Back at the start of 2023, when Nine is the Level was getting ready to release the Traces EP, I was noodling around with making a videos for a couple of the tracks. To be honest I'd forgotten about them until now.

The nature of the music is slow and atmospheric, so I didn't think they needed a narrative, storyboarding or slick editing. Something subtle to look at while listening to the music. Perfect for messing around hand having some fun with them. Also, Doug Tolley (he is Nine is the Level) has generously allowed his music to be used in videos, copyright free.

Giulia

This was deliberately abstract. I filmed some bud-shaped Christmas lights through a square vase of water that I rotated by hand. This distorted the lights enough to make them less obvious, although there are a few frames where you can see them quite clearly. I then overlayed several takes onto one clip, slowed it right down, and faded in a picture of Giulia.

Jack

This one was even less effort. I filmed the dusk from my office window - one where the window frame was in focus, and one where the view outside was in focus. These were then combined into one 15 minute video where it gets progressively dark. I think I also overlayed some textures from leftover Giulia footage. There is a metaphor in the fading light at the end of a day, but that's as far as any narrative goes!

I'm not claiming they're anything special, but it was really fun experimenting. They weren't even done using any 'Pro' software - just farting about in Adobe Premiere Rush (a cut down version of Premiere). I feel I don't do enough "just try it and see what happens" these days.

I've been a follower of Canada's finest, Bruce Cockburn, since my friend Corin introduced me to him in 1991 with Nothing but a Burning Light. At that time he was a doppelgänger for Adam Clayton from U2 (or maybe it was vice versa?). A brilliant lyricist and guitar player, his music spans decades and has weaved its way into my life ever since. When I found out that he was playing just down the road at the O2 Academy in Oxford, Leigh grabbed us a couple of tickets.

Inevitably, at 78, his health isn't at it's peak. He needed two sticks to get on stage, and he explained that arthritis in his hands meant he had to modify some songs. Not that I would've noticed, his playing sounded just as sharp as ever. He played old favourites such as 'All the Diamonds', 'Pacing the Cage', 'Lovers in a Dangerous Time' and 'Wondering Where the Lions Are'. There were also new songs like 'On a Roll' and 'When you Arrive'.

It was an emotional evening, but the real heart stab came when he finished the encore with the sublime 'Us All' from his latest album O Sun O Moon. Not because it was such an emotional song (although that would've been enough), but it felt like in all probability, the last time I would see him perform live. I hope I'm wrong.

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Brian and Adam Wiltzie hadn't recorded together since 2007. It felt like Adam had moved on from Stars of the Lid when he formed A Winged Victory for the Sullen, although I did see them perform live together at the Barbican in London in 2016. I’d always hoped that they would record new music, but then again, And Their Refinement Of The Decline is, in my eyes, the best album of all time. How could you top that?

As a solo artist he also released the excellent albums When the Detail Lost Its Freedom in 2005, and The Effective Disconnect in 2010. I recommend both if you're not familiar with his work. If you're also new to Stars of the Lid, they feature on two previous episodes of Troika, #1 Music for Stars, and #31 Dusk.

R.I.P Brian.

It's inevitable that throughout my career, I've had to watch as my work is replaced and updated by other designers. It's extremely rare to be asked to redesign old work, which is why I leapt at the chance when the Thunderbird Team asked if I could design a contemporary update to the Thunderbird logo - the one I designed nineteen years ago!

Thunderbird v115 ('Supernova') is released today, and with it, the new logo:

Mozilla wanted a logo that communicated the improvements they were planning, but didn't abandon all the brand equity that had been built up over all these years. I also explored ideas that only made small updates, going all the way up to a complete reinvention. Sometimes you need to test how far not to go. The sweet spot ended up being in changing the viewpoint, but using the recent Mozilla branding update as a guide. The original logo had become affectionately known as 'the wig', and once seen it can't be unseen! As side-on perspective helps move it away from all that.

As Thunderbird is more than just an email client (RSS feeds, Chat etc), we wanted to see if we could suggest a wider variety of communication. Early on in the process I did a vector sketch of the Thunderbird side-on, and realised I could use the negative space created by the fore-wing to morph the envelope into a speech balloon. This also meant it could keep its 'protective pose'.

Here are the iterations from first sketch to penultimate version. As you can see, I treated it as a monochrome logo first and foremost, with shading added on top later. This was all created in Figma, as I could make good use of components and variants to make it easy to update the outline and maintain a linked flat and shaded version.

The 'flat' version will stilll be used in various contexts, particularly now that Android phones have the option to use adaptive icons.

When Sean Martell redesigned the 2018 version of the Firefox logo, he talked about it being more of an 'elemental being' than an anthropomorphic representation of a real fox. That concept makes so much sense in the context of a logo, and means you're not constrained by the challenges of making an animal fit a square area. I also echoed the shapes of Sean's version, incorporating elements of the Firefox Logo flipped horizontally. You'll see in v5 above that the wing shapes on the left were oddly stuff and spiky, and incorporating the more fluid shapes worked so much better:

However, unlike Firefox, I felt that Thunderbird still needed to keep the eye. It's an important anchoring element, to draw your eye to first, so I kept it high contrast: simple and white. Anything more complex than that would reduce its impact.

There was a soft launch of the new logo on Mastodon back in May, and since then I've refined it further, making subtle changes to make it less evil:

Essentially, the eye is just rotated very slightly, and the shadows around the eye and under the beak are much less pronounced. Small changes, but they make a big difference to the overall feel.

Thanks to the Thunderbird team for being such lovely people to work with, and for the opportunity to revisit and improve old work!

• Wind direction
• Wind speed (using the Beaufort scale out of 12)
• Expected change in wind (Varying, Backing or Becoming Cyclonic)
• When the change will happen (Imminent, Soon or Later)
• Visibility (Good, Moderate, Poor or Fog)

1. "Sailing By" by Ronald Binge
   The episode opens with "Sailing By" by Ronald Binge, a track that would also fit into Troika Episode 4's theme of British Light Music. It's played every night on BBC Radio 4 before the late Shipping Forecast. It's designed to be repetitive, helping sailors tuning in to be able to easily identify the radio station. As you can hear in the opening seconds, it was chosen by Jarvis Cocker on his Desert Island Discs.

2. "Pharaohs" by Tears for Fears
   There are a lot of tracks that sample the Shipping Forecast, and as you would expect, Wikipedia has a comprehensive list of them as well as songs that feature lyrics inspired by the forecast. I was rather surprised when Beck dropped a sample into the intriguingly named "The Horrible Fanfare/Landslide/Exoskelton" in his 2007 album The Information. Surprised, because I'd always thought of the Shipping Forecast as a quintessentially British phenomenon, and not one that anyone else would be aware of. However, that's generally the problem, the samples do just feel 'dropped in at the end' without any connection to the music. This next track is, I think, the exception to the rule. "Pharaohs" was the B-side to the Tears for Fears single that surely everyone knows, "Everybody Wants to Rule the World". The name is a play on "Faeroes", the second most northerly area, and rather than slapping a sample in, the track is built around it.

3. "Irish Sea" by Solomon Grey

4. "South East Iceland" by Solomon Grey

5. "Portland" by Solomon Grey
   The soundtrack for Daisy Haggard's BBC series 'Back to Life' features music inspired by some of the of shipping forecast regions. They're such beautiful pieces of music, composed by the London based duo Solomon Grey.

6. "The Shipping Forecast" by The Longest Johns
   As with tracks that sample the Forecast, there are many that spoof it. My favourite of these is from the The Longest Johns 2018 album Between Wind and Water. Known more for their sea shanty's, they finished the album with this excellent parody. "Viking, leaving later, with your wife".

