sounds easy enough, but in practice it’s not so, or at least for me.

I have only managed to capture one photograph that I am happy with, the lion and zebra image below, for balance I have cropped the image to square with the horizon in the middle. The three subjects, the two zebras and lion accomplish not just the rule of odds, but the rule of balance and symmetry too. The dust gives a sense of action and movement and creates a mood within the image.

Color theory is an essential part of a successful color image, as I tend to favor black and white photos over color images, this something that I want to learn about in more depth. What is color theory? You are using specific colors in a way that are harmonious. My favorite one I love to use for wildlife photography is using complementary colors — shades of cool blues and warm/orange tones, which are opposite on the color wheel.

I have briefly explained some of my favorite rules of composition which will help you in the “Art Of Seeing.” But the most critical part of creating or crafting a compelling photograph is “vision” your vision, that is what is going to separate your portfolio from somebody else. We can all learn to know and understand the rules of compositions. But how can you create that unique vision the “x” factor in your work? The only person that can do this is you!

Every time you look or scroll through your images, be your own harshest critic. I have heard photographers say they are unable to choose their best photo. If you are not able to recognize your best image, how are you going to know an excellent compositional photograph in the field?

Be selective in what you photograph. Do not shoot for the sake of shooting. A feeling should overcome you, an inner voice shouting at you. Then ask yourself what is it that draws to you this scene? How can you successfully capture this feeling? What kind of mood or emotion do you want to create in this photograph? Then shoot the subject from every angle possible, use different focal lengths, different shutter speeds, and remember to check your frame, what you leave out is just as important as what you leave in.

There is nothing as frustrating getting home, downloading your images, and wishing that you had shot the subject with a different lens, aperture, or angle. Cover all the bases when you come across a subject that connects with you. And remember to try and convey that connection, mood or feeling as you edit the image. Your images must connect on an emotional level with the viewer.

When I photograph it is a balance between my mind and heart; my brain looks after the technicals while my heart looks after the emotion within the photograph. Too much of one will leave an emotionless image or a poorly executed image. To sum up, I think the words from one of my favorite songs, “Reverence” by Faithless:

“You don’t need eyes to see… you need vision.”

About the author: Peter Delaney is an award-winning wildlife, architecture, and landscape photographer based in George, South Africa. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author. You can find more of his work on his website, fine art site, Facebook, Twitter, 500px, and Instagram. This article was also published here.

from Photography News https://petapixel.com/2019/03/21/the-art-of-seeing-as-a-photographer/

[delaneypeter]

Art of Seeing

Art of Seeing

In Nature Photography

When I look back at my journey as a wildlife photographer especially as I scroll through my images on my editing screen a few things become apparent, firstly most of my pictures were either action or close up portrait and secondly the editing was awful.

Editing is an essential skill for a photographer, and you must be equally as good as editing as you are in capturing the image. I am still learning and improving my editing skills. Action images and close up portraits, why do I have a problem with those images. Well, they needed little or no ability, action images with today's technological advance focusing systems. It is just a matter of point and shoot. Close up portraits, requires a good lens a willing subject and then you fill your frame up and release the shutter. Ok, maybe I am oversimplifying, but my point remains the same, little creative effort went into those images.

Wildlife photography, in my opinion, is one of the most challenging genres, why? We are reliant on all the elements that make a successful wildlife photograph. Timing, place, light and subject matter are generally all unknowns for a wildlife photographer on safari.

That's why we wildlife photographers on safari head straight for the waterhole especially in the dry season as that is the best place to capture wildlife action photography. But what do we do when all is quiet at the waterhole, and there is no action to photograph. How do we create a compelling photograph? The most important thing to remember is that we are crafting a picture.

We all know that a successful photograph needs a good composition. Some rules and guides can help you create an image. But it is your "vision" that will make it unique and compelling. That is what we all want from our photography no matter what genre, to stand out from the crowd to be different and for people to recognise our style.

Firstly I will talk about the guides and rules that are important in creating a composition. Then I will discuss how you can improve your "vision" your unique way of seeing.

Ask any photographer about rules of composition and the rule of thirds will slip off their tongue, for some photographers it is all they will ever use. There are numerous rules of compositions that can aid you to be more creative with your photographs. I have often heard, and I am sure you have too, "there are no rules in photography, or learn the rules and forget them", there may be some merit in these statements, I will leave that discussion to others, but for me and my photographic journey, increasing knowledge of my craft every day has helped me make better photographs. I want to discuss just a few rules, guides and tips that I use most when out photographing.

