I was asked to speak at last night’s “An apple a day” talk, held by the D&AD at the Hoxton Pony. The speakers were asked to consider ‘what piece of technology has truly changed the way you work’. You can see my response in slideshow form over at Slideshare, and preceeding my ramblings were Alex from de-construct, Ranzie from Tonic, Flo from Dare, Clare from The Partners, and a handful of other people with really interesting perspectives on the question.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, everyone pretty much had the same thing to say - remember the human element, interaction and connection within everything you do.

Someone sent me this newspaper clipping about The Visual Dictionary. We still get regular submissions and the database is just growing and growing. I’m going to try and pull together a team of people to do something with the content this year. It’s funny how old it feels now - especially as the images are quite small (it wouldn’t do print), and its all hosted on a server, rather than in a cloud, and it doesn’t use flickr APIs or any form of interconnection with any other services, but the content is still great, and concept is clearly still liked.

if you haven’t seen it before - check out www.thevisualdictionary.net

ps. i have no idea why people think its an american website.. it’s not! i’m english, and the site is internetional (sic)

W+K creative team Ida and Fabian have just completed a music video for music group ‘we have band’, using stop motion. Awesome video, but most interestingly, they’ve uploaded all the the stills from the stop motion to flickr. Will be interesting to see if people take these and create their own versions of the video.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/jun/20/bandoftheday.culture

I think so often when dealing with world issues like famine, poverty, illiteracy - the problems is not being able to comprehend the scale of the situation. What does 1.2 billion people without clean drinking water actually mean? And the more intangible the issue, the less one feels able to do something about it. These infographics all use the idea of ‘If the world was a village of 100 people..’ to scale down the numbers and make the problems tangible. Great use of design to explain a problem. Next step: Simple tangible steps towards removing the problem.

Last Day Dream [HD] from Chris Milk on Vimeo.

Hi from Multitouch Barcelona on Vimeo.

Us Now from Banyak Films on Vimeo.

Although I’m now working at Wieden + Kennedy London, I’m spending one day a week working for Yarned, a company I’ve started up which focuses on doing work for non-commercial projects and organisations. As part of this, working together with Maek, we’ve just launched the new site for Trekstock, raising money for the Teenage Cancer Trust through organising music events. Its a great organisation, and we were happy to provide what support we could through building their digital presence with the design skills of Maek.

Have a look at the site, and do what you can to help out.

Arduino the Cat, Breadboard the Mouse and Cutter the Elephant from hmt on Vimeo.

I have an old paperback copy of Douglas Hofstadter’s Gödel, Escher, Bach sitting on my bookshelf that’s torn to bits. It’s missing its cover and the spine is falling apart. When the spine finally disintegrates, I’ll probably just use a rubber band to hold it together. Trying to read the book in this state would be impossible, yet it’s one of my prized possessions because of its connection to a point in my life, like a tattoo made of wood pulp.

I still have this same attachment to offline, in fact, it seems to increase the more and more i spend online. I wonder if its a generational thing, as we maybe the last batch of humans who will make a distinction between offline and online. Can you build the same emotional attachment to a tatty Kindle from your university years? Does content and container seperate? Focus on the story and its meaning, more than the object which contains the words? If we lose the emotional connection to the tactile, will we lose feeling in our fingers? Why hasn’t my coffee cooled enough for me to drink it yet?

Read “The Transient, Digital Fetish”

to

http://www.downloadsquad.com/2007/05/11/shoot-an-iraqi-artist-with-paintballs-over-the-web/

to

http://www.shootthebanker.com/

to

http://dodgeball.doritos.co.uk/game/

Slagsmålsklubben - Sponsored by destiny from Tomas Nilsson on Vimeo.

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Susy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy;
Tear in eye, your dress you’ll tear;
Queer, fair seer, hear my prayer.

From the excellent World Wide Words weekly newsletter.
An extended version of the poem is here.

The lovely people at Tall Poppy have used one of my images for their ‘happy may day’ card which they’ve sent out to their clients. The power of creative commons at work!

Yesterday, I joined the lovely people at Wieden + Kennedy London, as a Technical Creative Director. I’m already feeling at home, and the sun is shining through the windows at me. I never thought I’d go straight back into a perm role, but I’d always said W+K were the only agency I’d consider a proper job with, and gosh darnit, they invited me in - so looking forward to taking part in the amazing work which they produce. Take a look at their site for the skinny on their clients. I’m now back in the East of London, around Hanbury Street / Spitalfields, so pop by and say hello.