Both men and women may choose to remove unsightly facial and body hair for many reasons, including social acceptance, aesthetic, hygienic and religious reasons. Numerous hair removal methods have gone in and out of fashion over the years, and the most efficacious to date is laser hair removal, which has experienced fantastic popularity recently.

Traditional hair removal methods include shaving, waxing, depilatory creams and plucking or tweezing. These methods temporarily remove hair, giving smooth skin but can result in undesirable reactions like rash, irritation, ingrown hairs, and even scarring. In addition to such side-effects these methods can be time consuming and have to be repeated regularly to maintain the desired results.

But time and technology have resulted in advances in hair removal methods, and none is as effective as laser hair removal. It focuses on the melanin pigment in the hair allowing the laser energy to destroy the cells at the very base of the hair follicle. This process progressively reduces the number of hairs in the targetted area, and after a number of treatments results in a permanent hair reduction. Laser hair removal leaves little or no side-effects and is actually a very effective treatment for ingrown hairs commonly caused by waxing and plucking.

Laser treatments are able to cover a large area in a small amount of time, with people able to have treatments in their lunchtime or on the way home from work. Treatments take between 5–60 minutes to complete and are usually spaced at six weekly intervals.

Laser Hair Removal can save the ongoing cost in both time and price of hair removal products such as wax, creams or razors, and will free you from worrying about daily, weekly or monthly upkeep, as it leaves the skin smooth and free from hair long-term.

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Again, Honda World Motocross face their last competitive match before the MX1 World Championship starts in Sevlievo, Bulgaria on April 9 to 10. After racing in the last round of the Italian Championship, Evgeny Bobryshev and Rui Goncalves will now build a momentum that will surely carry over to the beginning of their campaign for the 2011 World Championship.

Evgeny Borbryshev is familiar with the new Honda 450R from his experience in 2010 when he raced for the CAS Honda team. He exhibited his effective form from pre-season to last season preparations and scored an excellent win in Faenza. As Rui Goncalves joined the Honda World Motocross team, it represented his return to the manufacturer he used to race for during the early years of his career. This season will be his first time riding 450cc machines for the MX1 championship campaign.

“It feels good to be back with Honda, and it actually seems like I am on my way home. After competing for several championship races and succeeding as a member of Honda Portugal, I developed a good relationship with them so it almost feels like I never even left the team,” Rui says. He also mentioned that Evgeny is great to work with and he believes that they can help each other perform better on the dirt bike tracks.

After changing from the 350R to the 450R, Rui shared a few insights on how he has adapted to the big change. Although he has already raced with a 450R bike before, he hadn’t ever used it for a full championship and he admits that the last Honda trail bike he rode was not even a 4-stroke engine. But its increased torque, improved power delivery, and linear power curve makes it easier to ride smoothly and punch out of corners so he believes that it will positively affect his riding.

Since Rui Goncalves has confirmed his return to the Honda team, spectators can expect to experience plenty of action and excitement in the upcoming Motocross World Championship.

Until the late 20th century, the graphic-design discipline was based on hand-craft processes: layouts being made by hand in order to visualise a design; type was specified and ordered from a typesetter; and type proofs and photostats of images were assembled in position on heavy paper or card for photo reproduction and platemaking. During the 1980s and early ’90s, however, rapid advances in digital computer hardware and software radically altered graphic design.

Software for Apple’s 1984 Macintosh pc, such as the MacPaint programme created by computer programmer Bill Atkinson and graphic designer Susan Kare, had a majorly revolutionary human interface. Tool icons controlled by a mouse or graphics tablet enabled designers and artists to use computer graphics in an intuitive way. The Postscript™ page-description language from Adobe Systems, Inc., enabled pages of type and images to be placed onto graphic designs on-screen. By the mid-1990s, the development of design from a drafting-table activity to an on-screen computer activity was essentially complete.

Digital computers allowed typesetting tools to be placed into the homes of designers, and thus a time of experimentation began in the design of new and unusual typefaces and page layouts. Type and images were layered, fragmented, and dismembered; type columns were overlapped and run at very long or short line lengths, and the sizes, weights, and typefaces were often changed within single headlines, columns, and words. Much of this type of research occurred in design training at art schools and universities. American designer David Carson, art director of Beach Culture magazine in 1989-91, Surfer in 1991-92, and Ray Gun magazine in 1992-96, captured the imagination of a youthful audience by taking this kind of experimental approach into graphic design.

