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You should buy Everything I Know about Life I Learned from PowerPoint by Russell Davies

Russell has written a book, Everything I Know about Life I Learned from PowerPoint.

You should buy it because:

1. It has practical advice
2. It's funny
3. It's designed by the brilliant Stefanie Posavec
4. It's really about modern professional communication
5. It makes the perfect gift for people who communicate at work

Full disclaimers: Russell is (on and off) a friend, colleague and art collaborator. I'm thanked at the back of the book. Twice. Don't let any of that put you off.

1. It has practical advice




2. It's funny.

This probably isn't the funniest paragraph but I love the phrase "PowerPoint seems to be the software we hate to love".




3. It's designed by the brilliant Stefanie Posavec

4. It's really about modern professional communication.

Including the origins of. He actually interviews Robert Gaskins who wrote the original software.

5. It makes the perfect gift for people who communicate at work

 

Author direct, signed!

 

Amazon, unsigned!

The Beatles and the singing dog

 

10 lessons in productivity and brainstorming from The Beatles is a great blog post by Tom Whitwell.

I remember Russell and I did number eight once, "Pretend to be someone else". We got stuck coming up with some ads so we simply pretended to be all the other agencies and imagined what they would do for the brief. What would BBH do? What would Mother do? And so on. So and so would have a singing dog. Such and such would shoot on a drone with a manifesto type voiceover. Thingy would use that trendy actor. We did about 7 or 8 agencies.

That was a fun hour. And it genuinely helped I think. 

Anyway.

Where the streets have one name

Harley Street is a good example of that wonderful London phenomenon where A Street is famous for A Thing. Hatton Garden and jewellery. Savile Row and suits. Whitehall and civil servants.

Harley Street is famous for doctors. Or as wikipedia says, "noted since the 19th century for its large number of private specialists in medicine and surgery". Harley Street is obviously a very desirable address if you're a doctor. Posh doctors of course, it's in the centre of London, up West, so there isn't an A&E or a GPs surgery. It's all private doctors and private dentists and skincare clinics. Chauffeurs waiting outside.

Looks great on the letterheads, essential for some business models. Russell has often pointed out it's a lot of fun to see how far they can stretch the concept of a Harley Street address. Turns out you can go quite a long way around a corner or a side street and still put Harley Street on the business card.

Here's a photo that captures that nicely.

2021 water fountain update

We've spoken about these fountains before. 

Undoubtably a good idea in August 2019 and Here's the latest on the water fountains on September 2019.

Tl;dr the design of these fountains caused a stir, even though they're a good idea. They got covered up quickly. For non-design reasons.

I think they've been covered up for ages. I don't think they've been covered for two years but maybe they have because of Covid. Today I noticed they were open. I had a sore throat and an empty water bottle so I filled it up.

Lovely stuff.

Still think they look like an ad campaign which is a shame. But yay for free water.

August blogging done

31 days of posting every day. Exhausting. Off for rest now.

Finally a meaningful strapline

They don't even bother saying "our" investors. Perfect.

I made a parking viral

I posted this tweet the other day, so far it's had 12,000 likes. We're in Phil Barnard Castle territory here.

I didn't realise it would go so viral but of course it's about parking which British people love. And so here we are. Some of the responses are typical of the internet, some are funny.

Here are some of my favourites.

Jennifer Daniel's Emoji Newsletter

I follow Jen on loads of socials. I think she's amazing at everything she does.

I've even met her look here is a picture of me and her and Dr Wave and Frances in San Francisco.

Picture by Drew Altizer in 2014.

But I did not know until the other day when Phil blogged about it that she writes a newsletter about emojis. After all she is Unicode's Emoji Subcommittee Chair and Head of Emojis at Google.

Newsletter here, looks amazing please subscribe.

Thanks Phil.

Heritage status for my reckons

This article Spanish village seeks Unesco world heritage status for outdoor chats I learned you back in April on another popular platform for reckons All this sitting in the road / alley / pavement in the freezing cold is the most British thing ever and I am here for it.

I mean, not really. But I have content deadlines.

Anyway.

50 years of the Photographers' Gallery

I didn't realise the Photographers' Gallery is 50 years old. But it is. Obviously.

Good piece in the New York Times about it. (Link, possible paywall I'm not sure how that works on the NYT.)

Our hero James in a previous exhibition Seamless Transitions.

The Photographers' Gallery have a nice bit on their website 50 Exhibitions for 50 Years.

And let's not forget the great logo by North.

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