This video explains why I started creating and making items to help virtual working professionals stage their on-camera backgrounds to emanate meaning about how they work with people, on projects, and in programmes, so they can confidently always feel proud to switch their cameras on.
Tag: Personal brand
Organisational Aesthetics: Unconventional Influence of Spa and Beauty Industry
This week’s AI generated featured image gets an 8/10 it resembles the mess when you are doing product photography.
This week, I was reminded of my academic interest in the Journal of Organisational Aesthetics, which comes out of the highly lauded Tavistock to explore how human senses and artistry inform businesses and many other company practices found in charities and government.
Since I currently work at the intersection of art and organisational behaviour creation, I thought my take on organisational aesthetics might be unique and was looking forward to presenting a couple of papers to this scholarly community.
However, I later discovered that the very thing informing the presentation of my art practice is mostly from my experience in my first career, where appealing to the customer’s five senses was what we were all about in the world of the five-star spa.
I had an intense weekend. Synthesizing a range of ideas in re-doing some product photography. I had to fit in with Etsy’s new rules for sizing from listening to some of their reasserting of the preference of the algorithm for light backgrounds, in pictures. I also had to remember what my shelf styling class taught me about arranging items with natural materials. Additionally I integrated what the product photography coach said about getting good lighting with proper window positioning and using tools to get filler light to remove shadows and cast secondary light on areas of the product. Those are the three main main pieces of aesthetics advice that Etsy sellers get. It’s given as a recommendation of appealing to customers and selling more items. And the practice would appear to be in the thick of organisational aesthetics, however the scholars do say they distinctly focus on beauty for the sake of engaging the senses and not just for profit or sales.
I dug deeper into what organisational aesthetics might mean to me and the art I do and how I present it. I asked myself:
Q: What is this Aesthetic that I create and cannot avoid repeating? Where does it come from?
A: It comes from within and some of it might be the imprint of your spa and beauty years.
After a few struggles and wondering why my arrangements do not look corporate in the slightest, no matter how many books and staplers I insert. I then realised my style comes from an imprint from my early career induction into the interior design and decor values of five star spas, Mayfair clinics/ treatment centres head offices and London’s West-End retail (my first proper Saturday job was Miss Selfridge in Knightsbridge).
It also dawned on me that this is a group (except the West End retail) that might welcome some help. I remember being a sole trader in my city of London treatment room, unsure how to fit out the space I was renting. However, my friend Rachel helped to wallpaper in Timinney Fowler and fit the blush-coloured carpet at the reception. I just had a flashback of getting the electrician to install a gothic lamp and fill up our IKEA cabinet; it would have been nice to have someone to discuss shelf displays that might make the products look more appealing through storytelling other than piling the boxes boxes of moisturiser and serum high.
If you are an independent trader or sole operator in the beauty and spa world and agree that product houses could help more with your displays please comment below.
If you are in any other industry and a sole operator and wondering how you learned to present your professional and personal brand and how organisational aesthetics fits with what you do, please comment below.
How did you come to know what your style or aesthic preference is? How does your organisation use organisational aesthetics not only to bring in revenue but just for the value of having something beautiful to look at?
Below is a list of the posts you might have missed from August
Continue reading “Organisational Aesthetics: Unconventional Influence of Spa and Beauty Industry”
Optimizing Your Backdrop for Professional Image and Connections
AI created the featured image above after it read my post. I wouldn’t say I liked the first one it chose, but I settled on this one as the colours tied in with the green and gold that I talked about this week. This week, I’m reviewing the different themes in bookshelf backdrop styling that I do for my own shelf in my 9 to 5.
Themes for your backdrops
You can theme your shelf or backdrop beyond the colours of the books. The pictures below show how I have fallen into the trend of colour-coded bookshelves and am working to curate more meaningful staging for myself.
Consider curating talking pieces on your shelves to help you connect with colleagues. Avoid those bland vanilla Items you got because the influencer told you they look great. It might be a good idea to plan your shelf styling. You could take a picture on your phone and get the AI to rehash it to produce a simple outline like the one I did below. This might give you a sense of where the lines of the styling need altering so that they form that V shape or pyramid going across.
Image above based on photo of my bookshelf and the Android AI amended it to produce other stylised versions that I then selected.
Remember that it’s all about your personal branding (the extent to which you, in your backdrop, epitomise the organisation or company brand/ strategy), especially if you are a leader. It is also about your well-being through the social connection that can arise from extended chats about you and your curated collection. So what you place on the shelves should open up tales of your interesting travels, curious pieces of art you bought because you liked what the artist said or the strange way they made their art. There could also be pieces that tell of your scrapes and how you got through things; some examples below have those.
Whatever you do with your shelves in your 9 to 5 backdrop, ensure they are on message for you. Remember, it is your home, but it also plays a significant role in your personal branding and your potential in the organisation. The way we present ourselves on camera is now as crucial as the attire we used to carefully select for meetings with the boss.
Our backdrop is our new jacket.
What do you think or do about your backdrop for meetings? Think about it if you want your professional personality to shine beyond using the standard images available in Teams and Webex. Zoom, etc.
Home Office Charm 
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