This week's Words... comes straight from one of my favorite business and branding experts, Mr. Marty Neumeier. In addition to his consulting work, he is famous for his short and highly visual "airplane books" like The Brand Gap and Zag, and he's just published a new one I can't wait to check out: Metaskills (New Riders, 2012).
Also!
The Man Repeller (whose fashion sense we so love to question) has written a fabulous response to T Magazine's recent scather of an article "The Circus of Fashion." Peripherally, I tend to agree with the latter's disgruntled view of "dressing for the cameras" and all that street style represents today, but Leandra counters by pointing out Generation Y's conspicuous role in the changing status quo of major media and editorialization.
TMR's frustration about T's diminishing portrayal of bloggers mirrors my own, and I'll echo her sense that we bloggers may be nailing shut our own metaphorical coffins due to our sometimes blinding hunger for sponsorship and a quick buck. While (I think) there is always room for a shopping round-up (hello, they're fun and often helpful), I also think that blogging was/is meant to be so much more than that. I suppose that's what I've been trying to get at all this time, but in far less elegant language and from a comparatively shorter soap box.
I leave you with a tease, my favorite line from her post: "It isn’t fair to abate our influence, but in spite of that, it should be canvassed: how can we really assume that we will cull the respect we think we deserve if we don’t respect our own brands?" Does accepting a free sample or blogging on behalf of a company diminish self-respect? I can't answer that. But I admire her for giving us a reason to ask these questions. If (and that's a big "if") T represents an industry's view on our behavior, maybe we don't need any more of "what we've already got."
I demand that you read and consider it. And go...
