Pop songs and postcards

This was a nice job. Late last year I was asked to come up with a concept for a calendar that would engage with, and inform NHS staff of important health messages. Rather than the usual information based approach, I proposed we use song titles that would hopefully get into people’s heads and possibly even generate discussion. One for each month. These were of course backed up with short pieces of information. I mooted the idea of a competition where staff would be encouraged to name who sang each of the twelve songs to win iTunes vouchers. Just getting people to read this stuff is an achievement, so a competition is always a good way of gauging interest.

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Dutch Lawn

I have always been interested in music, I remember getting bought a tiny Casio VL-Tone when they came out and thinking I was the fifth member of Kraftwerk or John Foxx Junior. My musical career however was never meant to be, even though I wrote plenty of songs and even did a couple of gigs which were thankfully in the days before people could film things and put them online for everyone to see – for eternity.

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Write here, right now

With so many fonts to choose from, one often forgets about the simplest of them all – your own. We all have our own unique font, and just like our fingerprints, it’s unique. It’s also perfect for many jobs. Before the design industry became computerised and while I was studying design in the 1980s, I used my handwriting for a lot of design work. This continued when I was employed as a graphic designer and the only alternative was transfer lettering, Letraset etc. My first major public health campaign for HIV/AIDS awareness was all written by hand and can be seen in a previous blog entry.

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Steve Jobs 1955 – 2011

I woke today to the sad news that Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple inc. had died. He’d been ill for a while and had had major surgery as a result of pancreatic cancer but it was still a shock. I never met him and by all accounts he was tricky to work with; a ferocious attention to detail and demand for perfection made him as feared as he was respected. I think on balance, I respected him. Immensely.

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Own a colour

UNICEF has come up with a clever and creative way for us to ‘own’ our favourite colour based on the fact that the average computer/smartphone/tablet can display 16.7 million colours. If everyone picked a colour and paid even the minimum amount (0f just £1) that would be £16.7 million. That’s a lot of funds to help transform children’s lives.

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