Please note: Normal features will be resumed later this week- this is just a little bit more of an introspective piece.
This week’s feature is something a little different to usual. With the site being redesigned to reflect a more modern and forward-thinking direction, it just seemed right to offer some clarity and a bit of an update. After all, since the launch of UNTITLED back in January 2019, pretty much every post has been on a specific subject matter. There’s been nothing personal here which some may argue is the entire point of a blog - to that I’ll tell you to wait a little and read on.
One page that underwent an awful lot of design was the About Us in a bid to present the core values of UNTITLED in a bit of a clearer manner. If you were a day one visitor to UNTITLED, that page looked a mess and sounded like one too. Deep in the depths of the day-one posts on the blog, there was something entitled ‘UNTITLED - An Introduction’ which in hindsight just sounded like a load of overzealous nonsense - it wasn’t concise enough. What’s on the About Us page now makes an awful lot more sense. In addition, freshening up the design of a blog or website is one of the best things you can do. It just keeps everything looking a bit more trendy than it would if you hadn’t have changed anything.
The core values of UNTITLED can now be found by clicking the link in the disclaimer above the blog posts themselves which brings you to a page entitled ‘The UNTITLED Pledge’. There you can now find it all laid out in black and white - Honesty, Clarity, Enthusiasm. It’s a lot clearer than the over-the-top introduction piece before it, and beneath it, you’ll find a code of practice for reviewing products on the UNTITLED Reviews YouTube channel - more on that later.
This code of practice operates on pretty much the same lines as the principles that come before it. To reiterate, we never accept any form of incentive, monetary or otherwise, to review a product in a biased manner, and if you ask for a five star review of a product, you won’t get one unless it’s deserved. Moreover, all reviews posted on the channel and indeed on here are backed by fact. There won’t be any misleading claims - everything spoken or written abides by those three ethical principles of Honesty, Clarity and Enthusiasm. This is something that needed to be clarified, especially given the fact that UNTITLED has been approached by a few firms over the last few weeks requesting reviews of products, but in some cases, they wanted everything done on their terms. In these cases, if no compromise could be reached, review requests were politely declined. Of course, I understand that everyone has their own way of doing things - that’s life - but, there’s a fine line between a method and hardline morals. Sending a YouTube channel a product for nothing and expecting a gleaming review isn’t how this works, not least from the creator’s point of view.
On a lighter note, this more introspective piece also seems like the perfect place for a bit of promotion and placement. Since UNTITLED launched back in January 2019, there’s been a few notable successes that I’m particularly proud of. First off, the YouTube channel passed 50,000 views last week - it might not seem a lot in today’s fast moving world, but to get that many in under a year must mean I’m doing something right. Back in April 2019, the Album Of The Week column gained attention from the one and only Elvis Costello thanks to a post on his seminal 1978 work This Year’s Model with the Attractions. That was the first of any posts/videos to reach four figures in reader numbers, which seemed crazy at the time. That weekly column has since drawn in praise from fans of bands from The Beatles to Oasis to the Arctic Monkeys - there’s no doubt that music has the power to engage people. Retweets and mentions from the likes of the Brooklands Museum last year too are also pretty important to me - that editorial on Count Louis Zborowski was by far and away one of the most interesting pieces to write and research.
So, what next? Of course, as a teenager, life is full of pleasures when it comes to higher education, and you can definitely expect UNTITLED to continue in this capacity over the next however long - it’s not going anywhere just yet! Also, if there’s one thing you could do after reading this for me, it’d be to comment on this post about your views, or spread the word about UNTITLED as best you can. Features will be every few days and keep coming back - there’ll always be something new here for you to enjoy - you never know what you might see.
Be Different. Be Unique. Join Us.
Reece Bithrey.