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Friday, April 22, 2016

Language, Quotations, Symbols and Titles Which Sell For Travel and Gifts

How times have changed. In the Sixties anybody who wore an advertising tee-shirt looked like an elderly, white haired, obsessed or depressed prophet of doom parading Oxford Street with the banner The End Is Nigh or New Shop Opening. Not illegal, not immoral, but definitely either nuts or so poor he had to accept money to walk up and down carrying advertising.

Now the trains are full of people wearing slogans, religious people wear religious symbols and quotations for holy books, national flags appear supporting football teams, witty quotations, motivational quotations.

You can wear a symbol such as a gold cross to advertise attachment to Christianity. Tee shirts and charms on bracelets or pendants to show you are a guitarist or rock band, their supporter. Skis and souvenir shirts from ski resorts show you are a skier. Scissors show you are a hairdresser or dressmaker. Wine bottles and grapes show you are in the wine business. Anybody at a trade show wears a tee-shirt advertising their business whether they are sitting down on the stand or walking about looking at other people's stands.

You can write books on language and grammar, serious books teaching English, or funny books explaining or making fun of mistakes and dialects such as books on Let's Stalk Strine or Singlish.

I bought fine bone china with card patterns to serve food at bridge parties.

I bought clothes with grape patterns and jewellery featuring wine bottles to wear at wine dinners.

I bought tee-shirt with the sayings and photos of Oscar Wilde and Edgar Allen Poe. I also nominated as birthday presents bracelets, rings and items on Banned Books.

I ordered from the Vistaprint site a bag featuring one of my books, a hat and a tee-shirt to match, business cards and stickers.

Looking at the Singlish cushion I thought, I could make and sell all sorts of products with my caricatures or sayings, or others which are out of copyright.

In medieval times the architect would sometimes the faces of his sponsors on public buildings; he might include his symbol or self-portrait or a caricature of a person he disliked hidden in the statues of a cathedral or the gargoyles.

Hitchcock gave himself a walk-on part in his later films. In the film When Harry Met Sally, the older lady who says to the waiter in the restaurant after the actress fakes an orgasm, "I'm having what she's having" is a relative of the film maker.
On this mural in Singapore the artist has included himself in the notes on local characters at Cooking Pot Bay, which is the translation of the name of the MRT (Mass transit railway station) and area, Telok B l a n g a h. 


Many authors use their books as a picture on Facebook. I have my own self-advertising.

If you want to buy a book from me, and get a signed copy, I am usually carrying either a book of quotations or a book of children's poetry or a story for and about children and a talking dog.







Angela Lansbury, author of;
Quick Quotations, and
Who Said What When
Larry the talking dog
, ten books by mainstream publishers and ten self published, more in preparation.


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