Noisy Decent Graphics

Nuts

Nuts the new publication from FOOD. Pop down to 70 Clerkenwell Road and say hi to Iain, Nick and Richard. Well, not Richard he's in New York.

Do Interesting: Notice. Collect. Share by Russell Davies

It's very good. Available to buy from Do, from Bookshop, from Amazon and from other places.

Randomly accessed memories: 2

We were on holiday in Menorca with some friends and their 1yo son, it was their first holiday since the baby had been born. I think we had an apartment with a shared swimming pool. I assume we flew out on the Sunday or the Monday, we hadn't been there long.

On the Tuesday we went out for the day, we had hired a car and we drove around the island looking for stuff to look at, I think, I don't remember this part very well. I remember popping into a bar and asking for directions somewhere and on the TV I could see a building on fire but didn't think anything of it.

We returned to the apartment in the early evening and headed into the town for dinner. As we approached the town square we could hear the bongs of the BBC News at 6. They were unusually loud. I have this recollection of people starting to run, or walking faster towards the big screen. We heard the opening lines of the news, I can't remember exactly but it was something like, 'America Under Attack' and we started running. As we turned the corner we saw a massive TV that one of the bars had rigged up showing footage of the planes going into the Twin Towers. It was 7pm in Spain on Tuesday September 11th 2001 and we'd spent all day completely unaware of this huge worldwide news story. We ate dinner and watched the news in disbelief.

The next morning my friend and I queued round the block of a small newsagent buying every newspaper we could find, just like all the other Brits. There was internet obvs but there weren't smartphones and there weren't good, frequently updated news websites. I'd brought a copy of the Economist with me and for the first time I read the Asia section. In one story there was a nonchalant mention of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. It already seemed like a more innocent time.

The week before we flew out we'd bought a flat, my first. The deal actually went through on September 10th. As I devoured the newspapers I remember being terrified about mortgage rates and house prices. It felt like a different world now.

Most scaffolding in a special build award

The old Top Shop on Oxford St will soon be an Ikea. While they are carrying out the refurbishments they've made the front of the building look like a massive Ikea blue bag. I love this.

It's a simple idea, maybe the most obvious idea, and all the better for that. Nothing else needed.

I keep waiting for the 6 minutes BTS video on LinkedIn by some agency talking about the activation and the purpose and everything else. Nothing yet but lots of chat in the marketing press. The creative agency was Mother. 

It was built by Embrace Building Wraps and the stats we really want come from Scaff Mag, the scaffolding industry's leading source for cutting edge news and commentary. In their article they report that "the installation necessitated 1,000 linear metres of scaffold tubes and 2,400 m2 of environmentally-conscious PVC-free (Kavalan Sunlight Weldable) scaffold wraps – a space equivalent to 44 double-decker buses." Marketing journos take note. 

Related: 12 years ago I wrote about Massive Happy Things.

 

 

What fish do you want? Small, regular or large?

This would make a great text based website

A blog or a Tumblr or Mastadon or Threads or Whatever.

Originally posted by Russell.

"I’m going to settle for small, random stabs of extreme interestingness – moments of intense awareness of the things I’m about to lose, and of gladness that they exist. Things that remind me of other things. Tiny scenes. Words that people choose, their accidentally biblical turns of phrase. Hand-lettered signs, quotes from books, offhand remarks that make me think of dead people, or of living ones I can no longer stand the sight of. I plan to keep writing them down"

Helen Garner on happiness: ‘It’s taken me 80 years to figure out it’s not a tranquil, sunlit realm’

I didn't realise at the time but this is exactly what I was doing with this post.

We've been featured in ooh.directory!

I'm delighted to announce that we've been featured in the ooh.directory.

Ooh.directory is a simple curated list of blogs on the internet. As they say, "a place to find good blogs that interest you". It's a good way to broaden the spectrum of things you read or maybe go deeper on a particular topic. There's a good section on design and that's where you'll find us.

I love the clean design and the simple functionality coupled with the upbeat, optimistic colours.

Ooh.directory was started by an artisanal grass mower and occasional coder somewhere in the countryside outside of London. Thanks for featuring us!

Notice. Collect. Share.

Kellie has been collecting all the instances of 'your way' used in marketing. It's fascinating and interesting. Have it your way — A journey into personalisation in advertising.

She's following the time honoured method of Notice. Collect. Share. 

Now we just wait for the inevitable 'Login to your MyAccount your way'.

Design research urls #20

Issue number 20. Yay!

98. Everyday Automation Observatory, this is a great initiative from Rachel Coldicutt. "Collecting everyday examples of ways automated processes are popping up everywhere. Share your pictures of QR codes, self-service machines, app interfaces and delivery robots."

99. Some New York lawyers got paid $90m for ensuring that Musk went through with the Twitter acquisition. They didn't do a lot other than being on hand to "enforce the terms of the merger agreement" if necessary. The FT has more details here. (£)

But the totally cold sales email they sent the Exec Team at Twitter is incredible. If you make cold contacts with people in your day job have a read of this and bear in mind they got paid $90m for doing not that much off the back of it.

100. We all know naming things is hard. ULEZ being the most recent example of this. What a wasted opportunity.

101. Nick Asbury has been railing against purpose + brands for a while now. I don't always agree with him but he writes thoughtfully and sensibly about the topic. This post on Coutts + Farage is a great example and really good way into a piece of critical thinking. (Also; what a mess.)

The Barbie Dreamhouse on Architectural Digest

Haven't seen the movie but this walk through of The Barbie Dreamhouse by Architectural Digest is fascinating. Not for the promo/colab stuff but for the look behind the scenes at the set making.