Friday 27th August 2021
One of the activities that goes into the creation of The Climb each day is the construction of a thumbnail image to go with the post.
Visually these are pretty simple. It’s just a picture of me with the logo. It gives the post a bit of visual uniqueness as well as some ‘brand awareness’.
I used to take the picture on the day but back then (in the pre-pandemic times) I was travelling around a lot more. Since Covid hit (and I brought back The Climb) I’ve tried to develop a bit of a stockpile. If I’m going on a walk I’ll try and do some photos. I’ll wear a different baseball cap and try and get a few different backgrounds. I’ll also gurn for the camera, trying different expressions. I’ll even swap which side I take the photo from. All this contributes to the uniqueness of the image.
I’ll then mix them all up. The idea is simply to give a reader a visual clue that the content is new. They don’t have to spot what I’ve done, they just need to subconsciously realise they’ve not seen this image before and therefore this is an edition they’ve not read before.
I’d like to claim this is super scientific, but really it’s just about grabbing a bunch of photos, adding the logo and then mixing them all up so I’m not wearing the same cap each day, or have a similar background.
Because I travel so little, when I do, I go into overboard with images. Going down to Dorset on Monday, I did a ridiculous number of photos… because the sea makes for a different backdrop to the local park or a housing estate. I even took two baseball caps with me!
Today I spent a good number of hours, processing those images, adding logos to them and labeling them ready for future editions.
Because of how I mix things up, if I have 20 pictures of me on a beach, I’ll space them out (especially if they are similar). My go to number for spacing them out is 25. That’s nearly a month and should be enough of a gap for regular readers to have forgotten the image.
So if I have four pictures of the beach I might label them X00, X25, X50, X75, (relating to future editions of the climb, e.g. 625, 650, 675, etc.). Then if I have another batch of images of a day at the park, I might space those out as X01, X26, X51, X76. And so over multiple events, baseball caps and gurns, I fill in the pictures for future editions.
Like my photo creation, it’s nothing scientific.
The end result is that I have a huge batch of future images, with the occasional gap that I’ll try and fill in if the thumbnail I’m working on won’t look too much like the one preceding or succeeding that edition.
I’ve now built myself quite a stockpile (and now they are synced I don’t have to worry about future computer crashes making them inaccessible) and with the thumbnails I created today, I do not have to worry about a single thumbnail until the beginning of August next year. I have ones still prepared for after that but 2nd August 2021 is when I have my next gap.
Is this overkill? Totally, but there’s something I weirdly like about the anonymity this gives me for a year. It gives me a year to get my fitness in check and lose my pandemic weight. I read something today about how habits are based on self-identity and whilst I have more to read, I’m starting to think on this, and how I want to identify myself in a year’s time. Am I a HEMA athlete, a writer, a streamer, or am I all of those things? Or none of them?
I have some exciting projects coming up, and time and time again whilst browsing the web I’m encountering people who started things during the pandemic and are now reaping the rewards. I need to not get distracted by being result-orientated. Journey-orientated is where my focus needs to be… but I think about consistency (especially of those who have come out of the pandemic successful) and know that needs to figure in my future identity. I’m good at doing little bits of things, and on some things like writing I am consistent, but I need to be more so.
Weirdly, I see my surplus of thumbnails as buying me some time to figure this all out and put everything in place. In many ways, I’m giving myself a year to figure this all out. That doesn’t mean things stop in the meantime. But I intend to be in a different place next time I need to think about taking a thumbnail.
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Past Years: 2020 – The Year of Being Fearsome | 2019 – The Year of Soldiering Through | 2018 – The Year of Priorities | 2017 – The Year Of The Offensive
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