Further links

I've restricted how many versions I used on the podcast, but here are some choice cuts:

• List of music influenced by the Shipping Forecast on Wikipedia
• Jarvis Cocker on Desert Island Discs
• Stephen Fry reads The Shipping Forecast
• Alan Bennett reads The Shipping Forecast
• Episode of the 99% Invisible podcast on the The Shipping Forecast

I recently had the privilege of working on a project with iOS game developers Artist Arcade, who were creating an Apple Arcade game for Disney called SpellStruck. If SpellStruck reminds you a little of Words With Friends, it's because it's from the same team!

My contribution was to create a unified set of icons to be used in the game, including those to depict the character's superpowers. I'm a fan of using two contrasting line weights in icons where possible. I prefer to treat icons more like typefaces, and not just use monoline. Fortunately the Artist Arcade team had already explored and decided on using two weights, and the result is all the better for it:

The icons had to balance recognition with showing a more fun and dynamic style. They were created in Figma (my icon design app of choice) and then sent to Disney for approval.

Last weekend I popped into Truck Oxford to see Newcastle's Lanterns on the Lake doing an in-store show. My last in-store here was for the genial Hamish Hawk back in February. It's a small stage, but they managed to fit four members with plugged in instruments (not an acoustic set). Lead singer Hazel Wilde described it as a 'Skoda Set' - they bought whatever would fit into their Skoda for the trip.

They played new songs from new album Versions Of Us that came out on Friday. Please do have a listen (here's a reel from it)! Radiohead's drummer Phil Selway played drums on the new album, and I half expected him to turn up, seeing as he's a local. He wouldn't have fitted on stage as well as the rest of the band, but he could've had a seat with a biscuit tin and some knitting needles.

Aside: I once saw Phil Selway in Hobbycraft one Sunday. I was feeling like my life force was draining away from me, and that I would never leave. Then I looked up and saw Phil, with an expression that told me he was feeling exactly the same.

Afterwards, lead singer Hazel Wilde met 6 year old Elodie, named after the opening track on their 2013 album Until the Colours Run. Or to be specific, named after "the guitar solo from Elodie", according to her dad.

So looking forward to seeing them play in November 🙌

My dad's name was John Bryan Hicks, but since before my teens, we've always called him Bert. My older brother Anthony decided that calling our parent's ‘Mum and Dad’ was too childish, so he started calling them ‘Bert & Ada’. They weren’t too happy at the start, but it soon became adopted as a term of endearment. I still think of him as 'Bert' instead of 'Dad' or 'Bryan' (as his friends and other family knew him).

He was an avid photographer of railways, buses and canals but his later years became defined by his Parkinsons, which slowly reduced his quality of life. I've written a journal post about him, if you want to know more.

I do just want to mention the Bryan font I designed in 2021. While he was in his last week of the “end of life pathway” I had the idea of immortalising his handwriting as a typeface. You can read about the process in the journal, and download it free in the shop, with a suggestion to donate to Parkinsons UK if you use it. It's since been used in the iPad app Linea, and more recently by Marc Thiele for the speaker slides at Beyond Tellerand Conference this year.

This episode's intro music was the theme to The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin, one of his favourite TV shows. It was written and performed by the ubiquitous Ronnie Hazlehurst and his Orchestra, the BBC's go-to soundtrack man for every comedy series in the 60's and 70's. That's an extra that doesn't count as one of the six pieces of music that a 'Double Troika™' allows!

1. "Bits and Pieces" - The Dave Clark Five
   Dad loved classical music. He didn’t like pop music, and it took a lot of persuading to allow us to watch Top of the Pops, but he often sung the Bits and Pieces chorus to us in an ironic style, as if to suggest the guise of ‘listen to this idiotic pap’. Secretly, I think he really liked it! He also found Denise LaSalle's 1985 hit "Don't mess with my Toot Toot" very funny, and would sing it every time Archbishop Desmond Tutu was mentioned on the news.

   These aren't his only links to pop music however. When my brothers and I were clearing out his house, we found a letter to him from pop Svengali, Pete Waterman. He was building a model railway layout of Leamington Spa station, and my dad has sent him photos from his extensive archives to help him with the process. It's odd how worlds meet.

2. "Nimrod" from Edward Elgar's Enigma Variations
   I asked my two older brothers to tell me what piece of music they most relate to our dad. This is my eldest brother Anthony's choice first. This recording is performed by the London Symphony Orchestra and conducted by Sir Colin Davis. Do be aware that this starts rather quietly, but soon builds up - so don't go tweaking that volume knob!

3. "Battle in the Air" from Sir William Walton's Battle of Britain Suite
   My brother Dave's choice this time. Dad took Dave to see the Battle of Britain at the cinema, a memory that is combined with the many Airifix planes he had dangling from the bedroom ceiling. Dave chose this piece, Battle in the Air, which was used in the film. This recording is performed by the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, conducted by Sir Neville Mariner.

4. "Adagietto" from Mahler’s Symphony No. 5
   And this one is my choice! When I was in art college, I decided to submit my essay about Pre-Raphaelite artist Edward Burne-Jones as an audio presentation on cassette. To give it a bit of gravitas I asked dad to suggest a piece of classical music, and this was it. During his last hospital stay, when he wasn’t able to communicate with us in any way, we all read to him and played music. This was the first piece of music I thought of. This recording was performed by the San Franciso Symphony Orchestra conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas.

5. "Five variants of Dives and Lazarus" by Vaughn Williams
   We all asked for this piece to be played at the funeral. Just before that came the final moment where we consulted whether we wanted the curtains around the coffin to stay open, or to close. We didn't know what was best, but plumped for the latter as this felt more like the moment of ‘going away’. As the curtains closed it was clear they hadn’t been lubricated in a long time, so the solemn moment was ruined by the load squealing of the curtain mechanism. To be honest, it gave us a good chuckle at the time we needed it the most. I think Bert would’ve approved. This recording was performed by the London Symphony Orchestra, and conducted by Richard Hickox.

6. "Salvador Sanchez" (Acoustic) - Sun Kil Moon
   So we've reached the final track. After visiting my dad, I would often drive the scenic way home and the acoustic version of the Sun Kil Moon's Salvador Sanchez would be the first thing I played. The lyrics have nothing to do with my dad but somehow I found the sheer sadness of it quite soothing.

This episode’s theme was suggested by the mysterious ‘CN’ on Mastodon, when they replied about Troika 41. I don’t know who you are CN, and I hadn’t even considered and episode on The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, but of course with this being #42, it would be rude not to.

I didn’t want to get too bogged down in the lore of Hitchhikers Guide story, as this is Troika, and I want to focus on the music. So I’ve picked 6 tracks that spans the original BBC Radio series in 1978 (45 years ago!), BBC TV Series in 1981, and a movie in 2005:

1. "This is the Story" by Paddy Kingsland
   We start this episode with "This is the Story" by Paddy Kingsland, who is basically the composer of my childhood soundtrack. He wrote the evocative synthesiser music for several series of Doctor Who, starting with Tom Bakers’ last few stories. I had the cassette of the music he made for the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, long before our family owned a video recorder, so it was my only way of 'reliving' the stories. He also wrote the music for the Hitchhikers TV series of course, and "This is the Story" is the opening music from that. There's more from Paddy later…

2. "Journey of the Sorcerer" by The Eagles
   Here’s an admission - until 'CN' mentioned it, I had no idea that the Hitchhikers theme wasn’t composed especially for the original BBC Radio series, and was in fact, by The Eagles. Journey of the Sorcerer came from their 1975 album One of These Nights, and according to the Internets, Douglas Adams was looking for something that sounded "spacey" but not serious. He looked through his collection of LPs, which included One of These Nights, and decided it was ideal, representing a feel of 'alienation'. There have been many different versions on Hitchhikers, but this is the original.