Negative space is one of my favourite rules of composition. I place the subject in the frame using either the golden ratio or rule of thirds; mostly I go with what feels right. Remember rules are only guides. For "Negative space" to work in a composition, it is essential that there are no distracting elements within the scene.

This kind of image works best with a solitary subject with a clean background in an open space. I try and not include clouds as this will give the image a different feel and distract from the subject. Negative space creates a sense of calm and allows the image to breathe.

Shape, lines, form and textures are essential elements of successful landscape black and white photograph. But we can make beautiful compositions in nature photography with these elements too.

Look for interesting patterns in clouds and include them with your wildlife subjects. Clouds give you shapes and textures which create a sense of depth, a three-dimensional feel.

An essential tip to creating a unique image is your viewpoint or angle of view. Always try and vary your perspective, go low, go high, if you are using a wide angle lens, tilt your camera and get aggerated sky, adding impact to your photograph.

Lines create feelings within us; vertical lines give a sense of power; horizontal lines suggest a feeling of calm; diagonal lines a sense of movement; soft curved lines, which is probably the best known and used in photography, create gentle and soothing feelings.

The "background" of a photograph is not a "compositional rule", but it is undoubtedly one of the most critical elements within a successful photograph.

A busy background is very distracting and will take the viewers eye away from the subject of the image and create a visual sense of unease.

Street photographers have favourite locations with beautiful backgrounds, and they wait till a subject walks pass and then press the shutter and create a photograph.

We can do the same with wildlife photography although it can be a lot more difficult to achieve.

In my last article, I talked about a recent safari. I had never been to this location before, and upon my arrival, I notice the distant mountains were magnificent, and immediately I set about finding a waterhole with the mountains as a backdrop and then it was a matter of waiting. Elephants arrived, within a few minutes, the elephants began their usual ritual of bonding. I press the shutter capturing an intimate moment between elephants with a beautiful backdrop to complete a compelling composition.

Another useful and effective backdrop is to use the "subject" as a background, for example, photographing a young animal against the side of its parent, zebras are the most common ones that come to mind.

When you find the backdrop for an image, be it beautiful mountains or something uniform, you can then go about creating a series of pictures with different animals or the same animal in various poses.

Rules of Symmetry and Rhythm are two essential guides that will help you become more creative in your photography. Symmetry is achieved when one side mirrors or balances with the other. Best-known use of symmetry in nature photography is the reflection.

In the image below with elephants on the horizon, I tried to create balance and symmetry with the elephants at either end. I included the clouds for shape, form and texture this adds a sense of depth, the line created by the horizon gives a feeling of calm.

When photographing try and include as many compositional elements as you can to create an engaging photograph.

Using patterns in your photographs help create rhythm. Patterns appear everywhere in nature, try and photograph a pattern that has a repeated shape as in the image below of lines in the dunes, these repeated patterns will add rhythm that the viewer will easily follow. In this image, I used a low angle of view and tilted the wide angle lens to create diagonal lines and aggerated the stormy sky which adds mood.

Framing your subject is a very nice way to lead the viewers to your subject, in wildlife especially with adults and young, the young will always try and shelter underneath the parents for protection, giving us opportunities to use the adults as frames as we focus on the young.

Depth of Field another useful aide to isolate your subject from a distracting background. I love to use DOF with the rule of rhythm, finding similar subjects as in the image below of the baby zebra, I focused wide open on the foals eye creating a pleasing blur of the stripes in the foreground, which form a pattern and sense of rhythm.

Rule of Odds is not a well-known rule of composition and one that I struggle to accomplish in my wildlife photography. The theory behind the rule of odds is that the viewer's eyes are drawn to photographs with odd numbers, and within the odd numbers the eye will be drawn to the subject in the centre. Sounds easy enough but in practice not so, or at least for me. I have only managed to capture one photograph that I am happy with, the lion and zebra image below, for balance I have cropped the image to square with the horizon in the middle. The three subjects, the two zebras and lion accomplish not just the rule of odds, but the rule of balance and symmetry too. The dust gives a sense of action and movement and creates a mood within the image.

Colour theory is an essential part of a successful colour image, as I tend to favour black and white photos over colour images, this something that I want to learn about in more depth. What is colour theory? You are using specific colours in a way that are harmonious. My favourite one I love to use for wildlife photography is using complementary colours, shades of cool blues and warm/orange tones which are opposite on the colour wheel.

I have briefly explained some of my favourite rules of composition which will help you in the "Art Of Seeing." But the most critical part of creating or crafting a compelling photograph is "vision" your vision, that is what is going to separate your portfolio from somebody else. We can all learn to know and understand the rules of compositions. But how can you create that unique vision the "x" factor in your work? The only person that can do this is you!

