Ania Sunny Morning

Ania Sunny Morning, a photo by gingerpig2000 on Flickr.

I have always wondered why people like to ogle pictures of beautiful young women, and yet dress like did not consider themselves worthy of notice.

Ageing by Design

Coming Out!, a photo by gingerpig2000 on Flickr.

One of the issues I see in design is the understanding that a significant segment of the consumers are older people, and that they, like all of us, will only get older.

In a way I was lucky because I have suffered from a skin condition that leaves flecks of dry skin everywhere and arthritis since I was about 30. Lucky, because it gave me a perspective on what it must be like to get old long before I arrive there.

I need a flooring system that is easy to clean and without things to trip over, cupboards that I can reach, places where I can steady myself, and, potentially, room to manoeuvre such items as walking frames and wheelchairs.

And I need my home to remain stylish at the same time.

There are two general paths that design takes - the traditional one that leaves you difficult to clean furniture, and the modern one where there is a plethora of low level surfaces to negotiate. These are not especially good choices when you find movement difficult.

My answer was to have good natural lighting so I can see where I am going and cleaning, a cupboard system either wall mounted at hand height or fully meeting the floor or ceiling to avoid dust crevices below or above that I cannot reach, and no table other than a bar for food preparation, work and eating purposes to free up space and cut down on furniture legs.

The key to good design, as I see it, is not to rely on the past for the overall shape, type and location of furniture but to use it as a source of styling. My apartment does not say 'old people's place' or 'weird' when you look around it, but do you notice something when you have to clean it - it's done quickly.

Social Media Art

Citroen in Wawalnica, a photo by gingerpig2000 on Flickr.

When you create your blog, website or other social media page it really helps if you make it distinctive. But why?

The world is full of pages that get few hits for many reasons. While it is essential to have content that is both relevant and interesting, and to ensure it gets seen by your potential audience, it is worth considering the wider meaning of 'seen'.

While your content might be the best, and you can get it to rank highly in the search engines, will people want to start reading? You know how it is, you do a search, see some interesting pages listed, and you open several at once before choosing the most likely to read. Is your page interesting enough visually to beat the other pages in grabbing the reader's attention?

Getting the right layout and images is like remembering to wear a suit to an interview. Yes, the suit should not matter - but it does. We all make our first and most vital assessment visually because we all have many choices to make in life - and we often need to make them quickly. The result is that we rely on our first impressions over and over again.

With the rise in the use of digital camera and image editing software, there is now a wealth of imagery from which to choose. However, if you are not making good choices, other people will be; it is a competitive world.

The good news is that a lot of the imagery is free to use if you are not using it to promote a product. The image I am using here is mine, a low resolution version of an artwork I keep on Flickr for people like you to use on social media sites. You must always check the licensing on am image to make sure you can use it for your purpose, and writing to tell the owner what you are doing is both polite and an opportunity to get your page seen (yes, I will go and check how my images are being used). You should also make sure there is some link back to the source page of any image you use.

Remember that image owners can use a number of tools these days to check where there images are appearing on the net, including simply sliding a copy of an image from their webpage into Google Images and seeing what turns up.

If your social media is used to sell products and services then you can always approach the image owner and talk about buying a right to use the image.

At the end of the day, your imagery should say something meaningful about what you want your page to say, and to say it quickly, before someone else's says it first.

Cross Town Traffic

Cross Town Traffic, a photo by gingerpig2000 on Flickr.

Via Flickr:
I have noticed that we are creatures of habit in what we talk about, and that it is incredibly hard to break these habits and talk about something else. And secondly - we put rather a lot of faith in people in positions we respect.

In terms of the European Union and national governments, we endlessly talk about the information furnished to us via the media. What the media talks about, we talk about. This is not to say that I do not trust the media, it is just that newspapers, television etc. are there to tell us what is going on in government and sport, at home and abroad - with some 'high' culture and tourism information to round out the experience.

However, if we compare a national newspaper with a local newspaper, what we see is different, with more focus on local people in the local paper than the in the national. They talk mostly about issues that relate to their audience.

So, why do we talk endlessly about national issues and so little about our issues, since we are our own audience? That is not to say we should not talk about national and international events and the players involved, just why do we not figure in their as well?

I mean you and I, we are both valid members of society, so why when a subject of national or international importance comes up, why don't we talk about our roles in them?

I believe the reason is our reliance on habit - we are presented issues from a specific viewpoint, we trust the viewpoint to the extent that we learn the habit of passing on what is said. Trust leads us to limit ourselves by habit, and the habit does not involve talking about our personal involvement in the events unless the trusted source tells us to.

I often talk to people about different things, and they keep wanting to pull the theme back to what they have been told over and over again, anything to avoid breaking a habit and being seen to have no opinion.

You can get a canvas print of this image at: shop.photo4me.com/picture.aspx?id=234261, not just on paper - but on canvas and on phone cases!