3. "So long and thanks for all the fish" by Joby Talbot
   Journey of the Sorcerer was used not only in the Radio and TV series, but in the 2005 film version as well. Joby Talbot composed this bombastic musical style opening number "So long and thanks for the all fish" for when all the dolphins leave the Earth. Neil Hannon (also known as The Divine Comedy) recorded a more laid back version to be used in the end credits.

4. "Reasons to be Miserable" by Marvin the Paranoid Android
   Switching back to 1981 now, with a single by Stephen Moore, the original voice of Marvin the Paranoid Android, the depressed robot created by Sirius Cybernetics Corporation (that also gave name to a Radiohead Song from a previous Troika). This was released as part of a ‘Double B Side’ and is of course, parodying Ian Dury’s "Reasons to be Cheerful, Part 3". It’s very much ‘of its time’ shall we say. Back to Paddy Kingsland now for our last two entries in this double-Troika:

5. "Disaster Area" by Paddy Kingsland
   Hotblack Desiato’s band Disaster Area, are "a ‘plutonium rock band’ from the Gagrakacka Mind Zones and are generally regarded as not only the loudest rock band in the Galaxy, but also as being the loudest noise of any kind at all". I love it because, it predates and foreshadows Sigue Sigue Sputnik by five years.

6. "Wonderful World" by Paddy Kingsland/Louis Armstrong
   The outro to this episode is also the outro to the TV series, a piece of Paddy Kingsland brilliance and a little ambient masterpiece. Various sounds like static, birdsong and synths all merge into Louis Armstrong’s "Wonderful World", creating an impression of receiving transmissions from a distant planet. It then finishes by morphing again into the theme music.

Thank you to Richard Baker for his Soundcloud, which seems to be the only source of music from the original TV series available.

I love birding at my local patch. If you're not familiar with the term, it's a convenient place, ideally with some variety of habitats, where you're likely spend a lot of time birding. It isn't necessarily a 'birding hotspot' or even a particularly beautiful piece of countryside, but it's somewhere close to home or work that you can easily visit regularly.

I've mentioned my local patch before - Rushy Common is a small nature reserve in the Lower Windrush Valley, an area of gravel pits and farmland only 2.5 miles from my home. If I've only got an hour or two spare (which tends to be the case), I can maximise my time spent birding, rather than travelling. It has a fairly spacious hide, as it was purpose built for wheelchair access. Bird Hides can take many forms, and I've been in ones that are little more than a cold concrete seat and wall. I'm a bit of a lazy birder, I like to sit, watch and see what happens. I always find that the longer I stay still and just be aware, the more I see, and the less anxiety I have. It's blissful.

…the longer I stay still and just be aware, the more I see, and the less anxiety I have. It's blissful.

A local patch is somewhere you get to know quite deeply, knowing which birds favour what parts of the reserve. The top of the pylon where there might be a Peregrine Falcon, the nest box where a Barn Owl might emerge at dusk. Over 4 years I've seen 100 different species there, which is probably a little misleading, as 90% of the time I see the same core common species. Coot, Great Crested Grebe, Cormorant and Canada Geese. On a 'normal day', Rushy Common can be quiet, which makes it all the more exciting when something unexpected turns up, like last weekend! I've started extended the area of the Rushy Common patch a bit to include Gill Mill Quarry workings, and it's been attracting some very interesting birds (in local patch terms).

The first of these were Little Ringed Plovers - one of my favourites! I was lucky and managed to get some very close views of a pair on a 'scrape':

This was shot handheld-ish (resting on a fence) with my Canon R7 + RF 800mm lens. The bird was quite skittish and I didn't want to miss the action getting my tripod setup - hence the shaky footage (and heavy breathing - oops) trying to keep it on the Plover.

It's a great setup, but even with a 800mm lens, some birds are just too far away to photograph. This is where digiscoping can be a fallback - using my birding scope and an adapter to hold my iPhone and align the x3 lens with the scope's eyepiece. It's a technique that needs patience, a decent sturdy tripod, and good light. I also use Halide camera app, as the default camera app doesn't let you use the telephoto lens when on the eyepiece. My hunch is that it detects a close object and switches to the x1 lens 'to be helpful'. When you choose x3 in Halide, it stays on x3, and you also get handy-for-digiscoping advanced features like Focus Peaking and a remote shutter for the Apple Watch - well worth the money!

With digiscoping you have to lower your expectations a bit. It's literally taking a photo of the eyepiece of a scope, but in this instance the bird was stationary, and distance and light quality were on my side. This is the best image I've ever taken digiscoping:

Golden Plover! Another first for the patch list, and what a beauty with its intricate gold-flecked feather patterning. Here is video footage of a couple of Golden Plovers, that was also digiscoped:

Last one: I also managed to get this photo of a lone Wheatear bobbling along the scrape:

I came home absolutely buzzing that day.

This was a gem of an Edinburgh record store find - A Year's Journey is an LP of British bird songs and calls from the BBC that's as old as I am (1972). Intended as an educational resource for schools, it's narrated in the plum tones of the famous ornithologist, Eric Simms. Taking us on a tour of various UK habitats, with the evocative wader calls being my favourite. Everything about his record drew me in, from the 70s design to the paltry £2.50 that it cost.

It is designed to help young people to recognise and enjoy the birds and other animals they may come across. The 14 bands are related to the different places visited in the first year's series of programmes but the species represented can also be seen and heard in many parts of the country

I've not found it available anywhere, but I finally got around to digitising the album as mp3s. Enjoy!

Here's what I'm listening to at the moment:

1. "Sauce!" by Site Nonsite Bandcamp
   I was blown away by Simon Collison's new music project, Site Nonsite when he launched last May with the Hiroshima EP. I didn't know what to expect, but I was delighted by how fresh and original it sounded. At times it's autobiographical, as Colly himself narrates parts of the journey. Since then he's released Kyoto and now he's gearing up to release the Osaka EP, and this is the second single from that EP, Sauce!. While Hiroshima understandably touched on some difficult subject matter, this is more light hearted. It joins tracks like Lemon Jelly's 'Nice Weather for Ducks' in my list of tunes to cheer me up. As you can hear on the podcast, it made me chuckle just thinking about it.

2. "Money" by Hamish Hawk Bandcamp
   Hamish Hawk came onto my radar last year, and immediately grabbed me with his voice and lyricism. A Scottish Jarvis Cocker perhaps? While 2023's Angel Numbers doesn't yet have as big a place in my heart as 2021's Heavy Elevator, this track is real standout. Hamish describes it as being a 'list of petty grievances'. It's got a great video too.

   If you haven't come across the epic "The Mauritian Badminton Doubles Champion, 1973" (not '72 as I say in the podcast), do yourself a favour and listen to that too!

3. "Ar Ais Ari​́​s" by Gareth Quinn Redmond Bandcamp
   Ar Ais Arís, is the third album by Irish producer Gareth Quinn Redmond, and one where he discovers the art of tape loops. Using traditional Irish instruments (or in the case of the title track, a piano) the effect is a minimalist but soothing ambient sound. Definitely one I had to buy on vinyl.

Cover Illustration: One of my noodly vector drawings.

Last night I was in London Town™️ to see the enigmatic Hamish Hawk at the Scala.

His 2021 album Heavy Elevator got a lot of plays with me last year, and his new one, Angel Numbers was released on Friday. As such, I haven't had time to really immerse myself in the new material, but what a superb first gig of the year! A truly fantastic performance from Hamish and his band, a great crowd who were all totally engaged and no loud people behind me talking through the whole thing. I can't remember the last gig I went to when this wasn't an issue!

All songs were crowd pleasers, but The Mauritian Badminton Doubles Champion, 1973 in particular got the biggest roar of approval.

