Today has been busy.

I wrote lots of letters, paid a bit towards my council tax (I’ve been keeping my payments in-advance and that’s working for me. I’m trying to employ a “if you have a tenner, put a pound towards your council tax” agreement with myself. But today I wrote to the council because I don’t think they’re quite offering adequate information as to the distribution of the money.

I’m deeply uncomfortable with the fact that there has apparently been an increase in the police workforce. I’d like to know exactly what kind of crime is committed in Brighton – that might justify that decision. Is it the police cuts in London? Have the London Police had to move out of London to afford to live? Is it those pesky gays men selling XTREME poppers or – no – not WEED? COKE? MDMA?) aaand most importantly I received a new deodorant in the post.

It’s an item that’s been endorsed by Doctor Jane Goodall.

She did a lot of very cool things and continues to do a lot of very cool things. She inspired the character for the mother in Mighty Joe Young and when I was little and I used to pretend that I had a kind and intelligent mother I would hum the lullaby in it to myself. If you do not know who Doctor Jane Goodall is you will learn a little bit about her in the email I sent to the deodorant company that I feel did her a disservice with their packaging and otherwise did a pretty poor job of marketing that she had let them use her name.

I’m not entirely certain that the people who are selling these deodorants knew who she is.

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Hi guys! Gals?

Thanks for the product. It did arrive. And it was packaged. I guess.

I wanted to alert you to the two broken links at the foot of the email you sent me, to inform me that my deodorant had been delivered. I’ve included it below, please do scroll down for a reference.

My new item has been lovingly placed beside me, I used it the second it arrived.

But back to those links: I was hoping for some ‘natural’ beauty hacks at the suggestion of Professor Jane herself.

I imagine your company made the most of the opportunity to meet and do business with Professor Jane – a woman who has helped us to understand and conserve endangered animals that are so precious to our Planet.

I’m sure that you’re aware that she has lived amongst wild animals, so that she could study them in their habitats, and that she was probably amongst the first twenty or so British women from a humble background to have ever been given a doctorate for her contributions to the environmental sciences? I had also rather hoped to read some eco-friendly showering tips from someone that has had to be so precious about resources like clean water while living in the wilderness, and sometimes quite alone too. It’s just: there was no reference to the fact on your site and the efforts made to sell the product were quite minimal. It must have come across as quite rude and poorly researched actually.

Did you also know that she might’ve been the first person in the World to document evidence that primates are capable of using tools to acquire food – the way primitive humans might have done so?

It’s a shame the links aren’t working because I imagine they serve as some kind of extended dedication on your fantastic little site to feature a woman that has done so much for science and other women.

Please let me know when you’ve fixed the links.

I’m sure you’re aware that I did visit your site and endorse your product because of an interview of hers, and I really don’t have that kind of money to be spending on deodorant (I already have one that comes in a glass bottle) – although I do know that the products I like to use often end up on the shelves of the shops I frequent – so I look forward to testing it. I think it’s of great importance that products void of damaging chemicals and carcinogens are available to all – whether I am inclined to want to be friends with them or not.

As the products are au natural, I was quite curious at the idea of there being some way to preserve them so that they remain in good condition. How are the ingredients in the deodorant preserved if they’re all natural? I know natural products are fast to degrade.

I’ll be updating my blog kariii.co with my thoughts on the product too, so I’d value any contributions you can make to helping me write something interesting about your product.

Also: I’m going to offer some advice: fire the person doing your marketing. It’s not their line of work, they were desperate for a job. Please let me know if you need someone to do graphic design or packaging design for you, I’m looking for a quick job and I’d love to add your brand to my CV. Speaking of which – here’s the URL. https://kariii.co/cv/

I’m embarrassed at how I envisage you must’ve come across speaking with Dr Jane and I hope my suggestions will help you fix it.

Love Karina

In the event that the staff come across this post: the art on the box is not good.

Did you know that Dr Goodall sells primates artworks on her site?

You should have asked if you could incorporate some of her Chimp friend’s artworks. I read the blurb on the box, accompanying the deodorant. I very nearly cried at the rudeness. Do you have any idea what she’s done for women, women pursuing education, women pursuing the right to work with animals or be scientists?

Do you know that she gave the animals NAMES? Before that: their personalities and identities (part of the reason we accept that animals have those is because she has DOCUMENTED IT) were reduced to numerical figures.

RESPONSE

And mine:

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STOP PRETENDING YOU CAN DO MARKETING IF YOU CAN’T DO MARKETING.

Here is a great route if you want to market things to sell things:

– Know what you want to buy – not what you LIKE to buy – but what you really, really, really WANT to buy

– Know why you really want to buy it

it is probably because of the packaging

– Study art. For a long time.

– Study graphic design. For a long time. Look at EVERYTHING and decide what you like and then spend literally weeks trying to emulate it

– Then THROW THE EMULATION AWAY because it is COPYING

– Study literature. FOR A LONG TIME. Have a vocabulary that is all of your own.

If you adopt words and phrases from shows, don’t forget the shows. They’re amongst your many inspirationseses

– Know about lots and lots of different things, so you have a DIRECTION in the event that you want to study marketing later. So you MERGE those ideas and concepts together.

And so when you try to dialogue with people about the work you like, and your INSPIRATION, you don’t sound fucking retarded

Anyway. So. How you butchered Professor Goodall. From a designer’s perspective.

