Category: introspection

Reflections on Reading of Mr Joseph Priestley and M Antoine Lavoisier While Travelling by Air Plane Between Leeds and Paris

Steven Johnson's The Invention of Air sparks a delightful reverie on the pivotal role of 18th Century scientist, non-conformist minister and poltical thinker Joseph Priestley. Living in Leeds, I was vaguely aware of Priestley from local museums and the blue plaque at Mill Hill Unitarian Church on City Square. What schoolchild could fail to be … Continue reading Reflections on Reading of Mr Joseph Priestley and M Antoine Lavoisier While Travelling by Air Plane Between Leeds and Paris →

Duck, dive, scribble, spray – now gestural interfaces are within everyone’s reach

Lower down this post, you'll probably find some high-flown stuff about gestural user interfaces going mainstream, but in all honesty the thread that joins together the following two-and-a-half things is that they've all left me grinning like a fool. A hand-waving grinning fool. And a bobbing my head up and down like Churchill the nodding … Continue reading Duck, dive, scribble, spray – now gestural interfaces are within everyone’s reach →

On BRICs and broken boxes

Adam Greenfield takes issue with the recently coined abbreviation BRIC, which arbitrarily lumps together the peoples of Brazil, Russia, India and China into a single multi-billion-sized unit. Terms like this are: antimatter to clarity of insight, or more accurately, some malignant linguistic equivalent of ice-nine: to drop one of them into a sentence is not merely … Continue reading On BRICs and broken boxes →

“Why can’t I see it now?” Or why it pays to listen to your most demanding customer

05102008295 Oh the impatience of youth! The first time one of my sons pressed the button on a non-digital camera, he turned to me and asked "where can I see the picture?" I knew at once it was a significant moment, but I was all wrong about the reason why. How cute, I thought, he's … Continue reading “Why can’t I see it now?” Or why it pays to listen to your most demanding customer →

Print’s not dead, it’s just evolving

"Is Print Dead?" was the provocative title for David Parkin's Leeds Media Breakfast Briefing the other day. If the answer had been yes, I guess we'd all have had to wolf down our croissants and get back to work. Thankfully as a newspaper business editor turned online start-up entrepreneur, David treated us to a more … Continue reading Print’s not dead, it’s just evolving →

Here Comes Everybody bigger (and smaller) than ever before

Back in May I blogged about Clay Shirky's book "Here Comes Everybody". I was torn: I wanted to believe that social media could indeed make the world a better place, yet my inner history graduate protested that people are people, and have communicated and interacted for good and ill since time immemorial. In "Television may … Continue reading Here Comes Everybody bigger (and smaller) than ever before →

Play Small: why mobile challenges designers to make a better web

In a single Noisy Decent Graphics post, Ben Terrett effortlessly segues between my two preoccupations of the moment - agonised middle-class parenting, and the superiority of mobile web over fixed. How could I resist? "City kids are not like country kids", he notes, "... the space available to play is smaller... so they learn to play smaller." … Continue reading Play Small: why mobile challenges designers to make a better web →

Rites of passage in late noughties childhood

We modern parents are sometimes accused of neglecting the enjoyment of childhood here and now, in order to lay down a catalogue of memories to be looked back on from afar. We pack our children's lives with structured activities, with classes and certificates, with trips to theme parks and zoos, seaside and stately homes, so … Continue reading Rites of passage in late noughties childhood →

Brushed chrome – the story of Google’s browser in comic book form

What a stroke of genius to commission Scott McCloud to tell the story of Google's new web browser, Chrome, in comic form. McCloud's own books have communicated his enthusiasm for the past, present and future of comics themselves. Now his fluid, conversational style perfectly captures the diverse passions of project team members - passions that … Continue reading Brushed chrome – the story of Google’s browser in comic book form →

Even on paper, the immediacy is the message

Adam Greenfield posts on Speedbird about British Airways' current ad campaign to rehabilitate Heathrow Terminal 5. The ads run across print, radio and digital, and confront low expectations of T5 based on its highly-publicised teething troubles. They break new ground in their use of near real-time statistics, such as the number of yesterday's flights arriving … Continue reading Even on paper, the immediacy is the message →