Rapid advances in onscreen software also enabled designers to make elements transparent; to stretch, scale, and bend them; to layer type and graphics in mid-space; and to combine imagery into complex montages. For example, in a United States postage stamp from 1998, designers Ethel Kessler and Greg Berger digitally montaged John Singer Sargent’s portrait of Frederick Law Olmsted with a photograph of New York’s Central Park, a site plan, and botanical art to commemorate the landscape architect. Together, these images show a rich expression of Olmsted’s life and work.

The digital change in graphic design was shortly followed by general public access to the internet. A whole new area of graphic design activity developed in the mid-1990s when internet commerce became a growing sector of the world-wide economy, causing organizations and businesses to quickly establish Web sites. Designing a Web site involves layout of screens of information rather than of physical pages, but approaches to the use of type, images, and colour are similar to those used for print. Web design, however, requires a host of new things to consider, including designing for navigation around the site and for using hypertext links to be taken to additional information. An example of strong web design is the Herman Miller for the Home Web site, designed by BBK Studio in 1998. These designers created a strong visual identity, effective navigation, and informational clarity. Attributes that added to the effectiveness of this Web site included a pleasing colour palette, an informative use of pictures of products, and a scrolling imagery of products.

Because of the international usefulness and reach of the internet, the graphic-design business is becoming increasingly global in scope. In addition, the blending of motion graphics, animation, video feeds, and music into web-site design has caused the merging of traditional print and broadcast media. As kinetic media expand from motion pictures and basic television to scores of cable-television channels, video games, and animated Web sites, motion graphics are becoming an increasingly important area of graphic design.

In the 21st century, graphic design is everywhere; it is a major component of the complex print and electronic information systems. It permeates modern society, bringing information, product identification, entertainment, and persuasive messages. The relentless advancing of technology has changed dramatically the way graphic designs are created and distributed to a mass market. However, the essential role of the graphic designer, adding creative form and clarity of content to communicative messages, remains the same.

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Marketing a lawyer is essentially based on selling the solicitor as the product, so a biography is a critical element of marketing your services. This article provides 5 essential ideas to ensure you get your biography right!

Writing a bio, to market lawyers on web-sites or in printed material is often given very little consideration and can appear to have been completed in little time. Worse still is the bio that a lawyer hasn’t been involved in creating and an admin worker has scraped together from a resume.

If this rings a bell regarding your firm or your bio then you have a serious flaw in your marketing strategy. You must remember that marketing of lawyers, especially those in repeat business areas of law, is based on the principle that the lawyer is the product. This is why the employees page of a law firm web-site is almost always the page most visited after the home or landing page. If you charge an hourly rate for your time, you are the ‘product’, and any potential clients will wish to know what they are buying!

It’s true that some companies base their marketing on a general sales pitch, or branding in one area of law, but generally, the success of a marketing strategy will come down to whether the client believes they are getting good value when they buy the services of the individual doing the work. So, hopefully having convinced you of the importance of a well-crafted bio, here are five quick tips for putting one together:

Quick Tips for creating a compelling Lawyer Biography

Provide all the relevant information
It’s perplexing how many law firm websites have biographies of their staff that neglect to include relevant information. And this doesn’t mean what law school you went to. Be sure you start the bio with a full name, your position within the firm, the type of work you provide, and any other firm responsibilities. It’s important to remember that you’re not writing this for other lawyers to read.

As a lawyer I was pretty pleased the day I was admitted to the Supreme Court in my state. But quite frankly, most clients don’t have any interest what this means. So remember to include info that could be of interest to your client, not just what will impress other lawyers. Certainly mention qualifications, positions on legal committees and the like, but unless it’s something your clients will understand and consider important, then leave it to the end of the bio. It may be of some help to involve a third party. Have someone outside the legal industry read your bio and offer some feedback.

Your client is looking for a solution
Difficult as it may be for your ego to accept, the client is not absorbed in you as individual. They are looking for a solicitor they believe can best solve their problem or most successfully undertake their project. So you need to provide information that proves you’re the perfect professional for the job. In printed documents you should aim to include examples of how you’ve helped people, but online bios often need to be concise. So try to cover this one with phrases such as: “More than 10 years experience in”, “Recognised within the X business community for assisting with”, “A certified specialist in the area of”, or “Successfully negotiated more than 200 rural property contracts”.

