#orgaization

Why I decluttered the majority of my book collection.

I used to have a LOT of books, but recently in the past several years I’ve been getting rid of a lot of the paper copies of my books. I still have my kindle but I haven’t been using it as much.

I used to pick up books at every thing I could. School book fairs, club book sales, library book sales, garage sales, you name it.

I’ve always loved the idea of having my own at home library. To…

Art Market Abelha VIII Overview

On Saturday 9th November I went to visit the Abelha VIII (Bee VIII in Portuguese) planned by the Hive Art Studio, an art market mostly dedicated to illustration in Porto and, for my delight, rare was to see a vendor (shall we call them bees?) without business cards since getting your work known through social media is a must for a business to thrive in Portugal (Yogev & Grund, 2012). It is growing fast and lots of different and unexpected types of art were in display.

I found roaming through the booths easy, there was no obstacle other than the crazy amount of people that visited the market. However, it rendered me confused. Took me a while to figure out why but when I sat to think about the whole visit and found it was hard to place the artists by mind mapping and it was definitely not due to quality. 

But what drove me out after only two hours inside? Why didn’t I stay longer?

Somehow, after what seemed like endless thinking, I finally realized it was due to the bees’ random location.

Immediately I found myself in trouble, doubting if I should be truthful or if I should just avoid talking about the event but, truth is, every art fair has their artists randomly placed and this is only an example so I decided I’d be true to my research analysis and unfold it here in a blog post.

Great works were displayed but I got lost in the middle of a crowd of diversity. Every artists’ table was laid out well but the bees themselves were not ordered in any way: tatoo and gore sided with crochet artists, photography in the the middle of commercial art and so on. It was curious how this sensation of randomness made me feel.

Imagine a mall, for instance: There are areas dedicated to woman’s wear and areas for decor, eating areas and so on. These are meant to ease the client’s flow and draw its attention to smaller retail stores (Brown, 1991). Inside the stores you have, for example, clothes arranged in sections of either age, colour, typology, style or whatever makes sense in such store because the order will allow the client to have a cleaner mind map of the options he has. Same should happen in all markets to increase their clientele. I believe that this is why well organized shopping malls are always thriving.

In this case, as I have learnt with a class of mine, we should find the order that fits the fast-growing hive the most.

I don’t believe that artists should be ordered by popularity, for example. This market stands for freedom and opportunity giving chances to all Portuguese illustrators and helping them get their work out there. It truly resides on pure taste when it comes to deciding how to order this hive. I believe that if these bees were ordered according to areas and styles, they would profit more while the client would walk the market without feeling lost. Order is one of the basis for a good user experience.

Being an inverted U, this space is located in the Centro Comercial de Cedofeita or CCC as we call it. It would be fitting to arrange the crafts at one point of the market and in the other corner of the U it would be all about photography. The rest of the U would be illustration since most people come to see exactly that, specially the modern illustrators. This way people would be drawn in and would pass near the other arts in order to see the great works of all bees.

I know there might be some disagreement with this but my organization of the hive would be: crafts, children illustrators, commercial artists, modern styles, realistic, goth, design & calligraphy, photography. There are plenty other ways to organize the booths but I found that by category and style would fit the arts costumer better, they could see it clearly this way without loosing interest and would show the immense variety better. It would appear to be a curated space, thought thoroughly.

This way quality products would not be lost in the midst of areas that make no sense to their target audiences and people that would come to visit these markets with a specific artist in mind would also get to know other bees with similar traits in the tables nearby. Also, artists would feel like they belong, being surrounded by those similar to them.

I think by now the hive must have felt what I felt too. For it to become a win-win situation, I would advise the Studio to at least give this a try, to assign places to the bees beforehand. 

With that said, I must congratulate the Hive Art Studio for the incredible initiative and for being one of the few that fight for freelance artists and art culture by giving them a chance with a place to show their works to the world. A big vow must be given also to the CCC for allowing the use of their halls for this art and culture shout out, a wonderful idea for the touristic flood that has been taking over Porto (Adam, 2014) and a huge help to placing artists on the map.

Lastly, the artworks showed overall quality even if missing a queen bee to order the hive.

References

Adam, G. (2014) Big Bucks: The Explosion of the Art Market in the 21st Century. Surrey: Ashgate Publishing.

Barragán, P. (2008) The Art Fair Age. Milan: Charta.

Brown, S. (1991) “Tenant Placement in planned Shopping Centres: Implications of an Observational Survey.” Journal of Property Research. [Online] 8 (2). pp.179-187. Available from:  https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09599919108724032#aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cudGFuZGZvbmxpbmUuY29tL2RvaS9wZGYvMTAuMTA4MC8wOTU5OTkxOTEwODcyNDAzMj9uZWVkQWNjZXNzPXRydWVAQEAw [Accessed: 16th November 2019].

30 Day De-Clutter Challenge

I recently heard about the 30-day de-clutter challenge from Love and Marriage blog and I decided that I would give it a try.

I am always amazed at how quickly junk could pile up in our house and I absolutely hate it. Generally speaking, I am a very organised person, however, with two kids and a husband my house is always in disarray.

I don’t know about you, but for me living in a cluttered,…

hey guys so i’ve gotten some questions regarding my daily schedules that i’ve posted so i thought i’d make a post allll about it