Red ones go faster!

This week I’ve fulfilled a long standing desire, boosted my eco-credentials and doubled my designer poser-status all in one fell swoop. That’s right I’ve gone and got myself a fixee.

Not just any old fixed gear bicycle, I went to my friend Bicycle Repair Man, otherwise known as Sam and spent a very enjoyable evening putting various cogs, gears and other bikey bits together. It’s mostly second hand pieces from various other bikes, which makes it twice as cool. In case you’re interested I paid him by designing and printing him some business cards, go market economy!

Here’s some pictures of the building process in all it’s greasy glory (building bikes uses lots of grease it turns out).

In with the forks!

Building bike’s uses many tools.

Like I said, lots of grease.

Finally in goes the seat. There’s a real satisfying sense of accomplishment in making your own transport (all right I pretty much just held the tools and tighten the nuts), but I feel much more connected with this red streak of bi-pedal speeding metal. You’ll have to wait to see the finished bike in all it’s glory, plus I’ve got to get the hang of riding it.

NFN (me old beauty)

Recently Norfolk County Council, in it’s wisdom, launched a campaign to get Norfolk noticed on the international stage. A worthy cause indeed and I (generally) agree that this county has a lot to offer. Nelson for one thing. He was born in Norfolk. And Stephen Fry lives here. That’s two very famous and important people. Not to mention Delia Smith.

However the strapline they chose to promote this campaign was “Normal for Norfolk”, an attempt to play off the classic stereotype of the country bumpkin and rebrand the county as “a world class place to work and live”. Well possibly. But the heritage of the phrase is rich indeed and has been embraced by the people of Norfolk almost as a badge of honour, a bit like certain groups of teenagers have embraced ASBO’s.

There is a musician who performs under the pseudonym of “Normal for Norfolk“, singing songs about amusing stereotypes to the tunes of his acoustic guitar. They’re actually pretty good, although if you don’t know the places he mentions then it probably isn’t as funny. The phrase was apparently used by doctors to describe some of their patients, as described on the predictably named blog (whose name I won’t repeat again).

A Google search returns over 700,000 results. There’s a Flickr group and numerous websites. There’s even been a film made using the phrase as a title.

Norfolk Council are arguing that they’re seeking to reposition the meaning of the phrase, but in my mind ‘Normal for Norfolk’ is already a strange source of regional pride, a strange quirk, an eccentricity unique to a quirky, eccentric land. And I think it’s great.

Fireworks fun

You know winter is approaching when things start going BOOM in the night. I flipping love fireworks, so I was very pleased to join some friends at Norfolk Showground for a colourful display of well orchestrated explosions and fun-fair induced nausea. Some English traditions are so mad they’re wonderful.

More photos over on my Flickr, but it was very cold and I was too busy sipping luke warm tea and chewing under-cooked burgers to take very many.

Also sparklers are great fun to mess around with now I’m old enough to disregard safety warnings.

CP Update – I’m published!

Just a quick update to last week’s post about me being asked to write for Creative Pool. My first article has now been published (hurrah!), in fact it’s the article I entered into their competition. If you fancy reading it, clicky here.

Giving a back to Wells

Recently I fulfilled a long standing promise to give a talk at a meeting of the Mother’s Union in Wells. When I was fundraising for my trip to Nepal last year my Nana organised a tea and coffee morning, which thanks to the help of the local community became quite an event with a massive cake stall and a raffle. In all it raised around £100 for my trip, bringing a step closer to my target and my challenge in Nepal with the NGO Action Aid. As a small token of my gratitude I agreed to come back and give a talk about the challenge I undertook. I think they appreciated it.

Write stuff

Firstly apologies for that awful play-on-words. “Write stuff”, I don’t know what I was thinking, put it down to youthful exuberance if you like (it’s not though).

Anyway I’ve just heard (on Wednesday) that the excellent, free, online service for creative industry jobs, Creative Pool, have selected me to write some articles for their monthly newsletter! Pretty sweet, I reckon. I entered a writing competition for them a while back and apparently impressed enough for them to ask me to wax wordy on design subjects.

The first issue featuring meself is coming out early next week; if you can stand the anticipation I’ll be linking it here (and across other social media platforms).

‘Til design do us part

There are definitely some similarities between the designer/client relationship and a marriage. Stay with me, there is a reasonable and straight-forward explanation for this statement. Both require considerable commitment from both parties and the actual ‘wedding’, the affirmation of intent whether through the signing of a contract or the exchange of little gold bands, will, generally, take place after some period of courtship and fact-finding about each other. And it is more often those relationships that are rushed into, where there hasn’t been sufficient time to get to know the other’s bad habits, that falter.

This thought swirled around my brain whilst I sat at the wedding of my cousin last weekend (see I told you there was a good explanation). A wedding is a celebration of the commitment that two people are willing to make to each other. Designers seem spend a lot of time bitching about their clients, but maybe if they viewed the relationship more like a marriage they would be more willing to compromise rather than sticking their heads in the sand. That and we’d also have an excuse for a big party with cake.

