Weeknotes 112

I love designing, all aspects of it - from the squishy people side: the way organisations should be set up to function, to the technical side: writing code in a thoughtful and well-engineered way to deliver a product that fulfils its purpose.

But there are times when the bigness (real word) of design gets a bit much. There’s always more to a problem, there’s surprises, constraints, changes of brief and a million other things that can get in the way. That’s why I like making stickers.

One-off, tiny, pretty much disposable design projects that satisfy an itch deep in my brain to conceive something and deliver it without complication. I’ve done this for years, usually being the defacto graphic designer in organisations with no-one better to ask, or partnering with Jukesie to make some of his ideas real, and most recently, under my own steam.

I think every designer should have ‘off book’ projects to help balance the slow and often grinding pace of real-world projects - small, design adjacent things that let you walk the process of conception to delivery in a trivial way.

Here’s a couple of stickers I’ve got sat waiting to go to print:

Generalist

F*ck it.

‘Good’ designer

Reading

I’m reading a lot, I’m way more likely to reach for my book than my phone at the moment. I finished God of the Woods, a really enjoyable murder mystery set in a 1970s american summer camp. I started and finished the Girl with all the Gifts, a zombie horror set in not-too-distant-future Britain that was about as bleak as it was readable (very!). I’ve just now started The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, which I’ve never read before, nor seen the movie, and it’s definitely living up to its reputation. Alongside that I wanted to read something really old so I started Macbeth. GCSE-era Martin would be shocked.

Listening

I’ve been digging into grunge a lot recently, and have been listening to Soundgarden more than anything else over the last two weeks.