That Gormandizer Man

Lovely little bit of UX

I just wanted to post this here for future reference. I'm using a new piece of software to blog from - MarsEdit - and am getting to grips with it.

I thought this little UX touch was lovely:

It's the little things that can make a big difference.

Thankyou to my teachers

I was reading a little from Sir Ken Robinson's The Element the other day. In there is a passage where he talks about the value of a good teacher, and that whilst some of us could pinpoint a vital teacher in our life, some of us couldn't.

So it got me thinking about the teachers that I still think of fondly now who have helped shape me. (By teachers I mean the people who were the 'establishment' at an educational facility only. I'm not discussing the notion of teaching - as that can come from everywhere.)

So I thought I'd spend a few moments thanking those teachers publicly, and in keeping with Sir Ken I'm going to overuse the word 'profound'.

Secondary School.
There's only one teacher I can think of that helped shaped my thinking throughout my whole first 16 years. Sure there were teachers I enjoyed lessons with, but for the purposes of this post I'm thinking only about teachers that taught me something profound.

Mr. Henderson.
I was never really interested in English - language or literature - until I was taught by Mr. Henderson. Primarily this was down to two reasons: 1) We had free reign of the DTP computer in his class and were encouraged to design and write at every occasion; 2) He introduced me to Animal Farm. Not only was this a profound book in my growing up, but the way in which he taught it was quite brilliant. He made it fun to read. I'd never had that before - a book that I looked forward to reading. He totally shifted my perception of how interesting and exciting a book can be, and he also taught me some fundamentals in basic critical questioning.
Thankyou Mr. Henderson.

My Undergraduate Degree
Two teachers stick out here for me. One is based purely on a single learning, the other helped shaped my mind quite a bit.

Peter Lee.
Initially an amusing teacher because my brother lives in Peterlee. (Do you see the name thing! Funny hey!) One single thing happened that made me respect Peter and I still remember it. Mr. Lee was our 3D graphics teacher (I studied Architecture just as computers were starting to dominate the industry. My class was right on the cusp of the change with some of us presenting hand drawn ink graphics, and some presenting CAD drawings. A really interesting time.) On one deadline day one of my friends of off ill and when explaining he was worried he'd fail, Mr. Lee went into a tirade. Not about my friends illness, but about the inability of the rules of the University to accommodate ill people. This was a profound shift from other tutors I was learning from - they would very much toe the line of the University rules. This showed me that regardless of age, experience and situation there is always a place to question hierarchy and to never take it as gospel. A crucial learning. Always questions things. Sure some rules are there for a reason, but sometimes they're a dogma that needs shaking up.
Thankyou Peter.

Sam Jacob
Big thanks need to go to the last two of my influential teachers. Starting with Sam.
When I moved to London I was a young, naive Northerner a bit out of my depth and surrounded by so many amazing things I was a little overawed and also a little too ambitious in what I could do. I mean that in both professional terms and social terms.
Sam taught me innumerable things so it'd be difficult to pull out individual learnings but I can give no higher praise to Sam than to state that I think he turned me from a raw student into an employable, more intelligent professional. I grew up a lot when I worked with Sam.
In the Architecture world he was (and is) prepared to fuck things up a bit and the way he helped improve my creative thinking was amazing. I was very rational before I met Sam, and it's because of him in no small way that I now see things and immediately think of creative ideas. He taught me that it's OK to fully immerse yourself in others work and to then use that as a springboard to inspire your own work. There's a world of difference between that and stealing ideas, and one that James Young also acknowledges. Sam taught me how to look at things, and by critically questioning them to then piece them back together in a different order. In a new way. To create something new and fresh. That's the way a lot of people work.
Along with Mr. Lee above, Sam liked to fuck things up a bit and be a bit subversive. This has definitely rubbed off on me... and I think that's a good thing.
Thanks Sam.

My Postgraduate Degree
I was taught by a few different people on my MA, but all of them espoused the same key thinking as the Course Director, so I'm going to talk about him here, but thanks all.

