When I look through your eyes...

I've recently (mentally) dug up an old presentation: Art Theory for Engineers. I kinda irritated some co-workers a few years back, when I not-at-all-subtly suggested that their uninformative and over-stuffed PowerPoint presentations looked awful, and they'd actually be more effective if they thought about eye/brain intake and color theory. Which was true! They prompty ignored my advice and kept presenting ineffective slides.

I mean, yes, the school mascot is kinda funny to have in print and completely enhances all of your cool scientific data. Especially graphs. Totally helps on graphs and points out the pertinent information. And flying-in or swirling out bullet points? Very impressive, because no one else thought of using that.

Oh sarcasm...

Where does art theory come into slides? It's all in your eyes. What were your eyes designed to do originally? See stuff that thinks it's about to eat you. Pretty important. Therefore, your eyes (and brain) are fantastic at picking out fine movements (based on high-contrast light and shadow) and bright out-of-place colors. Bright color, fine details. Let's take a look at what makes ads effective:

image from Crate and Barrel website

Lovely turkey dinner, just in time for Thanksgiving! What's the first thing your eyes focus on? Probably the turkey. Why? It's the bright white fine twine on the leg trusses. That's detail and contrast. The second thing your eyes focus on? Probably the wonderfully fluffy mashed potatoes (and you know they've got the right of butter in there, along with the potato skins for extra contrast). They're the next brightest thing, and in close proximity to the string/turkey. Then you follow the shiny silver immersion blender across to the left, which leads you to the patterned orange and yellow dishtowel, up to a similarly-colored wine glass, and back to the turkey. On your second pass, you'll probably notice that the knife block points to a lemon-yellow cassarole pot. You probably still won't notice the bowls of Granny Smith apples or cranberries in the background, not to mention the colander of whole potatoes in the front right.

So, what are they selling? Obviously since it's Crate and Barrel, they want you to buy kitchen stuff. From the picture, it's mostly about the food that happens to be sitting in and around kitchen stuff. Food is a fantastic motivator (hooray for the primitive brain), so it makes sense to make you hungry for, uh, roasting pans.

Let's try another:

image from Banana Republic website

This one's actually pretty clever at moving your eye around. It wouldn't be nearly as effective if the lettering weren't there.

Okay, breakdown time. You first look at her face. It's the only non-neutral color in her cheeks and lips, as well as the brightest part of the whole picture. Details make you then look at her eyes, which (cleverly) are reading the taglines! Because we read left-to-right, you then follow the last of the text over to the white part of the pattern in the sweater, which then leads down to her hands. Because her jacket is open, you follow the V-shape back up to her face via the bright strands of blonde-highlighted hair. Repeat loop. You probably don't realize what color her shirt is, or that it's even in the picture at all.

How's that? Impressed yet? Next time will be why some ads (and slide presentations) are ineffective.

Have you got any tips for effective presentations?

Sewing: B&W&P dress problems

Pesky dress.

The biggest hurdle in finishing the dress is that work has ramped up. And I just want to sleep when I get home.

Okay, another part of why I haven't had any progress on hemming the pesky B&W&P dress is the problem of see-through-ness. I've pinned up the dress (taking out about 7.5 inches, and it looks pretty good. Except when I tried to mock-up the normal rolled hem. The pattern was very evident. Too see-through. The twill tape I've been using on the seams is only half an inch wide, which would be difficult to manipulate into a hem. So, I got some 2" wide hem tape, which I assumed would be suitable for hemming. But I can still see the fabric pattern through it. Thinking about using a strip of the lining or something, but that would require more hemming of the strip. Or something.

Still working on it, but mostly in my head.

Any suggestions out there?

The Style Thing

I have some issues with sewing and creating clothing that I would want to wear out of the house. Here are my (larger) problems with sewing totally awesome clothes for myself:

1. Sense of style. I'm pretty boring. I don't wear the latest trends, it's unlikely to find me in frilly blouses or giant pendant necklaces, I don't wear high-heels, purses make me glaze over. I look good in slacks and a button-down shirt, which is what I wear to work, along with the pair of brown or pair of black, sensible flats. Otherwise it's jeans and t-shirts and my faithful hiking boots. I do know if something fits me well, but I've no idea if an outfit looks good or not. I currently favor the stylings of Anthropologie, ModCloth, Banana Republic, and Boden, but I don't have a handle on knowing whether it fits me or not. Have I ever bought anything from any of the above stores? No. Have I drooled over them? Yes. Well, and I'm also kinda cheap and don't want to pay the prices of some of those shops.
   
