Octoblog

With our wiggly tentacles in many places, it’s interesting to reflect on what’s happening on the open seas of creativity. Check out our blog for musings and observations on design related matters and connect with us in the comments.

It’s nice to be nice

There's a lot of horrible design out there. Walk down any high street, look in any magazine or visit your doctor and look on the wall in the waiting room. There are a lot of things that have made it to print that are a crime to aesthetics and good taste. Sometimes this is down to people not caring. Sometimes it's down to people thinking they can just 'cobble it together' themselves. And sometimes because, whilst people know it needs to look good, they can't afford to have it designed professiona...

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Life’s a pitch

For those that don't know, a 'pitch' in the design world is a submission of an idea or concept to a client in order to gain work. It works like this; the client approaches you and says something like "we need to get ideas from x amount of companies to see which we like best". There's always a lot of discussion about this in the design press as it's something you don't generally receive any payment for and doesn't happen in other industries. Try going to multiple restaurants and asking t...

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I could be happy

I curate a website about a short lived art collective called The Cloth. They consisted of four people and only lasted for about three years but were incredibly prolific in the mid-1980s. Do check out the website for examples of their creativity. Sadly one of the members, David Band died last year - aged 51, and last weekend I was invited to an event at Glasgow School of Art to celebrate his life a...

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Back to the future

I'm a geek, it goes with the territory really. One can't be a designer with an interest in photography, music composition and sci-fi without getting excited when Apple comes along with the latest and greatest new iThing. This company brings us the future today, sometimes it doesn't seem like it, or even make much sense at the time, but resistance is futile (I did say I was interested in sci-fi)....

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Right Royal Rubbish

It's been a while since the last blog entry. This is due to all sorts of things: work got in the way with a couple of new clients, I updated my website, was really poorly with a virus that knocked me out for nearly two weeks, a visitor from a distant shore arrived and Eurovision of course happened. All these things have now passed and the country is now firmly in the grip of Jubilee and Olympic frenzy - christened the 'Jubilympics' by some heretics....

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The vinyl countdown

Record Store Day 2012 is almost upon us. Just like last year, there's a lot of publicity about how people love vinyl more than ever - the smell of it, our visceral connection with the object's shape, packaging, design and even warmth of sound. This can only come from listening to music in its full audiophile format, apparently. To a certain degree I concur, a digital download really can't offer the same satisfaction of owning a real object that has been manufactured and distributed in its own lo...

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It’s a dog’s life

Myself and Ruby the beagle were intrigued to learn that a recent study has shown that bringing pet dogs to work can reduce stress and make the job more satisfying for other employees. US researchers found that those with access to dogs were less stressed as the day went on than those who had none....

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iPaid. It’s a hard habit to break

Being an Apple addict isn't a cheap habit but it's one I've given up trying to beat. Quitting biting my nails was much easier... So, there's a new iPad and it's called just that - 'The New iPad'. Bit strange really, as they still sell the iPad 2 which is now inferior to iPad 'The New' and costs less which just doesn't make sense. I can see that numbering things is silly and Apple don't do it with desktops/laptops so really there's no reason to do it with phones and tablets but I think the time ...

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Out with the old – in with the new

It's nice when you get a chance to fix a logo that you are familiar with and have never liked. Qwikprint is a local printer that I've used for a long time and whilst their service has always been brilliant, their logo has always irked me and my design sensibilities. ...

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