Geoff Crook
My MA was brilliant. I loved it. I looked forward to going to class and I looked forward to the coursework. It was the basis of a profound shift in the way I thought about myself and the way I thought about my career moving forwards.
Geoff is great. From minute one on lesson one you know where he's coming from. You know this isn't going to be a course where you jump through hoops and remember key facts for the exam hall. The course is what you make it and he explains this very early. Some found that uncomfortable as they're used to being spoonfed. I loved it.
Geoff taught me not only to critically question the fundamentals we'd been taught elsewhere, but to critically question our own questions. Geoff was also the first teacher that really taught me the value of parallel problem solving - of using examples and ideas from other areas and to think of them in relation to a problem in another area. He taught me the value of stripping away 'marketing bullshit' and, whilst using robust evidence to back up ones argument, presenting that argument in a simple lucid form. Something I still do every day.
My respect for Geoff was amplified when I tutored on his course for a couple of years. Seeing how constrained he was by the gatekeepers of the business of academia was depressing, but he always stuck to his guns - for the benefit of the students.
Thanks Geoff.

So there you go.
Four teachers I'd like to thank. Most of them are from Higher Education and this doesn't please me. My schooling in the North East wasn't particularly good and in fact my Comprehensive has since been closed down by OFSTED. My learnings during Higher Education have had a profound effect on the way I think, however, and I found it really useful to reflect on that. No matter what age we are, we should always reflect and learn.

In a time when every public service is being squeezed I thought I'd spend a few minutes to say to all my teachers not named here - thankyou. I know the difficulties you all face and I know how challenging kids can be.

But to the people I have named above: Thankyou so much. In some way I'm a mirror of your teachings... so be worried!

An Idea: Making second hand products more appealing

My dad bought a guitar from EBay recently. It's an old Fender Jazz Bass from the 70s and it's beautiful. It's battered, worn and the paint is flaking off. It sounds absolutely amazing.

It's exactly because it's an old guitar, because it's been used by lots of people that it's desirable. It has history.

I think he told me that he checked that the serial number was a genuine one online. I think you can get the serial number and pop it into a website to find out the guitar colour and age and stuff and you can see if it's been resprayed etc. A good idea.

This made me think about other similar items - things like cars where there isn't really any desire to own a pre-owned car. Unless it's a classic, buying a second-hand car is a necessity of cost and perceived as a risk. Again, you try and find out about the history of the product to check what you've been told but you'd probably buy a new one if you could.

I remember going to a talk a few years ago and some chap from Howies was there talking about a coat you could hand down to other people when you'd finished with it. I like this. The problem for brands, though, is that it goes against exactly what they want. They want people to buy something, and wait for it to become redundant so you have to buy it again. Some even plan this very process into their products.

All this got me thinking about how we could start to track the history of items for both rational reasons but also emotional reasons.

My dad was interested in whether his guitar wasn't the original thing from a value point of view. Whereas I'd love to know what kind of music it's played, the places on earth it's been and the people that have used it. That stuff would really give it a rich history me and turn a functional item into an item with soul.

This could be done with unique identifiers such as Serial Numbers but you could also do it with something a little more dynamic. If we could start embedding intelligent chips into items we could track so many different things.

Think of this.

If a chip in a guitar could collect location information for example, we would be able to find out what venue the guitar was at. Cross reference that a couple of times with the venue website and we'd be able to tell which band it was in. Then we'd be able to tell the kind of music it was playing. Even link it to a specific person. A guitar owners family tree as such. All we need is a small chip in the guitar that is charged by the amp and shares its info when it is in a wifi area.

I think that kind of rich information gives a product a history, a rich history that adds value to the item, not takes value away from it.

If this is the kind of information that adds value to a second-hand guitar, then what kind of information could we collect to add value to second-hand clothing, second-hand cars, second-hand anything?

If we think about it properly could the addition of some key bits of information move second-hand items from a rational necessity to an emotional want?

Some documentaries I've watched recently

I love a documentary. I've watched a few great ones recently.
Here they are in no particular order:

Best Worst Movie

A film about the worst movie ever. Reuniting the stars and how that part of their history helped shape them and how they're surprised it now has a cult following.

Oil City Confidential

A film about Canvey Island and Dr. Feelgood. A great social history of the place and the band.