Connect with the real world, not just the legal world
If your firm or practice provides services that are based in a particular city or region you can advance your marketing efforts by demonstrating a connection to that community. Being recognised as a “local” by prospective clients or demonstrating a connection with the region’s major industry eg. ” from a family with a long involvement in the coal mining industry”, helps to build an immediate connection with the client.

Add a little personality
Don’t hesitate to inject a little personal to your bio. This doesn’t just have to be the standard “Married with 2.5 children”. By all means include personal information if it helps with point number 4 above, but more importantly, you should consider how you practice and the type of “client experience” you provide. Are you a ” fiercely determined approach”, a “collaborative practitioner focussed on keeping costs down” or a “down to earth, with a knack for easing clients concerns”. Finding a genuine point of difference in how you practice shows that you are a real person with a real personality” and not the same as the numerous other lawyers out there busily marketing themselves.

John Gray is a practising lawyer and the Senior Marketer at John Gray Marketing, an Australian specialist law firm and legal marketing consultancy. If you are interested in law firm marketing, legal marketing and marketing for lawyers, contact John Gray today.

Whether an artwork reaches completion by considered application or was executed directly by a hit-or-miss alla prima method (in which pigments are laid on in a single application) was once largely decided by the philosophy and familiar systems of its cultural tradition. For example, the medieval European illuminator’s painstaking procedure, by which a complex linear pattern was gradually enriched with gold leaf and precious pigments, was contemporary with the Sung Chinese Zen practice of immediate, calligraphic brush painting, after a peaceful period of disciplined self-preparation. More recently, the artist has decided the technique and working method best suited to his desired outcome and temperament. In France in the 1880s, for instance, Seurat may be working in his studio on drawings, tone studies, and colour schemes in preparation for a large composition at the same time that, outdoors, Monet was working to emulate the effects of afternoon light and atmosphere, while Cézanne analyzed the structure of the mountain Sainte-Victoire with deliberated brush strokes, laid as irrevocably as mosaic tesserae (small pieces, such as marble or tile).

This type of relationship established between artist and patron, the location and subject matter of a painting commission, and the physical properties of the medium used may also dictate working procedure. Peter Paul Rubens, for example, followed the business-like 17th-century custom of producing a small oil sketch, or modella, for his client’s approval before carrying out a large-scale commission. Fundamental problems specific to mural painting, such as spectator eye level and the size, architecture, and type of a building interior, had first to be solved in preliminary drawings and occasionally with the use of wax figurines or scale models of the interior. Scale working realizations are essential to the speed and precision of execution needed by quick-drying mediums, such as buon’ fresco (see below Fresco) on wet plaster, and acrylic resin on canvas. The drawings traditionally are covered with a frame of squares, or “squared-up,” for enlarging on the surface of the support. Some modern painters prefer to outline the enlargement of a sketch projected directly onto the support by epidiascope (a projector for images of both opaque and transparent objects). In Renaissance painters’ workshops, student assistants not only ground and mixed the pigments and prepared the supports and painting surfaces but often laid in the outlines and broad masses of the painting from the master’s design and studies.

The distinctive properties of a medium or the atmospheric conditions of a site may themselves preserve a painting. The wax solvent binder of encaustic paintings (in which after application, the paint is fixed by heat [see below Mediums], for example) both retains the strength and tonality of the original colours and protects the surface from damp. And, while prehistoric rock paintings and buon’ frescoes are preserved by natural chemical action, the tempera pigments thought to be fixed only with water on numerous ancient Egyptian murals are protected by the dry climate and unvarying temperature of the tombs. It has, however, been customary to varnish oil paintings, both to protect the surface against damage by dust and handling and to restore the tonality lost when some darker pigments dry out into a higher key. Unfortunately, varnish tends to darken and yellow with time into the sometimes disastrously imitated “Old Masters’ mellow patina.” Once appreciated, this amber-gravy film is now usually removed to reveal colours in their original intensity. Glass started to replace varnish toward the end of the 19th century, when painters wished to retain the fresh, luminous finish of pigments applied directly to a pure white ground. The air-conditioning and temperature-control systems of modern museums make both varnishing and glazing unnecessary, except for older and more fragile exhibits.

