Meelane's reference blog

I turned them into individual transparent pngs if anyone wants those premade!

if you're learning HTML for any reason, i can't recommend HTML for people highly enough. it's a fantastic introduction to HTML and CSS targeted towards beginners who aren't technically inclined, and it isn't patronizing towards the reader for that. it's a very relaxed and kind (but informative) resource that even i reference from time to time (and i consider myself pretty good with semantic HTML).

I used AskAManager advice to write my resume, primarily this key little nugget:

DON’T spend much time and space on standard job duties (especially if the job is one that the employer should be familiar with);

DO add in what you brought to that role that no one else did.

It’s an incredibly effective tactic. You change the focus from Past Job (not unique) to Self (unique). Scour that job history for weird but cool shit you did!!

At the moment, my resume is two pages, and 80% of it is One Job (being a public defender for 8 years). I spend a brief moment rehashing the standard job description (represented clients through all phases of cases), making sure to highlight qualifications that are required (certified by the state to represent juveniles and do felony cases since x year) and swing into my high-profile cases (about a dozen jury trials).

Then I started throwing EVERYTHING in.

Community outreach: first defense attorney invited to be on the community’s domestic violence policy team. Worked on news stories with a reporter who let me manipulate him.

Professional development: what actually happened is I made the mistake of showing up to a local bar association meeting and they elected me to [council role… let’s say vice president] behind my back. Is that what I said? Fuck no. Vice president of local bar association come and get me mfers

Experimentation in representation of clients: filmed and edited a sentencing advocacy video. (Included link.) (did not include the sad result that the judge refused to watch it at sentencing hearing.)

I even start naming some stuff I did just for myself. I use a lil tablet called a Remarkable, and I made my own formatted sheets for client interviews and stuff. “Designed and implemented Remarkable tablet sheets for various purposes including”

Anyway. It’s really surprising how much you can milk from your job if you really think about what YOU did. How YOU did it. In the end, I looked absolutely kickass.

Would it have been better to have my resume on one page? Eh probably. Could I have neatened and trimmed it up? Sure. But I made it interesting and fun to read because it was about me, not about anyone else.

And I got rejected from one public defender’s office I applied to. Guess what? They weren’t looking for someone with as much weird personality as me, they wanted a tighter run office with people who were conventional and organized and known to the area. In retrospect, I should definitely not have worked there, and by making myself that clear on my resume I rightfully scared them off.

The other office? Called me literally as I was leaving the building after the interview lasted half an hour longer than it was supposed to, with a job offer.

Don’t rely on stupid tricks to stand out. You ARE different than the other applicants. Think about how you’re different. Ask other people how you’re different. Take some of those stupid work personality quizzes if you need ideas for buzzwords.

Oh, and I did ask AskAManager’s favorite interview question: what distinguishes, in your mind, someone who’s good in this role from someone who’s great in this role?

so, ways to get around this:

turn off AI results. they're literally nonsense to us

don't use pinterest because the sources/provenance is often hard to trace

a standard internet search can be okay, but museum collections are the top tier (list of collections below this list)

instead of broad terms like victorian, regency, tudor, renaissance etc. try using the decade you're looking for. if you're not sure of what decade it is but have a vague image in your head, look on the fashion history timeline and just jump around until you find it. but even changing to e.g. 19th century will give better results than victorian

including terms like womenswear/menswear, daywear, formal wear, evening wear, court dress should increase the value of your search too

including "fashion plates" in your search can give you a nice impression of the intended silhouettes of the era. some of these might be a little stylised but will show you what was considered in vogue

for pre-fashion plate eras or things like makeup and styling, you'll have to look at portraiture or manuscripts. these are harder to actually find what you're looking for, but searching museum collections and limiting results to specific date ranges will be your friend

when looking at art, do bear in mind sometimes artists would paint fabric extra flow-y to show off their skills. it might not have been exactly like that in terms of fabric weight or drape. so, a pinch of salt required!

if you find something on image search where the provenance is dubious, reverse image search and you might find a source! i've been able to trace random pinterest images to real sources, but this does take a lot of time and effort and is often not worth the headache

some online resources and museum collections:

fashion history timeline is an invaluable resource if you're trying to get a feel for everything and should be your first port of call. it'll also link to good examples

the met has a vast number of extant examples of clothing, as well as fashion plates

costume institute fashion plates is a subcollection of the met for fashion plates (1800s-1922)

v&a also has many extant garments, fashion plates, and incredible articles on clothing and aesthetics. read the details of the objects because they'll often reveal a lot about the piece

lacma is good for C19th-20th pieces

nypl digital collection for photographs

national portrait gallery or similar for portraiture, or literally any museum in your country that has historical art

national museums scotland can be useful situationally but might be oddly specific

stout style history is a great collection for finding image references for fat people wearing historical clothes. survival bias of a lot of museum pieces tends towards smaller clothing that couldn't be repurposed, but this aims to counter that. it's not sortable, but is still a really nice resource

wikimedia commons is surprisingly handy! and the images, if you should need to link/repost them, are public domain

auction websites sound like a funny one to recommend. some won't have mannequins and some will. just look up historical garment auctions and you'll find some!

On rare years when the conditions are right in the arid landscape of the Badlands, in the American West, wildflowers burst into a display of colour for just a few days. The vegetation in the region has adapted to the climate, with just a small amount of moisture the desert can become coloured with sweeping fields of Scorpion Weed, Beeplant and the flowers of the Pincushion Cacti. These blooms can be very short-lived to conserve moisture.

Photographs by Guy Tal

Just in case you forget this exists.

You can browse the most popular ones or search for certain colors, themes, and even specific hex codes!

When you find one you like, you can download a wallpaper swatch of it and also select the specific colors it uses to look at more palettes that use those same ones.