Inside Job

Oscar winner that looks at how the recent financial crisis happened and who was to blame. If you haven't seen it yet make sure you watch it. If you're not pissed off after you've seen it then you're not human. We've all been shafted and while they get away with it, we suffer.

Winnebago Man

Documentary that tracks down Jack Rebney from the original clip and sees if the clip was a true reflection of the man.

The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia

Jeremy Kyle meets redneck America. I didn't know whether to laugh at their ridiculousness or cry at their (and their community's) plight.

American: The Bill Hicks Story

I've listened to and watched most of Bill Hicks' stuff so was a bit reticent about this and whether it would tell me anything I didn't know. It absolutely did. It's beautifully put together and features some great input from his family and friends. Essential viewing.

Waiting for Superman

Outlines the education system in the USA. It focuses on their lottery system and builds to a crescendo that genuinely makes you feel nervous excitement for the kids. I'd love to see the UK equivalent now the coalition are fucking things up.

Budrus

I watched this at the excellent Frontline Club yesterday. It focuses on the Isreali West Bank Barrier and the impact that has on local Palestinian communities, resulting in demonstrations that bring together lots of people regardless of race or religion.

One Day in September

Focussing on the Munich terrorist attack, this is a harrowing look at how it happened and goes into sometimes gruesome details.

The King of Kong

Ever wondered who the best Donkey Kong player in the world is? Nope, me neither. But this is a great look at the people that do care about that kind of stuff.

My Adidas socks

The first in a new series.
Products that have served me well.

I've used this blog to talk about lots of things that I think could improve so I thought I'd use it sometimes to give praise to some products I own that are really good.

First up, my Adidas running socks.

In day to day life, socks aren't really a priority when it comes to your look or comfort. They're ubiquitous, usually an afterthought and they're rarely seen. Running socks are completely different though and they're a massively important part of kit.

Neglect them at your peril.

Over the past few years I've bought several pairs of running socks and these are the only ones I wear now. Every other brand and style I've bought have either become stretched; given me blisters or simply worn away. But not my trusty Adidas.

Runners become very brand loyal about their kit, but I try and be brand-neutral and go for the products that have served me well. I must have run a good few hundred miles in them and they're as good (if not better as they fit my toes perfectly now) as the day I bought them, and until they prove me otherwise they'll be my product of choice for some time to come.

One day of emails

So I was thinking over the weekend about how often our autopilot engages itself and does things we don't really notice. This manifests itself in many ways over the course of a normal day. Everything from the pockets we use for various things to the route we walk to the bus stop; from the sandwich we usually head straight for to the emails we delete instantly.

And it's the emails we delete instantly that got me thinking.

On a day when I'm working I have a pretty standard system regarding emails:

- When I'm travelling to work I'll check my emails on my iPhone;
- I'll read the important ones and split these into two categories:
1) Ones I reply to instantly;
2) Ones that are important that I'll read when I'm sat down so I press 'Mark Unread' as a reminder;
- The vast majority, however, I'll simply go down the list and delete.

These are the newsletters I've signed up to and the daily offers like Groupon.

I thought for one day only I wouldn't delete any of them (besides the ones that go to the spam folder), and I'd carry out a normal day and look at the emails at the end of the day to see if there's anything interesting. This is what I found.

Total number of emails sent to me on February 8th 2011:
96
Total number of emails sent to me by brands:
55 (57% of all emails)
Total number of emails sent to me by people:
41 (43% of all emails)
Number of emails replying to an email I sent first:
14 (15% of all emails)
Number of emails that were sent to me without me sending first:
82 (85% of all emails)
Number of brand emails where they used my name to greet me:
4 (5% of all emails)
Number of brand emails where they didn't use my name to greet me:
51 (54% of all emails)
Number of brand emails that want me to spend money:
26 (27% of all emails)
Number of brand emails that are brand building, but not asking for money:
29 (30% of all emails)
Number of brand emails where they couldn't be bothered to call me by my name, but asked me to spend my money with them:
19 (21% of all emails)
Wordle of Email subjects from brands:

(Some percentages are rounded).

So there you go.

A bog standard bloke and over one fifth of my emails in one single day are from brands that can't even be bothered to use my name even though they are asking me to spend money with them.