Every time you look or scroll through your images, be your own harshest critic. I have heard photographers say they are unable to choose their best photo. If you are not able to recognise your best image, how are you going to know an excellent compositional photograph in the field?

Be selective in what you photograph. Do not shoot for the sake of shooting. A feeling should overcome you, an inner voice shouting at you. Then ask yourself what is it that draws to you this scene? How can you successfully capture this feeling? What kind of mood or emotion do you want to create in this photograph? Then shoot the subject from every angle possible, use different focal lengths, different shutter speeds, and remember to check your frame, what you leave out is just as important as what you leave in. There is nothing as frustrating when you get home, download your images, and you wish that had shot the subject with a different lens, aperture or angle. Cover all the bases when you come across a subject that connects with you. And remember to try and convey that connection, mood or feeling as you edit the image. Your images must connect on an emotional level with the viewer.

When I photograph it is a balance between my mind and heart; my brain looks after the technicals my heart the emotion within the photograph. Too much of one will leave an emotionless image or a poorly executed image. To sum up, I think the words from one of my favourite songs, Reverence, by Faithless,

"YOU DON'T NEED EYES TO SEE…YOU NEED VISION…"

[filipeteimuraz]

13 Website Design Best Practices For 2019

Nearly anyone can get a website up and running with ease these days. It’s awesome. But just because your website is live, doesn’t mean that your design is optimized.

Why does design matter? It only takes 0.05 seconds for people to form an opinion about your website. Yes, you read that correctly — 50 milliseconds. Most of that opinion is coming from the design.

The design also impacts your conversions, credibility, and ultimately makes or breaks the success of your site. No website is perfect, but your goal should be to make your website as optimized as possible.

Here’s something to take into consideration as well: 94% of negative feedback about websites is design related and 38% of users will stop engaging with a website that has an unattractive layout. After a bad experience, 88% of consumers are unlikely to return to a website. That’s almost everyone. So, if your web design isn’t optimized for UX, it’s going to be detrimental to your success.

On the flip side, well-designed websites thrive. Visitors are more likely to convert, enjoy their experiences, and keep coming back in the future. I saw a recent study that 77% of agencies say that a poor website design is the most significant weakness of their clients. That’s what inspired me to write this guide.

Lots of factors go into designing a website. These are the thirteen most important elements to prioritize in 2019. If you follow these best practices, the performance of your site will drastically improve.

1. Minimize text

Stop filling your pages with so much text.

Obviously, if you’re writing a blog post, there will be tons of text on the page — that’s not what I’m talking about here. I’m talking about the number of words on your homepage and your landing pages. There should be very minimal text on those pages. This is a major problem I see when I’m analyzing websites.

Sure, you’ve got a lot to say. You want to tell your website visitors all about you, your company, your brand, and your products. That’s fine. You simply need to learn how to tell that story in just a few sentences — or even better, just a few words.

2. Show, don’t tell

Visuals not only help you break up the written content, but they can also provide a deeper explanation without the use of text. Instead of explaining things to your website visitors, you can simply show them. They’ll understand more completely in a shorter amount of time.

Harry’s product page embodies both of these first two design principles:

For example, let’s say your website sells razors, blades, shaving cream, and other shaving products for men. You operate on a subscription business model and deliver these products to your customers on a monthly basis. The design of your razors is very handsome — they’re made of carved hardwood and are nice enough to give as a gift.

Rather than going into all of this detail on your homepage, you can simply have a photo of these products with text saying something like, “delivered to your door.” You get your message across in just four words. Sure, you can go into greater detail the deeper the visitor gets into your pages, but a lengthy text description isn’t required.

3. Use short sentences

Short sentences are easier to read.

If you bombard visitors with text all over the screen — and make those sentences hard to read, they won’t know where to start reading and won’t be able to digest your content.

Mix it up. If you need a long sentence, follow it with a short one. Variety helps.

4. Try shorter paragraphs

Use paragraph breaks to your advantage. It’s okay to write longer paragraphs, but I like to keep my homepage paragraphs to a few sentences.

Start each paragraph with the new information, so if someone is scrolling they can quickly tell if they need to read that paragraph.

Eliminating unnecessary text on your pages reduces clutter and gives you more room to put emphasis on your call-to-action.

5. Make your CTA clear and obvious

CTAs should not be buried. They need to be big, bold, powerful, and clearly stand out as the action your visitors should take next.

