Illustrations by Amber Anderson, I think. Photo by Rachael Steven, I think.
It's impossible getting to all the student shows. Creative Review have a good thing called Talent Spotters where people send in reviews of student shows. There isn't a tag to group them all but there a few here, here, here and here. There are lots more. It's a good idea. Once again proving that CR are doing analogue and digital in complimentary ways.
We’ve won some design awards recently which is very flattering and has meant lots of people want to write about design at GDS, which is also flattering.
The downside is that I get lots of emails asking the same questions.
GDS is about much, much more than design. Design is a key part (and my bit) but it’s just one part of what we’re doing.
As an organisation we have a very open culture, the boss has a phrase, “publish don’t send” and so in the spirit of that I've published some links to the basic facts about GDS.
Firstly, I would read my colleague Russell’s blog post about GDS. That sets out the basics http://russelldavies.typepad.com/planning/2013/04/the-unit-of-delivery.html
Secondly, you should watch this video the Guardian made last week. That gives you a glimpse inside GDS and has interviews with our Minister, Francis Maude and the boss, Mike Bracken. http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/video/2013/jun/13/geeks-opened-up-government-video
Then if you need hard numbers check out these links:
The Digital by Default Service manual
Our design principles which Tim O'Reilly compared to Apple's human interface guidlines in the 80s
And of course, the product, GOV.UK
Well, it will get you most of the way at any rate.
We cycled around London the other night. 100k loop from Crystal Palace to Alexandra Palace and back again.
Timehop told me that we did the same last year and I tweeted how wonderful London is. Russell just blogged, "Whoever you are, wherever you've been, London has beautiful corners you haven't seen."
It's a great city. I am fortunate to live here.
In case you haven't seen it, an online archive of Alan Fletcher's work has gone live. It's a lovely thing and a rich resource of picture and writing by friends and collaboraters.
Brand guidelines are usually rubbish. Too long, too complicated, a hindrance when they should be a help. (that's why we wrote Design Principles and then the Service Design Manual.)
But these are different. These are brilliant. Particularly the alphabet.
Full story here, full guidelines as a PDF here.
Why?
One theory is that it looks OK on screen but the designers aren't thinking about the low fidelity printing on the 48 sheet.
Last Thursday was No Email Day in ERG, the bit of the Cabinet Office GDS sits in. It's easy to mock such an initiative, but I thought it was great.
There is too much email in your life.
Whenever email goes down, or there's a powercut like there was when I was still at w+k, people are delighted to have the chance to stop emailing and get back to working. Here's what Neil wrote during the famous powercuts of 2010.
"It's amazing just how much extra time you have when there's no email."
It's easy to romanticise this too, clearly no email at all would be a massive pain in the arse. But less would be good. And mostly the problem is because we tend to use email as a task list rather than a messaging service. We should stop doing that.
Luckily GDS is already pretty light on email, there's certainly less than anywhere else I've worked. This is partly becuase the boss encourages us to "publish not send" and partly because we believe in sticking stuff on the wall.
Last Thursday I set an auto reply to say I wasn't looking at email all day and to call or come and find me instead. Worked a treat. I'm going to do it again this week. Maybe it will become A Thing and we'll all start to look at Thursdays differently, and more importantly start to use Thursdays differently.
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