Some brands will never get it will they...

When I studied Architecture

So I had to move flat last week, and this gave me the opportunity to look through a couple of boxes I'd been avoiding looking through for a while.

Amongst lots of other stuff I found loads of old stuff from when I studied a BA in Architecture. It was really interesting browsing through a couple of old sketchbooks.

Along with reminding me of some of the projects I worked on, it gave me some great context on how I approached the briefs. Looking at them all these years later, with more experience under my belt was really interesting. I looked at them from a neutral point of view and I thought I'd share a few things, in no particular order.

Asher's Graveyard Cafe
This was a project where we were asked to look at a famous persons house, analyse it and then think about the kind of shop they would open.

This was Jane Asher's house. (Well at least I said it was).
This is a detail of the shop below it.

Then for some reason I decided that she would open a wicked cafe... but I have no idea where the graveyard came from.

And here's a scribbled cross section. I was surprised when I looked back at all the things I created with my hands. All of my drawings (bar one) in the sketchbooks were hand drawings. I used to love drawing with pen and ink on tracing paper.

Mother's House
This was a project where we had to design a house for an elderly lady. It had to be self-contained and also cheap to run (as old ladies usually have a small pension). Oh, and it reversed the idea that you would have a 'granny flat' on a larger house. In this one you had to provide living accommodation for you, her son.

This is the overall view of it, sketching out all its facades. I've no idea why I decided on the pitch of the roof like that - probably something to do with it looking a little like a quant cottage...

... but not that quaint as one way I was going to keep the house cheap to run was to sell the whole front facade as advertising space.

Eat food, drink beer, smoke fags. You can see my genius flare for advertising right there... and maybe some of my feelings about society too. Then I needed to provide accommodation for myself within this house, so I decided to have a mezzanine level where a scale version of Trellick Tower overlooked mother's section of the house.

The balcony held my bath and toilet, so even when I was having a private moment I could still be on hand and keep an eye on mother should she fall.

The Spirit of Soho Mural
So for this one we were given a very loose brief. Basically it asked us to do something close to the Soho Mural. Simple as that. I thought a nice thing to do would be to have a mirrored viewing platform that was both a kaleidoscope internally and externally - something that would talk about the swinging sixties heritage of Carnaby Street and something that allowed people to see the mural from a perspective they hadn't seen it from before.

I remember quite liking this simple model.

The Camden Lock Rock Cliche Hotel
This was one of my favourite projects but unfortunately I think I only have this single piece of tracing paper to remember it by. We were given a site at Camden Lock and briefed to design a hotel there. I wanted to design something that embodied the music heritage of Camden so designed an experiential hotel. The drawing below was one of the floors. I had two parallel towers that were kept apart besides the odd floor where they were connected. This was a connected floor - the signing floor. This was the floor where bands would sign their recording contracts. We know in reality most people in a band don't get on, so that's why there were two rooms, one in each tower - so the likes of Noel Gallagher could go into one tower, and Liam in the other. A simple layout meant they could go straight into the toilets and do a line of coke. Then they would sit around a huge circular table with loads of suits and sign their contract. The suits would then walk over the bridge and do the same with the other half of the band. When signed, the band members would walk out onto the walkways and throw TV's over the side to the ground below as a symbol of their newly signed contracts. I loved working on this project.

So what did this teach me?
Looking back on it now, this is clearly where I started thinking about things in pictures. I always sketch things out to help explain a question or solve a problem.
What it definitely taught me though was to think creatively, think with risk, think beyond convention - but always to back up this creativity with robust data. In the case of architecture that was engineering details and building regulations. For what I do now, it's about research.
It's probably also where I got my love for thin black ink pens.

I have more images from the sketchbooks - maybe I'll post some more work at some point.

The Aldwych Sandwich

So yesterday I was on a bus going through Aldwych. This is something I've done numerous times but yesterday something was different. I looked around, and looked up, and noticed how beautifully British it is. How beautifully old Britain it is.

It made me think of someone called Gerald. And it made me think of a sandwich that described Aldwych. So I decided to design a sandwich called an Aldwych sandwich. The recipe is below. But before we get to the product, we need a brand...