🙌

CSS Grid

In November I redesigned the site to remove the side navigation on desktop. Two weeks ago I redesigned to put it back. It’s something I’ve always had in the past, and it felt wrong without it. I'd also experimented using CSS Grid to lay every individual page element out onto a 9 column grid, but decided it was too heavy handed. An interesting exercise, but unnecessarily complex and verbose CSS. Going back to only using Grid when necessary took 5k off the size of the CSS file.

Typeface

I’m now using F37 Beckett as the Hicks.design typeface. It's based on the Ministry of Transport signage, used in the UK from the 1930s - 1960s, before the Worboys Committee changed it. It has that particular period character I’ve always looked for in fonts like Underground Pro and Brandon Text. In fact, in the past I've used Ministry, Rian Hughes’ take on the same signage. I don't want you to think I've done this on a whim though, it's taken me 18 months to finally decide whether to replace TT Norms, which I've used since 2015.

Ageing, like me

Another feature of historical hicks.design designs has been the slightly aged look. Yellowed at the edges, a bit like the once-white back sleeve of a 1960's vinyl record.

To bring this back, I added a subtle noise texture using SVG’s turbulence filter. Main headings do the same, but with -webkit-text-clip to give them a printed feel with areas where the ink has missed. Online tools like nnoise make it easy to play with turbulence, and codrops has a thorough article on it.

I then added simple linear gradients at all the edges of the viewport to give it a subtle aged appearance. I could go further with adding more skeuomorphism, but you can take these things too far. I like that it's not too in-your-face, and that you might have to be a little closer to the screen in order to see it.

Blogging like it's 1972

I also finally realised that there's nothing stopping me from adding journal posts dated from before I started blogging. So I'm going to start adding key life moments as much as I can.

I own the data

One thing I particularly like is the way my site works nowadays. Like other file based sites, it exists first and foremost on my computer in a Git Repository, which then gets pushed, triggering a deploy to my host.

If my host ever goes down, I still have the entire site, and can just upload to a new one. If anything happens to my computer, and my various backups, I can just clone it from the repo again. I've lost sites like the original Rissington Podcast because I've not remembered to do both site files and database backups (or be clever enough to know how to set up a 'cron job'). Particularly with events like Twitter going to shit, I feel the need to have control more keenly these days.

Especially in the long dark winter evenings, having your own website to constantly add to and improve is a great comfort blanket.

So happy to see the replacement signage I designed for local independent record store TRUCK has finally been installed in Witney!

Replacing the old 'Rapture' sign created in 2004, this is part of the rebrand to align naming with its sister store in Oxford. The sign includes a subtle black on dark grey Truck Monster, with glowing eyes.

Leigh and I went to see the new Sam Mendes (written and directed) film Empire of Light this week. Starring Olivia Coleman, it tells the story of a duty manager at a seafront cinema in the early 1980's, her struggles with mental illness and growing awareness of racism through her relationship with new employee Stephen. It's currently nominated for a Best Cinematography at the Oscars, and deservedly so.

I’ve been looking forward to seeing this, ever since we came across the outdoor sets in Margate last April. It took us a while to work out what was happening at the time. The Cinema on the seafront isn't really called The Empire (it's actually Dreamland) and those posters on the wall weren't magically preserved from the early 1980s.

We really enjoyed the film, although didn’t really get to see those great reproduction posters from 1981 on screen. Glad we took some photos!

Last Saturday was spent constructing the special insert for the Deluxe Edition of Nine is the Level’s final EP Traces. As with Crumbs and Remnants, Doug Tolley wanted to do something special for a 'deluxe' edition.

Following from my cover design using photos of Doug’s grandparents, the insert is made to look like a missing page from a photo album. To construct the inserts, I ordered new prints from my digital copies of the originals, and then artificially aged them. One in particular (Jack's photo) had more ageing, with rips and edges brutally sanded down to soften them. Even using an electric sander it took longer than I thought it would!

One photo was relatively recent, so for that I just rounded the corners with a special punch to better mimic the style of prints of the time.

The intention was to make all of these look as much like the original photos (in their current condition) as possible. These were then glued into one side of the 12x12” black card.

I then needed to add the liner notes and credits. I looked into the costs of printing white on black card for a small print run, but the cost was prohibitive. Instead I decided to get stickers printed with the text, which worked well.

As a final touch, I wrote the Traces script on the front in white pen, and asked Doug to sign the back. Only 30 of these will be available!

Buy the Traces Deluxe edition on Bandcamp

I love seeing where my fonts (such as they are) end up being used. A recent use of my Charles Rennie Mackintosh style Hill House font is by the The Red Cask Company , who use the font for their logo and range of single malts. What a gorgeous colour to have behind the typeface! The designer for this project is Jamie Stewart (email)

I'm still waiting for my free bottle though 😉

Male Blackbirds are very appealing to me in a Graphic Design sense. They have a strict colour scheme - black with a yellow accent used sparingly (see Blackbird studies one and two). You don't need to worry about recreating speckles or complex plumage patterns - get the black shape right and you're 95% of the way there. This makes them ideal test subjects for trying out different artistic styles:

Painted mostly using the flat and grainy 'Nikko Rull' brush. I like how expressive this brush can be, and how it can work for suggesting the movement lines around the wing and tail. I was really happy with how this one turned out!

This version was a 'fake linocut'. I started with a completely black layer in Procreate (with opacity at about 70% so I could see my sketch) and chiselled away at it using a Lino brush. To achieve the same level of detail in a real linocut, it would need to be quite large. However I liked how the marks left in the whitespace looked like falling snow. The shading lines could've better followed the form of the feathers more, OR, they should've been left out altogether.

This variant removed a lot of detail, going for more a solid look. Instead of using black hatching for the shadow and footprints, I was thinking about how an under-printed blue layer might look like.

Finally, this is an actual linocut. Due to the small size, there wasn't enough room to create details. While I could use a drill bit to get a neat white highlight in the eye, the ring about it is too crudely done. In fact, I felt the whole thing was too crude, but I really liked the result of protective piece of paper underneath the Lino when I was inking up. All those accidental marks where the roller overshot the Lino were far more exciting to me:

I love the movement and expression in those marks, it made me think of a flock (parliament!) of Rooks. Maybe that's the next style to try?

Behold! The Deluxe Edition of Remnants, the third EP from Nine is the Level, is now available on Bandcamp. I’ve written about the dark ambient music of Nine is the Level (Doug Tolley) before, and this EP centres around sampling found dictaphone messages. Doug sought out dictaphones that came with used (but not wiped) tapes, and found a strange variety of messages, from an eerie 'Taped Message from Clifford' to a lady warbling 'I am 16, going on 17' on the final track 'Bakers'. I was familiar with the digital album, but the mix on the vinyl opens up all sorts of new sounds I hadn't heard before.

I particularly want to highlight the extras included in the new deluxe release. I love packaging like this, and how it makes a record even more of an event. The special edition of the previous EP Crumbs included a unique photo on every cover, hand-typed liner notes, as well as match programmes for the two events mentioned in the samples (Brighton Vs Leicester in the football and England Vs France in the rugby).

Remnants' cover uses 
a gorgeous photograph of the bandstand in Pioneer Park in Steilacoom, Washington was taken by Paul Uhl . As I understand it, the photo isn’t actually black and white, but the light conditions made it subtly monochrome. He also gathered various samples of local literature for the deluxe edition. It also includes four photographs from Steilacoom, along with copies of the original photograph with Paul’s editorial notes.

Paul even typed the sleeve notes, and aged them with added coffee rings. A lot of love has been put into this record!

Purchase the Deluxe Edition of *Remnants*

It's that time of year again, when I try to evangelise the music that’s kept me going this year while trying to avoid sounding like a wanky music journalist.