2. I'm allergic to wool. This means no lovely woolen trousers, tweed jackets, cashmere sweaters, or mohair scarves for me. Yes, there are lined crisply-creased houndstooth pants, but the hems and waistbands are usually still woolen on the inside, leaving a fantastic red ring around my middle and ankles by the end of the day. Even my beloved woolen peacoat will give my neck a rash unless I wear a scarf. I do love a nice pinstriped suit (which tends to be wool).
   
3. Pink. I despise it. It looks fantastic on a lot of people (women and a few men), and even yours truly, but I hate everything that color stands for and represents. I will not wear pink, other than (possibly) a few stripes or dots in an otherwise-other-colored fabric. Basta.
   

While the pink issue is relatively easy to avoid (except some summers when it replaces red), the other two are harder for me to get around. Wool is all over the place in winter, especially with the fashion industry's recent "discovery" of mohair and cashmere. (Side note: If you find non-wool sweaters that are not ribbed turtlenecks, please let me know!) However, there's enough cable sweaters that will layer over shirts (can't anyone make a thick, warm cotton sweater?!) My biggest problem is the style thing.

The fact that I'm calling my issues "the style thing" just shows how clueless I am. Fashion frankly scares me, but yet, I desire it. I want to look more modern and indie and non... uh.... non-obsolete. At the same time, I don't want to look ridiculous or strange. I also don't want to light myself on fire, which actually is a job hazard for me (this is part of the no-frilly-blouses bit). Plus, there's the whole outfit-making-thing. "Accessories" to me means "stuff you don't need" rather than "stuff to make you look better." For me, you take pants + shirt + shoes = outfit. This apparently is a misnomer when you get into that super cool layering thing, which means at least three shirts of different lengths and decorations, plus maybe a vest or a necklace or something else, and have you thought about your hair? I just don't see it.

What are your suggestions/rules for trying new fashion thingies?

Sewing(?): Handsome and Valuable

Here's a thing that was in my box of pins:

It's not actually bent, it's kinda 3-D, about an inch long. I've no idea what it is, nor how it got into the pins. There is a stamp on each side, one says "handsome" and the other says "valuable." What the heck is this?

Kitchen Gods

I love food. While my eating habits should be supplemented with a little more exercise, there's very little better than cooking and baking and sharing a good meal with friends.

I'm not a religious person, but I really do appreciate a good explanation into how things work. For this reason, I have a list of Kitchen Gods, each useful in their own way, and I know they'll help me fix whatever mess I've gotten my food into. I also have a list of Lesser Kitchen Deities, to whom I look for guidance and recipes. I get recipes from all over (lots of cookbooks, and periodic web searches), but there are a few I go to consistently.

Here are my Kitchen Gods:

• Alton Brown. C'mon. He's funny. He's informed. He makes me forget how much I hated living in Atlanta. He has food anthropologists and food historians on his show. And sock puppets. And he's on tv. What more could you ask for?
  
• Harold McGee. The guy who wrote THE book on how food works. It's not a cook book, it's literally how food works. Not a quick read, but definitely an informative one, backed up with peer-reviewed scientific papers on the history of dairy products, possible health benefits, and protein denaturing.
  
• Joe Schwarcz. While not strictly a Kitchen God, he has some great but why? books out there. As one of the head honchos at McGill University's Office of Science and Society, he gives talks and has a call-in radio show that tries to explain current scientific knowledge to anyone who asks about anything. I met him once and was almost fan-girl speechless. Sad. But Dr. Joe is awesome.
  

And the Lesser Kitchen Deities:

• Seriously Good. KD Weeks is a Tennessee-turned-Oregon-turned-Tennessee chef and all-around experimenter with foods and stuff. He's got interesting recipes with everyday materials, especially when the farmers' markets are in full-swing.
  
• Chocolate and Zucchini. Clotilde is a French woman who loves to cook and bake. She messes with recipes and gets delicious results, especially her desserts. Besides her eloquently-worded stories to the recipes, the pictures are scrumptious.
  
• Manjula's Kitchen. I found her while looking online for Indian recipes. I can't get enough of her delicious vegetarian tasties! And watching Manjula make bread doughs on her YouTube stream is like magic.
  
• Herbivoracious. He's vegetarian and into haute cuisine, like super-fancy amuse bouche and molecular gastronomy. I've never made any of his recipes, but the mixes of flavors is intriguing.
  
• Post Punk Kitchen. Found while trying to to figure out how to eliminate eggs from various recipes (and yes, they tell you how). They also have some suggestions for other dietary limitations.
  
• Epicurious. A great search engine for looking up recipes. Following the user reviews is pretty reliable, although there aren't many people who are adventurous eaters.
  

Who are your Kitchen Gods?