Only 47% of websites have a CTA button that can be spotted in less than three seconds. So there’s a coin flip chance that you fall into the group that takes longer. That’s not the category you want to be in. You can’t drive conversions without an effective CTA button.

Here’s something else to consider: 72% of businesses don’t have a CTA on their interior pages. This is a major design flaw. You can’t expect visitors to navigate back to your homepage to convert.

Take a look at this CTA from Litmus.

Look how simple this design is. There is minimal text on the screen, so the message is clear.

As a result, the CTA “sign up free” stands out. In fact, Litmus even put it in more than one location on the screen.

6. Reinforce actions with familiarity

If your message is the same, your CTA should be the same. On every single page.

Think about how people navigate on your website — even if you set up a certain flow, not everyone will land on a page and convert in seconds. They may browse around for a bit first.

For example, let’s say you have an ecommerce website. You shouldn’t change the CTA button from page to page, which would look like this:

Homepage: Checkout now

Category page: Buy it today

Product page: Click to purchase

If a visitor sees one of those buttons on your homepage, the other on a category page, and the third on a product page, there’s no reinforcement. Instead, follow the example of a global leader like Apple. This is what the Apple homepage looks like:

Right away you can see that it’s very simple. There is limited text on the screen, and it has one featured product in view.

The product has a title, a quick snippet description, followed by two options.

Learn more

Buy

That’s it.

Now let’s see what happens when we continue scrolling.

This is the exact same format, but for another product.

After some limited text, we are offered the same two buttons, positioned in the same location above the image. Again, this is still on the homepage.

Just for good measure, let’s navigate away from the homepage to a product page to see if this pattern continues.

The watch page has the same pattern. This is consistent on every page, for every product. That’s how you reinforce actions with familiarity.

You need to apply this design principle to your website as well. It goes beyond the CTA button. The idea is to have this type of reinforcement with as many elements as possible.

7. Simplify the navigation

It shouldn’t be difficult for a website visitor to find what they’re looking for on your site.

Take a moment to put yourself in their shoes. They are browsing on your website for a reason. Maybe they want to buy something, get more information, or see what you have to offer. Whatever that reason may be, if they can’t figure it out quickly, they’re going to leave.

There is just too much competition out there. Users have no reason to put up with complex website navigation. All they need to do is leave your site and find what they need somewhere else.

Don’t try to reinvent the wheel with a complex design. Stick with the standard format.

For example, 88% of websites have the main navigation menu positioned horizontally at the top of each page. If your menu is somewhere else, it’s going to confuse your visitors.

Let’s continue talking about the menu since it’s a major navigation gateway. The fewer options in the menu, the better. Otherwise, it will be too hard for people to find what they need. This concept is known as Hick’s Law.

The more options you give someone, the longer it will take them to make a decision. That’s why complex designs and navigations will crush your conversion rates.

There’s a famous experiment about this, referred to as the jam study, which discusses the paradox of choice.

The experiment was conducted at a local grocery store. Consumers were presented with 24 jams to sample on one day, and 6 jams on the following day. The larger display on day one attracted 60% of shoppers, but only 3% of those people made a purchase. The smaller display of 6 jams on the second day attracted 40% of shoppers, but 30% of them made a purchase.

By limiting choices, conversions were ten times higher. This same concept can be applied to your website navigation.

Find ways to eliminate unnecessary menu options. For example, instead of having a “home” button, just use the website logo to link back to the home screen.

Take a look Square’s homepage.

The design is super clean. The menu options are extremely limited. This makes it easy for visitors to choose a selection that fits their needs.

I chose this example because it also follows the web design best practices that we already discussed. There is minimal text on the screen, and the CTA is clear and obvious.

This type of design makes it nearly impossible for website visitors to get lost or confused when they’re navigating.

For those of you who have lots of options on your website, such as an ecommerce shop, you can add a search bar to simplify the navigation process without using a complicated menu.

8. Optimize your design for mobile devices

According to Alexa rankings, 80% of the top websites are optimized for mobile devices. That’s because mobile browsing is becoming the new normal.

Just look at these trends from Statista.

More than half of the web pages worldwide are served to mobile phones. Mobile Internet traffic has officially surpassed desktop usage. That trend is continuing to rise.

Here’s something else to consider. 57% of people won’t recommend a business to others if that company has a mobile site that’s poorly designed. Getting your customers to recommend your brand to others is definitely something you need to prioritize.

94% of people will judge a website based on a responsive design. So if elements of your website design aren’t responsive, they need to be fixed or eliminated immediately.

A mobile-optimized website is not only essential for the user experience, but it’s important for SEO purposes as well.