Why does some music hit a spot and others don't (or not quite)? I often imagine it being like keys. The tooth patterns may look the same, but only one specific combination of peaks and troughs goes all the way in to the lock, turns and opens. It can be hard to define why a particular album clicks - just that it connects with you - turning and opening inside your mind perfectly. These are the albums and EPs that did just that:

Album of 2022

Blue Rev - Alvvays

BandcampSpotify Apple Music

Blue Rev is quite simple a flipping masterpiece. It's topped many end of year lists, and quite right too. Alvvays' (pronounced 'Always') flavour of fuzzy power pop has never sounded so punchy.  Antisocialites was my #2 album of 2016, but this is the sound of a band who have pushed themselves even further.  Gorgeous harmonies, woozy keyboards and heartfelt lyrics. Belinda Says is my favourite song of the year, with the rest of the album occupying the rest of the top ten, particularly Many Mirrors, Easy on your own? and Bored in Bristol.

If they get this much better with each album, what will the follow up be like?! I've got tickets to see them play next May, and I can't vvait.

Albums of 2022

Once, Twice , Melody - Beach House

BandcampSpotify Apple Music

It was an odd way to release an album, one quarter a month from November 2021 until February 2022. By the time the final portion was released, I’d already listened to three quarters of the album many times over. (By the time the vinyl was finally released, the whole album had been available digitally for 3 months). Also, with 18 tracks, there could've been a lack of quality control. No issues there though, its a dreamy epic from start to finish.

Ultra Truth - Daniel Avery

BandcampSpotify Apple Music

Over the last few years, Daniel Avery has been getting closer and closer in my mirrors, and this year he was full in view, first by catching up with 2021's Together in Static, and then with Ultra Truth. Sometimes rave, sometimes ambient, sometimes drum n’ bass and every electronic genre in between them. Banging!

Let’s Emerge! - Pye Corner Audio

BandcampSpotify Apple Music

This year saw Pye Corner Audio (Martin Jenkins) move on from its darker 'hauntology' past to create more upbeat tunes, with the help of Ride's Andy Bell on spacey guitar.

A Light for Attracting Attention - The Smile

BandcampSpotify Apple Music

Amazingly, Thom Yorke's solo work and side projects have avoided sounding like Radiohead by being so different, and The Smile follows that trend. A collaboration between Yorke, Johnny Greenwood and Sons of Kemet drummer Tom Skinner. Whether the Jazz elements were inspired by Skinner, or the reason for coming on board doesn't matter. The end result is familiar and yet refreshing. Make sure you listen to the Dennis Lovell remix of The Smoke as well.

Sincere - Hater

BandcampSpotify

Sweden's Hater are another band who have moved on sound-wise since 2018s Siesta. Sincere is a much stronger and emotive, with Caroline Landahl's vocals much more front and centre. Favourite track: I’m Yours Baby

The Alien Coast - St Paul and the Broken Bones

BandcampSpotify Apple Music

The Birmingham Alabama soul ensemble push further and blend more genres with this release. I was drawn in by the album artwork, and stayed for the musical creativity and raw power of Paul Janeway's voice.

Other Side of Make Believe - Interpol

BandcampSpotify Apple Music

Bucking the 'moving on sonically' trend in this years' top 9 is Interpol. In their case, I'm really glad they haven't. Favourite track is definitely Passenger with its oh-so-relatable refrain of "Save me, I'm in my head".

Things are Great - Band of Horses

Spotify Apple Music

Things are great! It's thrilling to hear Band of Horses equalling their earlier work like Cease to Begin.

The rest

• Summer at Lands End - The Reds, Pinks and Purples
• Now is - Rival Consoles
• Cool it down - Yeah Yeah Yeahs
• Dissolution Wave - Cloakroom
• can't hate myself in to a different shape - Brimheim
• Two Ribbons - Let's Eat Grandma
• For the Sake of Bethel Woods - Midlake
• Domes - Heather Woods Broderick
• Labyrinthitis - Destroyer
• Wet Leg - Wet Leg (I didn't get into Wet Leg as much as everyone seemed to, but the last track Too late now was a winner)
• Profound Mysteries - Röyksopp

Gems missed from 2021

As always, there are gems I missed from the previous year, and with 2021 being such a crap one for me, there so many more this year that I've given them their own category:

Heavy Elevator - Hamish Hawk

BandcampSpotify Apple Music

This was a gem I found via Mark from local heroes Truck music. Sharp, witty (and surreal) lyrics and epic pop. As soon as I heard the anthemic The Mauritian Badminton Doubles Champion 1973, I was hooked. Another one of the 'must see play live' list.

Under the Lilac Sky - Arushi Jain

BandcampSpotify Apple Music

With a warm evening and a dramatic sunset, you can enjoy this incredible album at its best. Classical Indian raga's are re-interpreted with modular synths and vocal textures into ambient music for watching day turn into night. It's a winning recipe.

Also…

• Blue Weekend - Wolf Alice
• Together in Static - Daniel Avery
• Home Video - Lucy Dacus
• Overflow - Rival Consoles

EPs of 2022

Hiroshima & Kyoto - Site Nonsite

BandcampSpotify Apple Music

I wasn't sure what to expect, but I must have had some subconscious assumptions, as Simon Collison shocked me this year with his two EPs Hiroshima and Kyoto. To suddenly hear such delightfully fresh, personal and fully-formed music was amazing. Why did he wait until now??! I'm not complaining - it was obviously the right time, and it's working so well.

Traces -Nine is the Level

BandcampSpotify Apple Music

Traces is the fourth and final EP from neighbour Doug Tolley as his dark ambient project Nine is the Level, with four tracks, one for each of his grandparents. Jack and Giulia are my favourite tracks, and I also did the cover ;)

The Besnard Lakes are the prayers for the death of fame

BandcampSpotify Apple Music

It's a Bezzies tradition to release an EP in-between albums, and She's an Icicle is one of their best songs. Also, the beautiful vinyl cover has excellent subtle detail.

Planet EP - Squirrel Flower*

BandcampSpotify Apple Music

At seven tracks this should probably be in the album category? Highlights are a sparse cover of Bjork's Unravel and the tear-jerkingly beautiful 'Ruby at dawn'.

New Low - Greet Death

BandcampSpotify Apple Music

No new album from Greet Death this year, but the gloriously upbeat Panic Song was my summer soundtrack.

Gigs

This year I started to feel more comfortable with going to gigs, and I went to see Slowdive, Tool, Besnard Lakes, Phoebe Bridgers, Joyce Manor, Public Service Broadcasting and Crowded House. That last one was  at the Roundhouse in London where I finally got COVID.

We also had tickets to see Low play in Bath in November, but a week before there was the devastating news that Mimi Parker had died from cancer. I still find this hard to come to terms with. For some it was David Bowie dying, but for me, Mimi is the loss I feel the most.

2022 playlist

To finish up, here are my top songs of the year summarised into Spotify playlist. I did try using Apple Music for the first six months of the year, but couldn't stomach the many WTF moments in the UI, and went back to Spotify for my social music needs. My music collection is still a mixture of physical (all vinyl these days) and Plex for my digital collection. Services like Spotify are great for discovery and sharing, but please buy albums and support the artists 🙏

My own homemade Christmas Sandwich

Roast Turkey, Pigs in Blankets, Pork and Cranberry Stuffing, Braised Apple and Red Cabbage, bread sauce, mayo and cranberry sauce on hovis granary bread. All made a few hours after Christmas dinner, with the Turkey still warm.

★★★★★

Bread was a bit on the floppy side (needed a nice thick white farmhouse loaf slice), but otherwise this was perfect 👌

“The Cheesemas” burger at The Part and Parcel, Witney

Beef Patty, Crispy fried breaded Camembert, Smoked Bacon, Rocket, Cranberry Ketchup in a sesame brioche bun.

★★★★★

The Part and Parcel is our favourite local pub here in Witney, and they always do a good burger. This festive version was absolutely bloody delicious. And yes this definitely counts as a festive sandwich! The Camembert was crispy but oozed its creamy goodness all over the burger. Combined with the cranberry ketchup it was 👌 BEHOLD!!

