There’s a strong culture of weeknotes in government and I’ve been reading Frankie and Mike‘s on and off for years. Mine tend to be a mixture of magpieing and professional reflections so let’s see if I feel the need to shape them differently moving forward. To get me in the mood, here’s what I hope… Continue reading Week 0 (thoughts on onboarding)
Category: design
Design and (self) confidence
These are some high level points I’ll be making at a talk I’m giving in Cambridge next month. It’s about self confidence, anxiety and the weirdness of our times. It’s also based on conversations I have with the 8 or 9 young designers I speak to regularly. A career in design is uncertain by definition.… Continue reading Design and (self) confidence
Where does design come from?
Design never had a very clear ‘origin story’. There is no Lascaux paintings to point to in design. A number of different people, communities and institutions helped build a local definition of design in a number of industrial nations in the 1800s. While doing some research at the British Library for the second edition of… Continue reading Where does design come from?
The next 80 years of the Design Council (a letter from a friend)
The Design Council is selecting its new CEO and as a friend of the organisation (I’ve worked there twice, in 2005 as an intern and in 2022 as an interim Chief Design Officer) here are my thoughts on the challenges ahead. Lessons from the past Something that’s often forgotten was that The Design Council was… Continue reading The next 80 years of the Design Council (a letter from a friend)