The Twiggy Story

Huge eyelashes, a skinny figure and a pixie style haircut got Twiggy named as ,”The face of 66″ by the Daily Express.

 Fashion icon till now, Twiggy in her days was considered as someone who would not last in the fashion world for not more than a few weeks. But as history has it, she ruled the sixties with girl’s going on strict diets to get her waif like figure and using hot eyelash curlers to attain the doe eyed appeal. 

This Virgo born (19 September 1949) has varied talents. She is an actress, singer and a model. Twiggy Lawson,being her married name she was earlier known as Lesley Hornby,who originated from Neasden a suburb of London.

 She reigned the fashion world for 4 years and in the mid 60’s at 16 she became the world’s first super model. But she quit modelling in 1970 claiming,”You can’t be a clothes hanger for your entire life!” and headed on to have a successful career as an actress beginning her film career in Ken Russell’s The Boyfriend.  

 For which she won two Golden Globe Awards, the Most Promising Newcomer and Best Actress in a musical. Since then she played various other challenging roles on stage and screen.  

Her portrayal as “Eliza Doolittle” in TV production of Pygmalion was highly appreciated and her musical “My One and Only” ran for almost two years and was extremely acclaimed too.

 She was a successful television presenter and has hosted shows like “Twiggy’s People” and “Take Time with Twiggy” intervewing stars like Ken Russell, Lulu and Ferderick Forsyth. She became so well known in such little time that there were Twiggy merchandise  lining shelves in clothes stores and girls were aping her elfin look.

 Barbie dolls, lunch boxes, paper dolls,  boardgames all had Twiggy’s name. This became such a huge thing that Twiggy retired from modelling for the next three years. In 1977 Twiggy married Micheal Whitney who she met on the sets of their movie “W” in 1974. Their daughter Carly was born the following year.

A few unsuccessful fims later in 1984 she toured in a revival production of Funny Face, shortly after which she separated from her husband.

Twiggy has appeared on television screens across the worlds for almost 4 decades, as a model, icon, singing sensation and an actress. She has been modelling for Marks and Spencer for almost for 4 years for their rebranding. She was also seen as one of the four judges for the show America’s Next Top Model with Tyra Banks.

This year Twiggy has been involved with the Breast cancer awareness campaign where she has designed a bath time duck “Duckie” exclusively for the Cancer Research UK.

For BBC 2 , she is hosting a show called the Twiggy’s Frock Exchange where every week  Twiggy and her team of experts host a party inviting over 100 guests who exchange their dresses and accessories and get fashion advice and walk out looking like a million bucks without spending a cent.

 She looks gorgeous in her fifites as she did when she started at the tender age of 16. For all the aspiring models and middle aged women  Twiggy Lawson will remain a superstar!!

Click here for the background story 

 

RIDERS ON THE STORM-SUNIL K(LOCAL NEWS ARTICLE)

RIDERS ON THE STORM

Global recession has not dampened interest in business education, reveals a management event at the QEII convention centre.

Click here for link to background to article

By Sunil Kumar

A worldwide economic downturn has not dampened the hopes of management aspirants across the world. At the ‘World MBA’ tour top business schools and potential business management students were upbeat about future job prospects.

The MBA tour is an organisation travelling with universities and top business schools around the world giving MBA candidates the opportunity to network with admissions directors and participate in panel discussions and one-to-one interactions.

Josh, a UK student said: “London Business School is my best bet at the moment. My previous job was in accounting. The MBA course will hone my managerial skills.”

“The US was my first choice but the dollar has appreciated, so I am planning to stay in the UK,” he added.

MBA schools painted a positive picture of the global scene with considerable speculation that China and India was where maximum growth lay. Marketing was the favourite specialisation for prospective graduates with sales development becoming more popular.

FUTURE PROSPECTS

Adam Kaniki a student from Paris, France felt that a management course with an emphasis on entrepreneurship was the right choice for him. He said that the downturn worldwide was not one of his top concerns and would not affect jobs.

Harsh, representative, Indian School of Business, said: “The recent worldwide slump has not affected corporate packages globally.”

Chris W. Chan, Director MBA Programs, University of Hong Kong, added: “Asia is the powerhouse of the global economy with China and India being the catalysts for growth.”

Twenty-seven of the top 30 North American business schools and the top business schools from Europe and Asia are part of the QS World MBA tour.

Bank of England to the rescue

Christmas’08 comes with a slight relief to home owners with another cut in interest rate from the Bank of England the third month in a row.

The Bank of England cut its interest rate again by 1% to take it to 2% which is the lowest level since 1951.

Bank of England (Source:Wikipedia)

Following up on the largest cut in its benchmark interest rate since being setup in 1694.

The Central Bank has cut rate drastically in the hope of easing the economic consequences of the financial crisis plaguing the British economy.
 
The bank hopes that this would give a boost to lending and hence kick start the housing market and consumer spending again.
 