Floral packaging, because it’s a floral scent. Okay, okay lets go with it.

Why that shade of green?

Why those fonts?

Why did you create a border with the flowers?

Was it some kind of nature of chaos versus order of the intelligent designer statement?

Did you design it with your mouse cursor? Can you actually illustrate flowers?

no – no wait one sec

Did that packaging happen to be accompanied by a huge, huge sketchbook (or many, for the prices of the items, I should think) where you explored the potential for every mark made for every single flower?

It took you five minutes, lets be honest.

I believe I might’ve written about the abstract movement on my children’s tumblr – if not I’m glad I have something to add to it. Illustration is OCCASIONALLY a caricatured impression of reality, but that “style” comes AFTER you’ve learned how to draw PROPERLY.

I appreciate how easy I’ve made it look but as I’ve said before – I spent my LIFE doing art. AND I AM STILL TERRIFIED BY THE PROSPECT OF EVEN CONTEMPLATING APPLYING FOR A CAREER DOING IT.

I have spent HOURS of my life just staring at things trying to find the perfect framing for a COMPOSITION. Did you know that composition in the arts and in film is an art of it’s own?

There are people who are so taken by the placement and position of every single aspect of a composition that they have composed their PHD research on it. That is a lot of words to write – and probably read, too.

Do you know that some pieces of art – REAL ART, BY ART MASTERS – can be translated into mathematic principles (the kind of maths that doesn’t make any use of numerical figures) and scientific equations?

You call it ‘cropping’ because the internet has made it all so easy for you but it’s something art masters probably lost HAIR over. It had THAT much meaning to them.

When you study art – it’s grrrrrrreat for personal expression. EVERYONE should do it. I think we all evolve a little more every time someone does a drawing with any kind of success.

It’s great if you can draw and scribble. It’s FANTASTIC. Does that mean you should be doing it in exchange for cash? Probably fucking not. It’s a hobby.

There are talented Arts graduates who are in crippling fucking DEBT – regretting going to University to study the arts because its not making them the living that they deserve. Arts academics reduced to the same salary as the lazy sixteen year old secondary school drop out, serving cheap coffee to rude customers, forced to have uninspiring and repetitive, scripted conversations about food they’re not passionate about selling or otherwise personally invested in because those companies can’t trust individuals to have polite conversations in a shitty uniform (it’s what happens in a society that makes celebrities of uneducated, uncreative, untalented inner-ugly people and then relies on the sub-economy of such a stupid fucking decision that said bureaucrats made because CLEVER people with money is THSCARY), in uninspiring, shitty fucking cookie-cutter franchises – independent cafes (the kind most artists dream of working at but very, very rarely do) are struggling because people (or do you prefer the term consumers? do you know the term? could you get away with using it conversationally without your peers laughing at you for using polysyllabic words? JUST INCASE THE ANSWER IS NO: it’s an inherently derogatory term that bureaucrats use to dehumanise the people buying the shit they’re trying to sell them) don’t trust that they’re serving people clean food & drink – and franchises can afford to be sued, can afford a nasty testimonial in a broadsheet or two.

It is an insult to Art students when someone just wakes up and decides to invest in themselves being marketed as the next Christian Dior or the next Coco Chanel, especially when the likelihood of that person being INSPIRED to do so was a result of their paying attention to a friend or an acquaintance that had been dreaming of doing that very thing their entire life.

Art students – I mean the real ones, not your friend that found out his/her favourite “softcore porn” blogger is going to an Art uni and decided they could do the same thing – spent their LIVES trying to get an arts education, they’ve DREAMT of meeting art masters that could teach them how to perfect a glint in a subject’s eye. Art students being robbed of the time they dedicated to their studies because of well connected, wealthy people who were ‘too good’ to study for a job they had to emotionally blackmail or bribe someone to get.

Oh wait – or those art students that picked the wrong University because the University had to let in subpar students (budgets) whose standard of work was so poor that they felt GUILTY submitting work or they couldn’t engage in group work because their colleagues didn’t respect that they were superior and so their education fucking suffered as a result of it. (Learning to cope with colleagues jealousy is a whole education of it’s own, I’D KNOW.)

If it “comes naturally” – and I mean, not because you’ve been copying someone or somehow gone through their work and had the audacity to think “oh this is so easy” – with nothing to back up the statement (I mean, sketchbooks? Diaries? A life’s body of work?)

If it really comes naturally, ANYTHING – STUDY it so if and when you do get a job of your own merit – it’s not a fucking insult to all the people that really fucking worked.

“Just because you can – doesn’t mean you should”

Don’t be ashamed if you’ve one of those magical footballer IQs, just stay in your lane. Unless your intelligence is of a variety that our IQ tests cant quantify yet. In which case, dude come be friends with me I need you in my life. (Not really)

someone give me a few million and I will show you 50 shades of grey. I won’t even invest in new clothes. I’ll wear leggings and boots and a few of my man shirts. I’ll go all out and get my breasts removed. I’ll be the boy of your dreams. I’ll play Levi in Attack on Titan. I’ll keep my flat. I will spend all the cash on helping you learn what 50 Shades of Grey BDSM could be. But first

Remember that I picked the actor in 50 shades of grey, based on the fact that he looked hot doing psycho in COLD MOUNTAIN. I liked his dainty leaps.