This week’s dilema – saving the environment

As well as a follow-up to last week’s article on living the good life, this post is part of (cue trumpety fanfare) Blog Action Day. If you can’t be bothered to follow the link, it’s essentially an attempt by the good people at Change.org to get the internet talking about the totally shit state of the environment. Bloggers all over the world have been signing up, including the blog for the government of the state of Minas Gerais in Brazil, to write about environmental issues relating to their own interests. The plan is not to cause direct change (although that’d be a bonus) but to start discussions and bring the environment back into the public arena.

All right! So it’s nice to be part of a global initiative, but what will I be bringing to the party? Well it’s definitely more of the pineapple on sticks than the main course. However as some obscure retail chain once quoth “every little helps“.

And it’s supermarkets that have proven to be the inspiration for this blog. Since I moved house a week and a half ago (into the middle of a city for the first time in my life), I’ve been attempting to ’shop local’ and avoid large chain stores wherever possible. It’s been pretty interesting and pretty flipping difficult, mainly because it’s been busy at work and I have to walk past two large supermarkets on my way home. However I’ve persevered, and despite several lapses, I reckon I did quite well, considering my previous, supermarket-dependant lifestyle.

I successfully found some sink and drain unblocker from a small hardware shop. Then I couldn’t find an independent deli to buy some olives from so I went to Sainsbury’s (admitably from their deli counter). I bought a rather nice open fronted wicker cabinet from the Salvation Army, but then I went to Argos and got a shelf. Hmm… I reckon so far my ethical-shopping report reads “must try harder.”

Let’s back-track for a minute. Why am I putting myself through this awkward and, as it turns out expensive, trial? Clearly it’s partly a sense of middle-class guilt, that as I can afford to change the way I live I really should, but also I really, genuinely believe that individual positive change can influence others into the same patterns that might (might) prove beneficial for us all.

But what is so wrong with supermarkets? Well plenty, but I’m not advocating the abolishment of the capitalist system, just an adaptation to our unsustainable way of life. And the evidence is getting overwhelming that we (and by we I mean everybody) do need to radically change the ways we consume.

Right, I’d better nip off to the open market to get some nice fresh, seasonal veg and a pound of pork chops. I’m trying my best to change, what about you?

Turning over a new leaf

So I’ve moved into a lovely new flat in the middle of Norwich, described by many as a “fine city”, very exciting and all that. Amongst other perks it means I have only a short walk to work rather than a 40 minute drive or an even longer train journey. Major, major bonus.

And a fresh start has given me some thoughts on other areas of me. If you watched BBC’s excellent Future of Food series, researched and fronted by the ever reliable George Alagiah, you might be thinking along similar lines. For those that didn’t catch any of the programmes I’m talking about the increasing evidence that the modern Western lifestyle, my lifestyle is unsustainable.

So I’ve decided to see if it’s possible to radically change the way I live my life, the way I consume. Now hold on a minute chums, I’m not about to go off on one of my ethical rants. This time the focus of my wrath is just me. Confused yet? Yeah me too…

Basically I want to see if its feasible to stop buying everything from just a handful of generic shops, supermarkets, high street fashionistas, all those big corporate places that have shaped the way we live today.

I’m no fool and I’m also no radical, I like the easy option. So I’m planning to start small rather than immediately stripping off all my clothes, going to live in a hedge and forage for mushrooms.

Food I reckon is an easy place to start. Luckily Norwich has a plethora of shops which makes this even easier. Not just shops, good old Norwich is home to the UK’s largest open-air 6 day-a-week market. The challenge is going to be find the time to do it what with having a life and all.

I’ll let you know how I get on.

[image credit: magazinewood.com]

The end of graphic design? Probably not.

Graphic designer’s really are a whiney old bunch. If it’s not the latest Olympic logo getting up their collective nose, it’s public consultation on an identity for the city of London. Last week’s topic of complaint; iStock’s decision to sell logos alongside it’s photographs. This is not a new idea, sites like this and this, have offered quick fix branding solutions for ages.

I’m not going to mouth off too much on this one because it’s been dissected very nicely and debated ad-nauseum in comment threads on quite a few blogs, here, here and also here. Eventual opinion seems to be leaning towards that despite the initial outcry, proper designers have nothing to fear.

Any designer worth their apple products knows that a logo is at best the wheel around which a complete brand identity turns, and is not a design solution in itself. Clients who would rather buy a logo off the shelf than have one created for them, well, I reckon we’re better off without them. Some designers even argued iStock might be presenting us, unwittingly, with an opportunity.

[comment link to Design O'Blog]

Now I love a good moan as much as anyone, in fact better than most people. You might say I’m never happier than when I’m grumbling about something; youngsters today, old people, young people getting older. So I’m not trying to get all high and mighty about how we should rise above these issues. Besides that’d be horrendously hypocritical of me. We need to debate and discuss these topics and everyone is entitled to their opinion, no matter how misinformed/stupid they may be. However designers shouldn’t be so quick to leap to their Twitter accounts, fingers trembling with indignation, with each perceived attack on our profession.

Am I worried about my job? Hell no, but then I’m paid to do web design.