Sandwich De Witney Christmas Special

Sliced Turkey, Stuffing, Bacon, Mayo and Cranberry Sauce in a freshly baked white baguette

★★★★✩

Now we're talking! Our local baguette shop with the chucklesome name comes up trumps. Proper thick slices of Turkey, plenty of stuffing and the perfect balance of mayo and cranberry. So close to a homemade sandwich - the only reason it didn't get the full five stars is that the bacon is in small cubes and very, very, very salty.

Marks & Spencer Naughty and Spice Turkey Feast

Piri Piri marinated sliced turkey, spiced pork stuffing, red cabbage slaw, cranberry and chilli sauce with seasoned mayo on a brioche roll

5% goes to shelter!

★★★★✩(4.5)

I'm quite torn on this one. On the one hand, it doesn't taste traditionally festive. The overriding flavour is peri peri, mayo and slaw - the stuffing and cranberry is a bit hidden. But it's also the tastiest pre-made shop sandwich I've ever had ☺️

M&S Festive Christmas Club*

Chicken, Bacon, mayo, cranberry chutney, picked red cabbage, cranberry stuffing on toasted oatmeal bread

★★★☆☆

The ‘toasted oatmeal bread’ made it feel stale and taste worthy. Especially with three slices of it (with it being a club sandwich). Red Cabbage tasty and crunchy, but the Cranberry was too dominant again. Swap the cranberry stuffing for chestnut, and bread for granary + it’s a winner. Generously filled too!

*5% goes to Shelter!

Waitrose Turkey, Stuffing and Bacon

Turkey, pork and chestnut stuffing. turkey stock mayo, cranberry and redcurrant chutney and smoked bacon on malted bread

★★★✩✩

Waitrose have done the best job of dialling back the cranberry so far, although I'd call it more tart than sweet. Generally pretty good, just needs to be a bit more generously filled.

Co-op Boxing Day Feast

Smoked ham & turkey, red cabbage coleslaw, and Christmas spiced chutney on soft white bread

★★★☆☆ (2.5)

Actually not that bad! Red cabbage coleslaw adds a nice little crunch, and spiced chutney a slight festive air. Suffers from the usual pre-made sandwich drawback - the quantity of filling would leave a Borrower feeling hungry.

Waitrose Pigs under Blankets

Pork sausage, cranberry and redcurrant chutney, Smoked Bacon and Mayo on malted bread

★★★✩✩ (2.5)

Seeing as the sausages are the main feature, I'd hoped for more of a herby and/or peppery flavour. Also, same tart chutney as yesterdays offering from Waitrose. Lack of stuffing makes it less festive. Maybe I'm also finally getting bored of 'pork products'? Never thought I'd see the day.

Starbucks Festive Feast Panini

Sliced turkey breast, Beechwood Smoked Bacon, Turkey Gravy, Sage & Onion Stuffing And Cranberry Sauce On A Ciabatta Panini

★★✩✩✩

This could've been a 3 star, but like most pre-made sandwiches, there was barely anything in it. I could taste the stuffing and gravy, but the cranberry was non-existent. A desolately vacant hot panini.

The Tesco Turkey Triptych™ (TTT™) all feature similar ingredients, so I'm going to put them all in a thread…

The Tesco Turkey Triptych™: Part 1 - Turkey Trimmings Wrap

Turkey Breast, mayo, sage and onion stuffing, cranberry sauce, spinach and smoked bacon

★★✩✩✩

The promise of a wrap is that it beats the doughiness of the sub roll, but in practice it's many over wrapped layers of dense tortilla with bugger all in-between. They say ‘trimmings’ to indicate that it was very small scraps of turkey, purreed into one mayo-y glob. Couldn’t taste the stuffing.

The Tesco Turkey Triptych™ (TTT™): Part 2 - Turkey & Trimmings Sandwich

Turkey Breast, mayo, sausage, sage and onion stuffing, cranberry sauce, spinach and sweetcure bacon

★★✩✩✩

It’s that ‘Malted Bread’ business again, BUT a sandwich with both Turkey slices and Pigs in Blankets! The sausage was bland and oddly dry, like it removed all saliva from my mouth.

Cranberry was there, but not overpowering. That was the only win. Couldn’t taste the stuffing.

The Tesco Turkey Triptych™: Part 3 - Turkey Stuffing an Cranberry Sub

Turkey Breast and thigh, mayo, sage and onion stuffing, cranberry sauce and smoked bacon

★★★✩✩

No malted madness here! I expected it to be too doughy, but it was nice soft fluffy bread. Could taste the onion in the stuffing, but like the wrap, the mayo to turkey ratio was too high.

Despite the bread win, it was all just a bit shit.

Subway Festive Sub

Thin Turkey slices, Smoked Bacon, Hash Browns

★★✩✩✩

Hash Browns. I ask you. I pretended the onionyness was bread sauce which helped. I noticed they sold pigs in blankets as a side, was tempted to buy that and shove it in, but without cranberry sauce I didn't see the point. "Do you want cheese and toasted"? - yep, may as well continue on the non-festive path. It was an OK sandwich - just made by someone who hates Christmas.

Greggs Roast Chicken and Stuffing Baguette

Chicken breast slices with sage and onion stuffing and 'rich' chicken gravy

★★✩✩✩

Let's deal with filling first. The gravy comes as a jellified layer, which wasn't as bad as it sounds, but the lack of cranberry means no festivities here. Definitely tasted of Sunday lunch, rather than Christmas Day. Worst part is that the baguette comes heated up, which makes the ends harder than left-out Weetabix.

M&S Roast Chicken & Christmas Slaw*

Chicken Mayo, Pickled Carrot and Red Cabbage with Spinach on Malted Bread

★★✩✩✩

More Boxing Day than Christmas Day. Fairly crunchy slaw, but (and this might sound a bit obvious for a shop sandwich) rather bland.

*5% goes to Shelter!

Co-op ‘Turkey Feast’

Smoked bacon, pork sage & onion stuffing, cranberry Chutney & fried onion mayo on malted bread

★★☆☆☆

Cranberry sauce and fairground style onions were the overriding flavours, but at least the turkey wasn’t as thin as I expected.

So there we are for this year.

Back in October, I finally managed to visit the UK's birding mecca, the North Norfolk coast, for the first time. Staying in a beautiful AirBnB in Stiffkey, I spent a luxurious 3 days visiting sites like Titchwell RPSB reserve and Cley Marshes. It was a heavenly experience and I took loads of reference photos. Coming from land-locked Oxfordshire, it was almost overwhelming how much there was to see.

This is the first artwork to come out of that trip, a painting of a Marsh Harrier hovering over the reeds in Cley, painted in Procreate on the iPad Pro. Although it started off life as a vector painting in Adobe Fresco

I'm not 100% happy with my style - I'm trying to break out of my illustration training and be a lot looser - less photographic. This has a lot of areas of 'loose-ness' but I still think I have a way to go. I've just turned 50, and I feel like I'm still trying to find my own style.

Those moving to Mastodon have cited a nicer community, chronological timeline and lack of ads as the main advantages. As someone who only uses Twitterific to view my timeline, along with copious mute words and retweets turned off for some people, Twitter was a really nice place to be for me. I follow accounts like Tree-lined lanes, which are a real breath of fresh air.

Obviously, being a white man who can't be bothered saying anything controversial also contributes to the lack of toxicity. Often I would start a reply or post and give up, either because I thought it too boring or not worth the hassle of the replies that would follow. It meant I would post less, but this is where Mastodon is winning for me. After the initial learning curve, I'm finding a community much like the early days of Twitter, and feeling more relaxed about posting.