Search engines recognize this and reward sites that are mobile friendly. Google knows that 87% of smartphone owners use their devices to run an Internet search at least once per day. The result: 70% of the first page results on Google are optimized for mobile devices.

9. Prioritize SEO

We briefly touched on this subject earlier when we talked about mobile-friendly websites. But everything you do on your site needs to circle back to SEO.

93% of all Internet experiences start with a search engine. So your SEO strategy must go far beyond just adding keywords to your blog posts.

Failure to focus on SEO will put you at a disadvantage to your competitors. Last year, these were the top SEO priorities for businesses.

As you can see, on-site optimization ranked second on the list. This is related to web design. So take a look at your on-page elements.

Create an XML sitemap. This will make it easier for search engine crawlers to analyze content on your website. A sitemap will show the bots the location of pages on your site, when the page was last updated, the updating frequency, and the relationship to other pages on your site.

A proper sitemap shows Google that you don’t have duplicate content, which can damage your SEO rankings.

When you’re designing your site, you need to make sure that the architecture has a logical hierarchy as well.

10. Monitor your page loading speed

I know what some of you are thinking. What does page loading speed have to do with web design? Everything.

Sure, loading times are related to your website hosting plan, server, traffic, and things of that nature. However, design choices can impact your loading times as well.

Each time you add an element to your site, especially images, videos, and other complex media files, your loading times can be affected.

Slow loading times lead to high abandonment rates. You can’t ignore this. If your pages take too long to load, it’s going to be a huge problem.

Furthermore, 40% of people abandon websites that take more than three seconds to load. Yes, three seconds. That’s all you have, or you’ll lose 40 out of every 100 visitors.

And three seconds isn’t always good enough — 46% of people expect pages to load in two seconds or less.

So how can you apply this to your web design?

Reduce the file sizes of your images.

Take advantage of browser caching tools.

Reduce HTTP requests.

Improve your TTFB (time to first byte).

Minify and combine your files.

There are lots of tools available online to help you accomplish these things. For example, check out the WordPress Rocket plugin as a resource for minifying and combining your files. Use the Page Speed Insights tool from Google to help you monitor your loading times whenever you make design changes on your website.

11. Choose a color scheme that fits your branding strategy

The color choices you make on your website are more important than you think.

Studies show that products are judged in less than 90 seconds. Your website can be considered as a product. 90% of that judgment is based solely on colors.

The best way to choose your website color scheme is with branding. Refer to your logo. Do the colors on your website fit with your brand image?

Research shows that colors can increase brand recognition by up to 80%.

Here’s an example. Think of Starbucks.

When you hear this brand name, I’m sure you have an image in your head. Maybe it’s the logo, a sign, or a store location.

Do you associate any colors with that name? Now let’s look at their website.

It’s no surprise that they went with a green color scheme.

This design choice matches their logo and brand image, which reinforces what consumers already associate with the brand. By keeping things consistent, there is no confusion. It would be odd if you visited this website and the colors were yellow and red. That has nothing to do with their brand.

We’ll talk more about reinforcement in greater depth as we continue.

12. Continuously run A/B tests

When it comes to your website design, you can’t just set it and forget it.

As I said earlier, no website is perfect. There are always ways for you to improve your design.

That’s why you need to run A/B tests.

Nearly every element of your site design can be tested.

Here are some quick suggestions to get you started in the right direction:

Test the location of your CTA button

Test the color of your CTA button

Test the CTA copy

Test the images that you’re using on landing pages

Test wording variations of text on the screen

Test the size of your navigation bar

There are so many options, I could spend all day talking about this. For those of you who aren’t familiar with A/B tests or need some help, check out my guide on everything you need to know before you start A/B testing.

13. Use bullets

Instead of adding paragraphs and long-form writing, consider using lists. In those lists, use bullet points.

Studies show that more people will look at lists with bullet points than other formats.

Conclusion

Saying that the design of a website is important would be an understatement. Your web design choices will ultimately impact whether or not your site is successful.

Everyone’s website can be improved. Use this list as a guide as a resource to help you make those improvements.

Don’t get overwhelmed. I’m not saying you need to implement all of these design suggestions overnight, but you need to start somewhere.

I didn’t pull these ideas out of thin air. Everything on this list is backed by research and statistics related to design principles.

It doesn’t matter if your website is brand new or if it’s been around for a decade. These are the web design best practices that you need to follow in 2019.

http://www.quicksprout.com/website-design-best-practices/ Read more here - http://review-and-bonuss.blogspot.com/2019/03/13-website-design-best-practices-for.html