The frames surrounding early altarpieces, icons, and cassone panels (painted panels on the chest used for a bride’s household linen) were often structural parts of the support. With the establishment of portable easel pictures, heavy frames not only provided some protection from theives and damage but were also considered an aesthetic enhancement to a painting, and frame making became a specialized craft. Gilded gesso moldings (made of plaster of paris and sizing that forms the surface for low relief) in exuberant presentations of fruit and flowers certainly seem almost an extension of the restless, exuberant design of a Baroque or Rococo painting. A bulky frame also provided a proscenium (in a theatre, the area between the orchestra and the curtain) in which the picture was isolated from its immediate surroundings, thus adding to the window view illusion intended by the artist. Deep, ornate frames are unsuitable for many modern paintings, where the artist’s intention is for his creation to appear to advance toward the spectator rather than be viewed by him as if through a wall opening. In modern Minimalist paintings, no effects of spatial illusionism are wanted; and, in order to emphasize the physical shape of the support itself and to accent its flatness, these abstract, geometrical designs are usually displayed without frames or are only edged with thin protective strips of wood or metal.

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For most people travelling overseas is a magical experience, a rite of passage or a well-deserved reward for working hard. Unfortunately there are instances where holidays have not gone to plan and travellers are involved in accidents that result in injuries, hospitalisation or even death. Each year, Australian Consular Offices handle over 25,000 cases involving Australians in difficulty overseas including 1,200 hospitalisations, 900 deaths and 50 evacuations for medical purposes.

In these instances, where individuals are not protected with travel insurance, such personal misfortunes are exacerbated by long-term financial burdens. Hospitalisation, medical evacuations and the return of a deceased’s remains to their home country can be very expensive. Where travellers are not covered by travel insurance they are themselves responsible for covering any incurred medical and associated expenses. In some cases, individuals and families have been forced to sell off assets including their homes, in order to ensure the safety and wellbeing of their loved ones.

Types of travel insurance include coverage for trip cancellation/interruption, medical insurance, baggage loss/delay, flight delay/cancellation and travel document protection. Whether you vacation overseas regularly, occasionally or are planning a once-in-a-lifetime journey, travel insurance is imperative. The cost of travel insurance is dependent on the type of coverneeded, the age of the policy holder, travel destination, how long you intend to stay and any pre-existing medical conditions. It is very important to purchase the correct kind of travel insurance to suit your particular requirements and it is essential that you fully disclose any aspects that may influence your insurance otherwise you may be denied coverage in the event of illness or injury.

Like many insurance policies there are standard general exclusions on most types of travel insurance and these can include acts of civil unrest, self-inflicted injury, loss/theft of unattended baggage, loss/theft of cash and pre-existing medical conditions. Some insurance policies may even invalidated in which injuries are sustained as a result of being under the influence of drugs or alcohol or during “dangerous or extreme activity” such as skiing, snowboarding, rock climbing, bungee jumping and underwater activities involving the use of artificial breathing apparatus so travellers should scan the fine print of their policy to ensure that their insurance is right for them.

The consequences of not taking out travel insurance far outweigh the costs associated with taking out a policy. The public consensus is that is you can’t afford travel insurance then you shouldn’t travel. It is also imperative that you are insured for the entire time you will be abroad and not allow your insurance to expire before your return home.

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The traditions and pathos of a particular epoch in painting have usually been reflected in many of its other visual arts. The ideals and aspirations of ancient cultures, of the Renaissance, Baroque, Rococo, and Neoclassical periods of Western art and, more recently, of the 19th-century Art Nouveau and Secessionist movements were emulated in a large amount of the architecture, interior design, furniture, textiles, ceramics, costume, and handicrafts, as well as in the fine arts, of their times. After the Industrial Revolution, with the redundancy of hand-craftmanship and the absence of direct expression between the fine artist and larger society, general society, idealistic efforts to unite the arts and crafts in service to the community were made by William Morris in Victorian England and by the Bauhaus in 20th-century Germany. Although their aims were not fully realized, their influences, like those of the short-lived de Stijl and Constructivist movements, have been far-reaching, particularly in architectural, furniture, and typographic design.

Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci were prodigous painters, sculptors, and architects. Although no artists since have excelled in such a wide range of creativity, leading 20th-century painters conceptualized their ideas in many other mediums. In graphic design, for example, Pierre Bonnard, Henri Matisse, and Raoul Dufy produced posters and illustrated books; André Derain, Fernand Léger, Marc Chagall, Mikhail Larionov, Robert Rauschenberg, and David Hockney designed for the stage; Joan Miró, Georges Braque, and Chagall worked in ceramics; Braque and Salvador Dalí designed jewelry; and Dalí, Hans Richter, and Andy Warhol made movies. Many of these, with other modern painters, have also been sculptors and printmakers and have designed for fabrics, tapestries, mosaics, and stained glass, while there are few mediums of the visual arts that Pablo Picasso did not work in and revitalize.

Painters have been taught by the visuals, techniques, and design of other visual arts. One of the earliest of these influences was quite possibly from theatre, where ancient Greeks are thought to have been the first to use the illusions of optical perspective. The application or reappraisal of design techniques and imagery from the art-forms and processes of other cultures has been a wonderful stimulus to the development of more modern styles of Western painting, whether or not their traditional significance have been fully appreciated. The influence of Japanese woodcut prints on Synthetism and the Nabis, for example, and of African sculpture on Cubism, and the German Expressionists helping to create visual vocabularies and syntax with which to express new inspirations and ideas. The development of photography and film introduced the creative to new aspects of nature, while eventually prompting others to abandon representational painting altogether. Painters of everyday life, such as Edgar Degas, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Édouard Vuillard, and Bonnard, applied the design tricks of camera cutoffs, close-ups, and unconventional viewpoints in order to give the spectator the feeling of sharing an intimate picture space with the figures and objects in the painting.

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Water colour is colour pigment ground in gum, usually gum arabic, and applied with brush and water to a painting surface, usually paper; the term also denotes an artwork executed in this medium. The pigment is ordinarily transparent but can be made opaque by mixing with a whiting and in this form is known as body colour, or gouache. It can also be mixed with casein, a phosphoprotein of milk.

Watercolour can compete in range and variety with any other painting method. Transparent watercolour allows for a vibrance and luminosity in its washes and for a deft calligraphic brushwork that makes it a most attractive medium. There is one basic difference between transparent watercolour and all other heavy painting mediums, its transparency. The oil painter can apply one opaque colour over another until he has achieved his preferred result. The whites are created with an opaque white. The watercolourist’s approach is the complete. In essence, instead of adding in he leaves out. The white paper creates the whites. The darker accents are placed on the paper with the pigment as it comes out of the tube or with very little water mixed with it. Otherwise the colours are diluted with water. The more water in the wash, the more the paper changes the colours; for example, vermilion, a warm red, will gradually turn into a cool pink as it is diluted with more water.

The dry-brush technique, the application of the brush containing pigment but little water, dragged over the coarse surface of the paper—creates various granular effects similar to those of crayon drawing. Entire compositions can be made in this way. This technique also may be brushed over dull washes to enliven them.

Three hundred years before the Renaissance of late 18th-century English watercolourists, Albrecht Dürer had predicted their approach to transparent colour washes in a stunning series of plant studies and panoramic landscapes. Until the emergence of the English school, however, watercolour became a medium merely for colour tinting outlined drawings or, combined with opaque body colour to produce effects similar to gouache (see below Gouache) or tempera, was used in preparatory studies for oil paintings.

The most well known formulators of the English method were Thomas Girtin, John Sell Cotman, John Robert Cozens, Richard Parkes Bonington, David Cox, and Constable. Their contemporary J.M.W. Turner, however, true to his unorthodox genius, added white to his watercolour and used rags, sponges, and knives to realize unique impressions of light and texture. Victorian painters, such as Birket Foster, used a time consuming form of colour washing a monochrome underpainting, similar in principle to the tempera-oil technique. Following the direct, vigorous watercolours of the French Impressionists and Postimpressionists, however, the medium was fully established in Europe and America as an expressive artistic medium in its own right. Notable 20th-century watercolourists have been Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Dufy, and Georges Rouault; the U.S. artists Thomas Eakins, Maurice Prendergast, Charles Burchfield, John Marin, Lyonel Feininger, and Jim Dine; and the English painters John and Paul Nash, Eric Ravilious, Edward Bawden, Edward Burra, and Patrick Procktor.