I know Mastodon is not for everyone, but for the rest, I can be found on mastodon.social/@jonhicks. I won't be duplicating posts from Twitter, and I see most of posting happening on Mastodon.

For years, I’ve wanted a single 27” monitor that I could also draw on. The iPad Pro is an almost perfect solution for this, but 12.9" isn't large enough. I don’t like using multiple monitors - so one screen has to do everything: positioned upright and further back as default, and then brought in close at an angle to draw on. Just like the elegant Microsoft Surface Studio, a product that Apple should've made and has been available for six years now.

For some reason, Apple are dragging their heels in bringing out a pen display larger than the 12.9” iPad Pro. After the release of their new Studio Display came and went without Pencil support I gave up hope. So, other than migrate to Windows, what were my options? Up until now, Wacom’s Cintiq’s have either been lower resolution (27 QHD), too small for normal work (24 Pro) or too large to use with a pen and touch (32 Pro). The large bezels make it dominate a desk, and users complain of noisy fans. Their touch capability was so bad, that most users turn it off. There are other competitors such Xencelabs, Huion and X-Pen, but none go higher than 24", and they all lack touch capability.

I was just about to buy a secondhand Cintiq 27” QHD from eBay when mere hours later, Wacom announced the new Cintiq Pro 27. The specs looked good (for a pen display), but for a very hefty price (£3250) that didn’t even include a stand. It lacks the retractable feet Cintiq’s normally have, so you either need to buy the specially designed stand (a further £500) or make use of that VESA mount. You can't use the screen without a form of stand.

(Also, their copywriting is weird- "Engineered for harmony" - what on earth does that even mean?).

It’s an eye-watering cost, but one I’m prepared to pay if it’s the right solution. It certainly seemed like what I've been looking for, but there was only way to try it. I had to buy one and trial it in the 30 day returns grace period. Here’s how I got on.

With this review there are three factors to bear in mind:

1. Little annoyances can be tolerated when you perceive a product to be ‘good value’, but at this cost level the expectations are higher and the critique much stricter.
2. My use case of 'Pen Display that can also become a normal monitor' is fairly niche. People who buy Cintiq's are normally artists drawing 100% of the time.
3. I normally use an iPad Pro & Pencil for drawing, with an MacBook Air & LG Ultrafine 5K for everything else. I'm not an existing Cintiq user, but up until the iPad Pro came out, I've always had Wacom tablets.

Review

Great

Let's start with positives! I can finally draw on a large screen and the pen feel on the surface is more natural - with none of the ‘tapping glass’ feeling of the iPad. I also found the size is ideal - plenty of workspace, but not too far to reach menus. There was also no parallax, and drawing felt very 'direct'.

Good

Screen quality, despite being only 4k - good colour and brightness. I found I was getting much less eye strain at the end of the day (maybe due to distance to face & higher refresh rate?). It’s been wonderful not to the end the day with a headache. The pen is very customisable both in feel and balance (a metal insert can place more weight either centrally or to the rear).

In terms of pen lag, the Cintiq was good, but not quite as quick as the iPad Pro. We're talking minute differences that are only visible on a slow motion video though.

Not so great

Note that I haven't put screen quality in the 'Great' category. The screen is ‘good’, but it doesn't match my iPad or LG display in terms of crispness, brightness and contrast. The matte drawing surface gives everything a slightly soft appearance. After a long period of using the Cintiq I saw a big difference going back to using my iPad Pro and LG 5k.

The build quality is sturdy, but very plasticky. There is also fan noise, and while not loud, it is constant. It doesn’t quite feel like £3k product. Another element of cost is the lack of built-in webcam or speakers, which isn’t a surprise but is yet another cost on top. While I don’t really need speakers, I use my Mac in clamshell mode which means the sound is a bit muffled. The webcam is more of an issue.

Wacom’s Touch capability hasn't been greatly improved from my previous experiences. For example, I can’t pan at the same time as zooming, which feels incredibly clunky. Zooming in/out can be very slow and laggy, and is best done with shortcuts instead. This is better in some apps than others - Photoshop is appalling, Illustrator a little less so, but Affinity apps are smooth. Here's a wee comparison video I did, using the same file on both iPad and Mac/Cintiq:

You also can’t reassign the basic touch gestures, such as setting a two finger tap as undo. I could change the three finger tap, but two is the standard on tablets.

The 'Express Keys' for shortcuts and modifiers are high up on the back and out of sight, and arranged in an irregular layout. This all makes it hard for muscle memory, and meant I had to 'feel around' to be sure I was about to press the right button. I always ended up using my keyboard instead.

Bad

The special stand for an extra £500 really isn't worth the money. It has limited adjustability to switch between upright mode (it doesn’t go high enough) and drawing modes. When I'm not drawing I need the screen further back, but it’s almost impossible to move the whole thing back and forth on the desk - even moving the display itself needed a lot of effort. The stand base ‘feet’ at the front also got in the way of my mouse.

Finally, the Lock/unlock mechanism is hard to reach round the back, so I always had to stand up to access it. I can imagine it working well for someone who kept their Cintiq in the same position, and just wanted to rotate it a bit. For me, a monitor arm, such as an Ergotron LX (£140), worked so much better.

The Wacom drivers seem to interfere with other apps like Figma. Simple actions such as drag and dropping an image from the desktop onto my Figma file no longer work unless I use the Pen. And then... it just stopped working altogether. Neither pen or touch input worked. The only solution was to restart my Mac. I think the Wacom drivers had crashed, but it was at this point that I shouted "NOT WORTH IT" and packed it all up to be returned.

Summary

I had such high hopes of it being the solution I was looking for, I really wanted this to work. I would maybe put up with some of these niggles on a £1500 screen, but not one costing twice that. In the end, the only real advantages were in workspace size and pen feel. I would prefer to trade the natural pen feel for the better screen quality.

Nine is the Level is the ambient/post-rock project of my friend and neighbour Doug Tolley. The Crumbs EP came out digitally in May 2021, but it's now seeing it's proper release on vinyl. This one is more melodic and accessible than other releases, and the track 'Tatty Old Red Bag' in particular hits Mogwai notes with some epic guitar drone.

Crumbs follows on from my first EP Oscillations and I really wanted to inject more melody with post rock and shoegaze elements. The song Crumbs is a bridge between the two EP's.

I wanted to mention it on my journal because of the love and detail Doug is putting into this release. Each copy has a different original vintage photograph attached to the sleeve, and the sleeve notes are hand typed onto vintage school exercise book paper.

The title comes from the first words Doug's grandfather Gordon Tolley speaks on the EP. Gordon spent many years on his own after his wife Doris died in the early 1980's. Suffering from chronic loneliness, Gordon used to record himself listening to the radio and talking about events of the time. The voice samples are taken from his old reel to reel recordings.

It charts the story of a few days over the weekend of February 2nd/3rd 1990 after a storm passed over the country taking down trees and causing mass flooding. Gordon recorded his reaction to these events and spoke of sporting contests being held over that weekend (Brighton Vs Leicester in the football and England Vs France in the rugby). The first 30 copies of the EP will even include a copy of the match programmes!

Crumbs EP on limited edition vinyl.

Not every redesign needs to start from scratch, and some don't need any rework at all. Sometimes the best design is already there, just hidden by lots of unnecessary visual noise. I'm a big believer in not redesigning for the sake of it, and my recent work with the Truck Store in Oxfordshire is a perfect example of this.

Last September, I was over the moon that my local independent record shop Rapture contacted me about working with them. Rapture's been Witney's independent music and film store since 2004, while its sister store, Truck, opened in Oxford in 2011.

The owner Gary Smithson had read my post about getting back into vinyl, and asked me if I would be interested in helping them with a redesign. Their plan was to simplify by renaming Rapture to Truck as well, a name that carries a lot of weight with its association with Oxfordshire's Truck Festival. Then they needed a new unified brand for both physical stores, as well as their online shop. Obviously the budget wouldn't be huge, but it was an opportunity to be involved in a fun project for a local shop with lovely people that's become very special to me. How could I resist? I was buzzing to get started.

