_do you worry about how you look?

Lunchtime chat with Valuable Sharon just now meandered to the topic of beards; specifically, beards with cornflakes stuck in them. We wondered whether or not seeking advice from someone who appeared to have said flakes lodged in their facial hair would lead us to doubt their professional credibility. What do you think about this?

We agreed that we don't mind the odd cornflake.

In fact, we probably prefer the expertise of someone with idiosyncratic cornflakes, because if they know their stuff you may not worry what they look like, and you interpret their lack of care over breakfast cereal as a sign that they have their mind on higher things.

You would actually refer friends to 'the cornflake man' because as long as his advice hits home, he clearly knows his onions (if not his oats), and—in a rather shocking twist of conventional thought, I know—perhaps it even increases his credibility in an appealing and vulnerable display of humanitarian realness.

Confession time: I get worried about my own misplaced cornflakes, and this stops me even stepping out to make my mark in the first place. Do you know what I mean?

Do you get so worried about doing the wrong thing, that you can't commit to anything? Being overly concerned with your it not looking like everyone else's it could be stopping you from making your mark at all.

I think the best we can do is this:

Just get on with it and employ all the tools at your disposal to make sure the truly important things happen for the people out there that need them. 

What has this to do with Thinking Made Visual? Quite a lot, I suspect.

Good visual communication means there's always something on the outside that reflects something on the inside, and folks, I don't mean undigested breakfast.

Come on, 'fess up with me, especially you lot in the design community - how many times have you stalled going live with your own site or posts or folio, because you're terrified of being judged on it not looking like everyone else's thing, even though you know what you've made is real, and comes from the heart?
Let me know what you think, because lunchtime chats around here are all about coming as you are. 

Leave your cornflakes in the comments! ~>