In the “pure” watercolour technique, often referred to as the English method, no white or other opaque colour is applied, colour intensity and tonal depth being built up by successive, transparent washes on wet paper. Parts of white paper are left unpainted to represent white objects and to create effects of reflected light. These flecks of white paper produce the sparkle characteristic of pure watercolour. Tonal gradations and soft, atmospheric qualities are formed by staining the paper when it is very wet with differing proportions of pigment. Sharp accents, lines, and coarse textures are introduced after the paper has dried. The paper should be of the type sold as “handmade from rags”; this is generally thick and grained. Cockling is avoided when the surface dries out if the dampened paper has been first stretched across a special frame or held in position during painting by an edging of adhesive tape.

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After releasing a diverse range of motocross bikes, some of the primary Honda motorcycles were subjected to a major overhaul. The long wait is finally over with the release of 2011 Honda CRF250R and 2011 Honda CRF450R dirt bikes. Derived from primary models of motocross bikes, both 250R and 450R continue to receive positive feedback from motocross enthusiasts and bike owners alike.

Honda CRF450R comes with a four-valve Unicam engine that can offer low and mid-range power. A 46mm body is also incorporated into its improved engine tuning in order to enhance its throttle response. Along with unique suspension settings, this dirt bike also received improved on its linkage. With lighter cartridge cylinders inside its fork in addition to updated valves, Honda believes that these changes have resulted in better rear-wheel traction and added luxury to their traditional Honda motorcycles. Honda dealers are estimated to offer the new and improved CRF450 by October 2011.

Honda also re-invented the 2011 CRF250R motorcycle in a unique way. With its new fuel-injected engine, it is expected to deliver superior performance and amazing throttle response. Although its specifications are not yet available, the 250R seems to hold plenty of similarities with the big bike. Its improved midrange and low power, new suspension valves, and larger Honda Progressive Steering Damper (HPSD) piston make it appear like a sound investment. Both 250R and 450R also operate on a 94-decibel limit through their improved exhaust mufflers.

CRF50F and CRF70F, two of Hondas smallest dirt bikes, also received a major readjustment. Honda revised their image with bolder designs and changed the color of their upper fork tubes to create a new exciting look and feel to their small yet powerful motocross bikes. CRF230F, CRF80F, and CRF100F are still available in dealerships but bike riders can still anticipate the launching of new and improved Honda motorcycles by October.

Paper has been traced to China in about AD 105. It reached Central Asia by 751 and Baghdad by 793, and by the 14th century there were paper mills in a number of places in Europe. The invention of the printing press in about 1450 markedly increased the need for paper, and at the beginning of the 19th century wood and other vegetable pulps began to replace rags as the main source of fibre for papermaking.

Earlier than 1798, Nicholas-Louis Robert invented the first paper-making machine. With a moving screen belt, paper was made one sheet at a time by the dipping of or mould with a screen bottom into a vat of pulp. A few years later the brothers Henry and Sealy Fourdrinier improved Robert’s machine, and then in 1809 John Dickinson invented the first cylinder machine.

Although most steps in papermaking are now highly mechanized, the basic process has remained mostly the same. First, the fibres are separated and wetted to produce the paper pulp, or stock. The pulp is then filtered on a woven screen to form a sheet of fibre, which is pressed and compacted to squeeze out most of the water. The remaining water is removed by evaporation, and the dry sheet is further compressed and, depending upon the intended use, coated or impregnated with other substances.

Differences among the grades and types of paper are determined by a number of factors: the sort of fibre being used; the preparation of the pulp, which is either by mechanical (groundwood) or chemical (primarily sulfite, soda, or sulfate) methods, or by a combination of both; by the addition of other substances to the pulp, the most common being bleach or colouring and sizing, the latter to impede penetration by ink; by conditions under which the sheet is formed, including its weight; and by the physical or chemical treatment applied to the resulting sheet.

Although wood is the chief source of fibre for papermaking, rag fibres are still used for paper of the greatest strength, durability, and permanence. Recycled wastepaper (including newsprint) and cardboard are also important sources. Still other fibres used include straw, bagasse (residue from crushed sugarcane), esparto, bamboo, flax, hemp, jute, and kenaf. Some paper, in particular specialty items, is created from synthetic fibres.

Weight or substance per unit area, called basis weight, is measured in reams (now commonly 500 sheets). Paper is also measured by caliper (thickness) and density. The strength and durability of paper is determined by factors such as the strength and length of the fibres, as well as their bonding ability, and the formation and structure of the sheet. The visible properties of paper include its brightness, colour, opacity, and gloss. Among the most important paper grades are bond, book, bristol, groundwood and newsprint, kraft, paperboard, and sanitary.

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