Doing an audit of their current brand usage, it became clear to me they pretty much had everything they needed already. Let's delve into that…

Logomark

The Truck monster character is well known locally - everyone I spoke to immediately associates the shop with the Monster. There's even a Truck Monster suit that makes an appearance at Truck Festival:

It's a clear, impactful image that they own, but was mostly being used for things like email sign-offs and the occasional social media post. It was incorporated into the Truck Oxford logo, but was lost amongst everything else going on:

So I decided to pick that out and discard the rest. I didn't make any changes to it, with the exception of an optimised version for smaller uses, such as the favicon. For this, I made the eyes larger to keep them visible.

Logotype

The original Rapture logotype was based on Radiohead's The Bends (except using Arial Bold), while Truck used a custom 'handmade-looking' font made for its launch. It had plenty of character, but was a bit too rough - having the appearance of being vectorised from a bitmap image. It made sense to follow on from the Truck logotype, rather than Rapture's, but it needed some cleaning up. I removed some of the roughness and balanced the letters better, while retaining the handcut feel of it:

This then combined with the logomark to create a much more memorable and impactful logo:

The monster character can also be playful and flexible, such as in these genre markers I created for use in-store:

Typeface

While Truck had existing brand fonts such as Knockout , a variety of free fonts were being used. It was clear that they just needed a flexible brand font and then use it consistently everywhere.

I liked the space-saving practicality of Knockout Condensed, but there was something aesthetically that didn't fit right for me. It took a long time to find what I had as the right font in my head, but eventually I found it - Neue Plak, an update of Paul Renner's other classic typeface that isn't Futura. It has a great range of weights and widths, with nice elements such as the curve of the bold lowercase letter r.

I was particularly pleased that Truck agreed to purchase the whole family, which will stand them in good stead in the future.

One thing that did stick in my mind about their previous type usage was a handwritten sign at the Oxford store. I really liked the style of this as it helped reinforce the people element of Truck. Good legible handwriting fonts are notoriously hard to find - and I didn't feel my own take was quite up to the task. However, I found Finurlig, and used the italic version to get where I wanted. This is specced in the styleguide to be used very sparingly, but acts as a nice foil to Neue Plak:

Here's an example of how these are used together, on a recommendation sticker:

Colour

Their previous brand styleguide had some very odd dingy colours, but as the brand would be competing against multi-coloured album covers, a straight black and white approach would work best. This way it would harmonise with everything, and also echo the tradition of photocopied music ephemera like gig flyers and Nightshift, Oxfordshire's long standing free music magazine.

In contexts where the logo is used on it's own, there's flexibility to use most colours if need be (e.g button badges). The key part is not to reverse the monster colours, and and keep the eyes shining white:

Website

The next part of the project was to combine their existing Oxford and Witney websites into one new site. My first suggestion to them was to purchase the more concise domain truckmusic.store to replace truckmusicstore.co.uk, rapture-online.co.uk and rapturewitney.co.uk. We then moved all the email addresses to the new @truckmusic.store domain.

Their website is built on Wordpress/WooCommerce, and after much discussion, the decision was made to stay in this platform but to create a custom theme. Originally, I'd considered starting with a pre-made theme, and then add some light customisation on top, but nothing worked quite how I wanted it to. In the end I made my own, by creating a new child theme for the official 'Storefront' theme, but 'dequeing' all the CSS. This gave me all the templates and functionality but zero styling so that I could start from scratch. It became a sort of CSS Zen Garden exercise where I was styling someone else's markup. Small changes were possible via the functions.php file, but generally it was working with whatever structure and classes existed. It's not an ideal way of working, but we're still iterating and improving. Overall I'm really pleased with how far we've got doing it this way.

As well as the custom styling, I also implemented flexible content fields with Advanced Custom Fields. I'd considered Wordpress's new 'Blocks' feature, but I got the distinct impression that it wasn't quite ready, so ACF was used to allow them to customise the homepage with it's ever changing content.

More to come

The transition from Rapture to TRUCK is ongoing, and I'm still involved in some parts of that process. Merchandise next!

I've been birding on and off for 44 years now, and recently had the nostalgic urge to document the various combinations of binoculars (bins) and field guides that I've used over the years:

1978: Boots Pacer 8×30 + Usborne Spotter's Guide to Birds

This is the book that started it all. It was a present from my parents on a holiday to the Lake District in 1978. Usborne books were a big presence in my youth (especially The Detective's Handbook), and the illustrations in this guide prompted my interest in nature. My first bins were an own-brand model from Boots the Chemist, but didn't come until Christmas three years later. All glossy black and silver detailing like a Peter Cushing era Dalek.

1990: Swift Audubon HR/5 8.5×42 + Hamlyn Guide to Birds of Britain and Europe

These Swift Audubon bins where my 18th birthday present, and a big step up from the budget Boots ones. Bright image, great field of view, and along with my first 'proper' field guide, my birding became more serious. They were bought from 'InFocus' just outside Coventry, a perfect shop-with-nature-reserve that was ideal for testing optics. Sadly it's no longer in business.

I hadn't looked in this field guide since the mid 90's and found my old birding permit for Draycote Water reservoir in it:

This was when the combination of my pursuing illustration at further education college, and my hobby, made my decision to go on to study wildlife illustration. It turned out there was very little money in it, and the UK already had 5 wildlife illustrators thank you very much, so after college I got a job as a designer instead.

1999: Pentax 8×42 DCF + Collins Bird Guide

I managed to break my Audubons, so with my first freelance work payment in 1999 I bought my first roof prism bins from InFocus. The recently purchased Collins Bird Guide was a revelation - such high quality illustrations, but my copy became chewed by Olive when she was a puppy!

2019: Swarovski EL 8×32 + Collins Bird Guide iOS app

The boat was well and truly pushed out, and I got these amazing Swarovski bins for my 47th birthday from The Birders Store in Worcester. Compact, light (which is really important these days) and a wonderful large field of view. Even though they're only a 30mm objective lens, the image is so bright that I felt I didn't need the much heavier 8×42's. The ability to have a field guide on my phone means I can easily carry it out with me, as well as get extra features like bird songs/calls and video.

Birding is very much a relaxing, mindfulness, anxiety-buster for me. At the end of the day, the equipment doesn't matter as much as the actual time spent doing it. It's more that these bins & field guide combinations represent milestones in my life.

In the last moments of the golden hour at Rushy Common this evening, I got a great view of a Barn Owl. I managed to get some good-enough photos to use as reference for these sketches.

I recently solved an issue I'd been having with how Figma exports SVG artwork. I use a lot of mask groups, but viewing the exported SVG file in anything other than a browser often shows the group as transparent rather than opaque.

The key thing is: Figma doesn't use <clipPath> to mask objects, it uses <mask>. Both are legitimate ways of masking in SVG files, but work slightly differently. With clipPath, an object is either masked or it's not (in or out), whereas mask allows for partial transparency based on colour. For example, a gradient can be used to mask with a 'fade'. A black mask means the artwork is completely hidden, white is visible and any colour inbetween is treated as a greyscale/opacity. You can read more in depth on the difference in the post on CSS Tricks.

So to fix the problem, just make sure your masking path is set to 100% white and you'll be fine!

In the simple example above there are two circles, one orange, one blue. In the centre, the orange circle has been duplicated to quickly make a mask group for the blue circle. The orange is treated as an opacity mask, so the blue circle has transparency and becomes green. On the right, the mask circle has a 100% white fill, so is properly masked.

In a similar vein, Rogie is developing a plugin to solve the 'other direction'. It allows for importing Ai and PDF into Figma and converts clipPath into masks.