Category: Innovation & business

I’ve been offering free CV reviews for graduates and thinking about ‘professional practice’. The proliferation of design diplomas means new graduates are spat out of a one year degree with a weaker portfolio than most and an inflated expectation of how much work is out there for them. If there are plenty of design courses,… Continue reading Out of sight, out of mind (thoughts on professional practice for designers)

The Creative Industries Sector Plan came out last week and I took some time to read through it. Here are a few things that surprised me: I assume for the sake of readability, there is a lack of technical language in the report. AI gets mentioned along 3D printing, robotics and XR but the devil… Continue reading Notes on the 2025 Creative Industries Sector Plan

I can’t believe I didn’t know Juan Mirò inspired Miro / an event about divination, prediction and AI / my friend Julie made sonic furniture / the fun film is based on Erik and Joan Erikson’s theories of psychosocial development / an article on how we’re spotting the shape of AI generated texts (article in… Continue reading Sunday Scraps #90

I started my design career by hiring people back in 2007 so as an experienced hiring manager, here are some observations based on the last four months of my own job search (and supporting others in theirs). Nobody knows how to write a CV anymore. Almost all of the graduates I’ve spoken to think a… Continue reading On hiring

I’m in my last weeks at work at TPXimpact and I’ve worked with Heads of Practice (the equivalent of government Heads of Profession) during my tenure. It was my first time working in an environment where practice is not a personal journey but a group activity we specifically make space for as a consultancy which… Continue reading Use it or lose it (on Communities of Practice)

I’m in my last 5 weeks at TPXimpact. It’s been so much fun and at its largest, the team was over 120 people. That’s the size of the orchestra required to play Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 ‘an expression of confidence in the eternal human spirit’. Fitting, except the orchestra is online and I played a… Continue reading Playing the orchestra: thoughts on a cultural audit for remote design teams

I studied design in the early 2000s, a time of brutal design feedback culture. These days, I have at least two to three conversations every week with designers who need some advice on how to share often negative feelings at work. Sometimes it’s because of a personality clash, other times it’s ‘constructive feedback’ based on… Continue reading It’s just emotion (or how to have difficult conversations)

I’ve been reviewing CVs for free for 6 months and supporting a variety of designers looking for work for years now. In a sector that was always (and continues to be) fragile, here’s some things to consider in a job search. Nobody reads, people skim. Giles taught me that in a lecture he gave my… Continue reading On looking for work (when you’re a designer)