My french sucks so I don’t know who these are by. If you can speak french let me know!

Either way, check them all out here.

Place your hand here and pull.

Affordance

(Yes its cliche but I can’t help it. I bloody love my new work computer. It’s amazing. I’ll tell you what I don’t like, however. Crappy camera phones! I’ve had nothing but dodgy images from my new one.)

I’ve started work at bragster and I can honestly say it’s bloody great. Big things are happening. The logo and branding, the site - its all being heavily scrutinized. What we end up with should be fun for the whole family. Don’t want to say too much more but rest assured, there is a general overtone of awesome.

As part of WKside, I helped create Rat Race, an engaging window display in Wieden + Kennedy London’s window. Live Rats craw around a section of the tube map which we created using standard rat tubes. After all the initial concepts, budgetary hiccups and general ground work, It was a tough few days in the work shop, to be sure.

They will be in the window for the month, check them out:
16 Hanbury Street, London E1 6QR

Visit the site and add the rats as your friends on facebook via ratbook

Here’s the post on W+K’s blog: Welcome to Optimism

I found this chopping board in my girlfriend’s kitchen. She said her dad has had it longer than her. What I love is it’s surface is basically a map of how it was used; wear from a product that is still in perfect working order after being used nearly every day for more than 20 years. There is still a tiny part of the print in the top left which leads me to believe that suze’s dad is right handed.

Anyway, this thing reminded me that there are still plenty of things I love about product design; things and how people use them.

From WK London’s blog. It put a big smile on my face.

An email bounced around Wieden+kennedy yesterday, showing everyone the work of Till Nowak, a young German who works mainly in 3D. Even though his 3D work outstanding I decided to show this installation of his. I love how simple to concept is. Also it has to be noted how incredibly flexible it is; there are any number of cool things you could do with this idea.

Anyway, check out his stuff - http://www.framebox.de/

W+K is great. Its really opening me up to new ideas.

In other news I have been offered a Design and Brand development role at the dot com startup, Bragster.com - the company I have been freelancing for for the last few months. I will be in charge of working with the developers to re-design the site. In addition to this I will be looking at the brand, who it markets to, and where it will be going with it’s newly invested 3.5 million. Hell yeah.

Along with fellow “siders”, I have been invited to contribute to Welcome to optimism, the 25th most popular advertising blog in the world. So, for the next three months we’ll be bringing down the tone. Who knows, maybe we can get it to drop down to 26th.

Every time I look at images of other peoples typographic tattoos I think,

“Wow that font was rendered so much better than my tattoo. I hate that trendy, bearded, brooklyn tattoo ‘artist’ who thought the flick at the bottom of my Helvetica R was a serif.”

But with this one I thought, Hey, mine was done in a tiny 21 points. At least I don’t have dudes on the beach shouting my vital details at me.

“Hey Richard Charles! Born in December ‘84! You JERK!” - You know, stuff like that.

Design around me is the blog of Lizzie Burns, fashion designer and general creative genius. Right now she’s working on a range of jewelry, under the name Daddy’s Favorite. Lizzie happens to be a good mate of mine. So I get first dibs on all the bling.

I find myself strangely affected by the death of this actor that I never met. Suze and I went to see I’m Not There recently and we both said how good we thought he was. I was also quite looking forward to his joker, which I guess I will get to see anyway. (Come to think of it, he was very entertaining in Lords of Dogtown, too.) I think it might be because he was only 28. Anyway, rest in peace dude.

And here is where I’m going to be working for the next 3 months!:

When I was in New York I came accross Wieden+Kennedy London’s site, never having previously thought of advertising as a serious career idea (for me). But I became addicted to the work featured on the site and the views and insights shown on the blog. It became less a daydream to work there and more of a goal.

Its been a long old few months since I did that stupid thing. Many follow up emails where sent, not replied to and subsequently re-sent. I went in 2 more times, first to see the lovley Lucy and Daz and then to meet with Tony and Kim. Both times I shat myself.

But the kid pulled it off. Just.

Tony did say something which I think I will always remember and that set me a bit at ease. He said: “WKside is our way of finding the black sheep creatives; the people who don’t necessarily fit in a particular category or know exactly what they want to do.” I thought: “Thats me, dude”.

(Just in case you think about doing something like this: The press I received on the (non) event wasn’t exactly supportive and was more in the vein of poking fun at the crazy dude. For me this wasn’t that much of a big thing. But be warned!)

After a long period of inactivity I plan to inject new life into this dusty old blog with my goings-on at WK. See you on the other side! (I am just so hilarious)

Check it out - http://www.leicatime.com/a000-Rollei.htm

Every once in a while you come across a website that is so completely 90s, you just have to smile. Some are so bad they actually cross back over into cool, via that oh-so popular buzz-word begining with an “R” and ending in an “O”, of which I will not speak.

The best thing about it is you just know that it took hours of frowning, labored one-finger-at-a-time typing and numerous telephone calls to the grandson.

Oh, who am I kidding? I just like it because its shiny.