--

It's 1972 and Gerald works as an accountant and he's in his late fourties. He lives with his wife Marjorie in Surbiton, works in London Bridge, and has an orangey-beige Volvo 145 estate. He smokes a pipe occasionally and reads The Times regularly.

Gerald always takes his lunch hour and usually goes to the Blackley Club with the chaps. But once in a while he goes to the cheaper cafe ran by Mario, reads The Economist and orders an Aldwych Sandwich.

He walks in, pops his umbrella over the back of a chair and takes off his bowler hat.
'Hello Mr. White,' Mario says, placing a cup of tea on the counter for a customer.
'Hello Mario. How are you?' Gerald replies.
'Marvellous. Will it be the usual for you Mr. White?'
'Yes please. An Aldwych sandwich, please Mario.'
'And tea, Mr. White?'
'Yes please Mario.'
As people around him conduct business on their lunch hours, Gerald reads The Economist and settles in for a well earned Aldwych sandwich before getting back to the office, telling Penny to hold all his calls while he works on the Pepperwell's account.

--

The Aldwych Sandwich:

Soft white bread, buttered well;
Breaded English ham;
Medium English cheddar cheese;
Cold, crisp, English cucumber;
A good spread of English mustard.

Things I love about America

I go to the USA pretty regularly, and I love visiting. I was over there for Christmas and New Year doing various things, and noted down a few things that I like. Here they are.

Number 537: A random bar like Whiskey's has 18 beers on tap.

Number 61: Getting ID'd when you're bald with a beard. And 32 years old.

Number 718: They know which ales are worth importing. Newcastle Brown Ale is widespread, Carling isn't.

Number 18: People drinking a light beer whilst demolishing a pile of onion rings the size of a house.

Number 182: Approximately 82% of all ads include the words 'Professional driver. Closed course.'

Number 278: The irony of watching two men beat the living shot put of each other next to a 'Happy Holidays' sign on the ice hockey coverage.

Number 418: Seeing at least 5 different sponsors involved in every sports game, seemingly without any relevancy. 'Captain Morgan goal of the week' at the ice hockey anyone?

Number 74: Using the words 'fuel efficient' when showing a Nissan stating 34MPG at the same time.

Boring 2010

I spoke at the inaugural Boring conferenceon Saturday.
I thought it was great fun. A great example of how people can pull together on Social Media sites for a common cause.

My understanding of how it cam about was that James Ward heard that Russell Davies wasn't going to do an Interesting talk this year so tweeted that he'd like to do one called Boring.

As is the way with things like this - people replied to him... me included... which led to this:

And the rest, as they say, is history.

So anyway, it happened on Saturday. There's a really good post here by Lucytelling you what happened over the whole day. I can't write a post as nice as that so I'm not going to try.

The other speakers were great and ranged from a milk taste test to a talk about car park roofs; from musical keyboard experiments with masking tape to what it was like growing up in an orthodox Jewish household.

As I mentioned here, I thought the talks could be split into two: 1) Talks that were about things that could be boring but were turned into something really interesting by the speaker, and; 2) Talks about genuinely boring things delivered in a very funny way. The writer from the Independent didn't understand this I don't think and wrote a pretty ill-informed article in my opinion.

So what did I talk about?

I used the time to speak about my 20 Beers Around the World idea. It's something that I've been talking about for a while but for various reasons it hasn't been going as quickly as it could be. For a while this concerned me but to be honest I like the idea of the project evolving and taking months and years to complete instead of days and weeks. I think it'll be really interesting at the end to refer to earlier posts to see how things have evolved.

I asked Jonathan to record a short video for me for the conference and that was the first thing I showed the audience:

Then I explained what the project is about. In a nutshell - I was sat in my flat alone one night supping a beer and realised how bloody boring I can be sometimes. Why don't I chat to others a little more?

Usually at this point I'd get up and do a presentation but I didn't really want to do that. I knew most people would do that during the day, and I do it everyday at work, so I thought I'd play a short video that explained the project a bit. It's only a few minutes long and you can see it here:

It went down pretty well ,and I sat down and enjoyed the other speakers.

So, if there's anyone you know that can help me please point them toward the site and ask them to get in touch.