Trick or tree?
It’s said that the Inuit people have 50 different words for snow, and the Sami have 1,000 words for reindeer. This abundance allows subtlety and precision – something lacking in our culture where trees are concerned…
Horseless carriages and engineless cars
In a way, Uriah Smith was the Elon Musk of his day. In 1899 he launched the Horsey Horseless: a motorised carriage with a life-sized model of a horse’s head attached to the front. Over a century later, it seems Tesla had the same train of thought…
RIP Bob Gill
Legendary designer, illustrator, writer, teacher – and one of my heroes – Bob Gill passed away on 9 November, aged 90. Bob co-founded Fletcher Forbes Gill back in the ’60s, which went on to become the internationally respected agency Pentagram.
Fireworks vs bonfires
As anyone who celebrates 5 November knows, fireworks can be an impressive and varied (but often brief) spectacle, while bonfires provide a longer-lasting (but less dramatic) attraction. Brands can be very similar.
Numbers count
We rely on and trust calculations done by computers, such as adding up the cost of the items in an online shopping cart. But it's important to know when the numbers in front of us don't feel right, figure out why they might be wrong, and what the brand in question is trying to do (or get away with).
Confounded and cursed!
5km into a 15km bike ride in an unfamiliar forest in the North Pennines, the waymarkers that had been regular and reliable suddenly deserted me. The outcome was two important factors to consider when planning communication.
Where’s your courtesy car?
Some car dealers and workshops see courtesy cars a necessary but unwelcome cost. But enlightened garages see them as a potentially wonderful marketing opportunity. And therein lies a lesson for us all.
Sherlock Homes
We invited some local estate agents around to value our house. Contrary to the popular stereotype, all were nice folk. The extremes of their approaches highlighted the some of the elementary traps many businesses fall into.
Please drive carefully
When entering villages, housing estates and other areas where people live, you are often greeted by a request to ‘Please drive carefully’. But with accidents, injuries and deaths on such roads rising, is this what we should be asking people to do?
Don’t butter me up!
I was 18 and studying for my A-levels. One Saturday, I turned up for my part-time job at the local superstore and got called into my boss’s office. I came close to being fired as the previous week I’d made a mistake. A very, very big butter-based mistake...