In a statement posted on the Bank of England website it says that
 
“Consumer spending and business investment have stalled, while residential investment has continued to fall” and “the downturn has gathered pace”
 
This has left the gate open for further rate cuts by noting “it was unlikely that a normal volume of lending would be restored without further measures”
 
According to surveys reported by Bloomberg online, analysts expect the interest rates to decline even further.
 
And it may even touch zero sometime in 2009 as Bank of England and the British Government struggles with deteriorating economy.
 
However, it must be noted that although the central bank has been cutting rates, a lot of people are unable to benefit as only few banks have passed the cuts onto consumers.
 
The Telegraph reports that some consumers with Alliance & Leicester and Northern Rock are paying up to 3 times the official rate, also some lenders like Halifax and Llyods TSB have pulled all their tracker mortgage products for new customers.
 
Promises to keep
 
The government has promised to persuade lenders to pass on the full cut to consumers, In an interview with ITV’s GMTV the prime minister Gordon Brown said
 
“I think banks should really pass on the interest rate cut. We are talking to the banks. Remember last time there was a cut, we had to speak to them before it was passed on and we will be speaking to them again.”
 
Only time would tell if the drastic action taken by the Bank of England and the British Government would be able to rescue the Economy, sinking housing market and the most indebted consumer in western Europe.
 
(Background to this article)

Website critique – Luton Today

First impression

 

The first impression of Luton today (http://www.lutontoday.co.uk/) is that the content and organization is quite clear and neat. It uses mainly black and blue on white background, which is quite easy to read and easy to find.

 

The banner on the top of the website is has good colour match and highlight different part of news in different colours.

 

It very good to have a banner called “national latest news” with flash news, which gives the reader an impression of professional information platform with latest news.

 

The advertisement stays in the corner and is not too dramatic or flashing, which gives the readers a sense of credibility and seriousness. The readers and focus on the main information deliver.

 

It has a powerful search engine for job, weather, motor, local pages and other aspects which connected with people’s daily life. The strong usability is its biggest attractiveness.

 

But there are still some shortcomings. The name of the publication is not so obvious. It’s good to use orange clour to be more attractive but it is too small. The readers are quite easy to be distracted from it to the advertisement on the right side of it, or miss the website without figuring out what it is about at the first sight.

 

There is much blank space on the homepage, separating it into different section, making the readers feel the content is not so rich and colorful.

 

There is almost no links in the article, and no comments from the readers under the article.

 

For different section of the websites, the designer chooses different font, colour matches and structure, which makes the homepage not coherent and integral enough.

 

Writing

 

The language of the articles is neat and clear, which is fairly easy to read. But it does not quite follow Jakob Nielsen’s “F Pattern”. The first two paragraphs of many articles are too long, with long sentences not so attractive.

 

On the right side of each article, the readers and click the button to increase text size or decrease it. This special feature shows the designer emphasize details very much and is quite reader friendly.

One of the most important attractiveness for online news is its interaction with the readers through comments, forum or blogs. But there is no such link under the articles.

Moreover, many articles don’t use bold font for the opening paragraph to highlight them. Some even don’t have double space between two paragraphs which makes the articles quite boring.

Among all the articles in Luton Today, you can barely see any links in it, or background story and related story, which is a very obvious flaw. Although most of the news here are easy to read and understand, since it is mostly related to people’s daily life, but some explanation for background information should not be neglect.

 

On the homepage, the separation of news categories is not so clear. The title of “news” appears three times on this page and is even separated into two parts. One title with different contents makes the reader confused where to go.

 

Content:

 

The website of Luton Today mainly offers the local news and national news, as well as the information related to residents’ daily life. For example, the news are separated into Luton news, Dunstable news, Bedford News, today’s choice and motoring news, etc.

 

It contains strong search engines for job, motor and property searching, and also has links to the local newspapers.

 

In the top categories for local pages, the readers can find information of all aspects of life, including dentists, doctors, restaurants, hotels, hairstyles, taxis, etc.

 

The websites uses multi-media quite well. Video and audio news make up a very big part of it. A very special column for if is its “talk newspaper”. It transfers the print newspaper into audio document. The readers can “hear” the newspaper on-line.  

 

It’s very good the advertisements on it is not quite flashing and annoying. There are separate parts called “advertising coupons” and “Ads direct”, which contains many advertisement information for commercial use. Although there is still some flash advertisement within some articles, it is not a big flaw and is acceptable.

 

Navigation:

 

Generally speaking, the navigation in Luton Today is organized quite well.

 

The upper section of the homepage is separated into three columns, with the main navigation on the top of it and the sub navigation on the right side of the page.

 

The main navigation should consider the consistency and integration of the whole web page. However, as I said in the part of “first impression”, the homepages seems being separated into two different parts up and down with different column and font design. The main navigation also seems separated, with different colour, fond and style, which is kind of confusing.

 

As for the sub navigation on the homepage, it contains much useful information, like local paper search, job search, weather report, advertisement and online shop. The flash news for the local paper is quite attractive.

 

For the news pages, the navigation on the left gives direction for different categories of news, and you can find the most popular stories following the sub navigation under the articles.

 

The navigations on the homepages also appear in every page of the websites, which is quite convenient for readers get back to any section they like.