Check out my latest piece about women’s fashion glasses, on Fashion Beans here.
January 22, 2010
The Ten Commandments (of Spring/Summer 2010)
By Renuka Rajadurai
My latest piece on Fashion Beans… 10 rules for a stylish new year:
January 21, 2010
Think Ahead – the do’s and don’t’s of a public presentation
By Renuka Rajadurai
Last night I was lucky enough to be part of a group to be given a brand new, free Palm Pre. Ariadne Capital’s strategy in building the brand profile of the new Palm phone being simply to get it into the hands and minds of London’s creative community and the adulation and recommendations would follow. My review to come later this month…
But enough about Palm and the fact that around 300 new Pres will probably be floating about Ebay this morning for half the retail price, as in order to get the phone, we had to sit through a two-hour presentation on the topic of ‘Forward thinking is a beautiful thing.’ One of the worst presentations I have ever had to sit through. So to save the world from ever having to sit through something similar again, here are some definite do’s and don’t’s, when it comes to public presentations:
1. Do choose an environment your audience already feel comfortable in.
2. Don’t adulterate it by plastering the doors, walls and windows with corporate logos, we’re not stupid, we know why we’re there.
3. Do fill us up with food and wine before the event, especially when you present over the dinner hour.
4. Don’t serve one awesome dish and then five other vegetarian ones. The Chorizo ran out in five seconds flat and the vegetable moussaka did not compare.
5. Do integrate creative magnifiers that will stimulate your audience and get them thinking abstractly.
6. Don’t split your presentation in two, the first half with nothing but countless metaphors about nothing to do with the second half, and the rest about business facts and figures alone.
7. Do use multiple presenters who are skilled at engaging the audience in different ways.
8. Don’t use one who is so captivating you don’t want him to stop and then finish with someone else who can’t stop saying a phrase that inspires the crowd to make it the cue for a drinking game.
9. Do hand out goodies at the end, I would have sat through a lot more for that great, and free, Palm Pre
10. Don’t make us sit through two hours of lecture on a topic the audience is more knowledgeable, and certainly don’t entertain that idiot at the end who asks why you’re standing up there in the first place.
January 21, 2010
Neck Candy
By Renuka Rajadurai
Neck Candy is my latest piece on Fashion Beans this week… stay tuned for my Ten Commandments of the Spring/Summer season later this week…
January 13, 2010
Read me weekly…
By Renuka Rajadurai
From today I will be contributing a weekly article on tricks and trends to the Fashion Beans website.
You can check out my first piece here:
January 11, 2010
Hermes for all
By Renuka Rajadurai
The new Hermes campaign preview is out and took me by surprise, I’ll admit. Compared to the usual print executions, this one seems relaxed, and a lot less exclusive, positioning the classic scarf as an everyday piece. A response to the recession perhaps?
The beauty of it, despite this, lies in the way it manages still to exude an air of exuberance and luxury as naked a lady lays across what I can only imagine to be the softest stack of Hermes silk-clad cushions ever.
If my credit card wasn’t still recovering from Christmas, I would probably go out and buy one in every motif, to brighten the rest of this dull and dreary week.
January 7, 2010
3.6 Zettabytes
Just came across this little graphic from Fast Company detailing the average daily data consumption of Americans.
Note that handheld devices is double that of regular computers, incredible. Assuming we sleep at least 6 hours thats non-stop data consumption during waking hours…









