Today's metro

p62 of Metro

Zebra crossing lights

Streetworks are a necessary part of maintaining the urban landscape - lights need to be replaced, cables need to be laid and roads need to be resurfaced. Unfortunately in London, it seems that some work will begin, complete with bright orange plastic barriers, then nothing will happen for several weeks. This is a particularly annoying thing for me - it looks ugly and is down to terrible planning and sheduling by the authorities. For some time in Angel there have been two identical zebra crossing lights side by side, the one being replaced still works perfectly but it did not stop the council digging a hole alongside and placing another one. It has been like this for about 8 weeks. So I made a sign to highlight their incompetence.

More from Dutch Design week

Nice set of stalls that hang on the wall

Door for desk

For a couple of weeks I've been wanting to buy a bigger desk. I went on Ikea's website and found a beauty - £80 including delivery. I got the tape measure out and imagined how lovely my new high gloss white desk was going to be. Then I went to Holland and visited the Instant Design exhibition and saw how they used a door for a desk. Finding one in the basement I did the same.

Dutch Design Week

Lamp shades that are spun according to how much sunshine there is - colour and thickness varies


Nice take on the last supper


My favourite exhibition by Bob Waardenburg and Marcia Nolte called Instant Design, lot's of interesting uses of everyday objects.

Andy Warhol rejection

A friend gave me this copy of a letter to Andy Warhol. Even he was once rejected. I've framed this letter to remind me not to worry when sometimes things don't go quite as planned

Dutch Design Week

Spent the weekend in Eidhoven and Amsterdam. A friend of mine is studying at Design Academy Eidhoven. A fantastic place. Looked around the degree show and other exhibitions in association with Dutch Design Week. Photos to follow but some 'trends' that I picked up on:

-Everyone is a designer. Everyone is capable of design. Do we need designers? Ikea hacking
-Making do. Using everyday discarded objects to create functional furniture - doors can be used as tables, jars taped together become storage. It sounds like crap, but it works.
-Space saving. Chairs that fold and can be stored in a wardrobe. Inflattable tables.
-Bridging the gap between offline/online and digital/analogue. A nice chest of draws where each contains a chip and contains a file. Place the draw next to a laptop and it loads the file.
-Objects that record their surroundings. A great piece was a machine that wove a lamp shade where the colour and thickness varied according to the level of sunlight. Each day creates a unique lamp shade.

Tesco Doom and Gloom

I've had a couple of requests for the Tesco Doom and Gloom newspaper label. So here it is (click to enlarge then save it to your computer, print it and fold it in half before placing in your local Tesco establishment)

Yet Another Chair chair

An idea for a chair

Banpo fountain - Seoul Design Olympic - beautiful bridge

Doom and gloom and clubcard points too

The role of design in the 2010s

What now for design? What do you think the role of design will be in the next decade?

The price of an object will obviously be a major concern for the average consumer.
What we happen to eco-design?

For me, I think design of the 2010s will be about minismising or removing risk. Whether it be financial or in our daily lives, as a result of what is happening right now we will emerge as a society a little bit more risk averse and conservative.

Or maybe design will be about providing an escape, or entertainment.

How are we going to get 2 million people working again? If I were prime minister I would encourage people to become entrepreneurs - to look at what skills they have and turn those into a way of making an income. I believe that everyone has skills that they can offer to someone else. And if none of us have any money to spend then we may have to look into ways of exchanging skills and working together.

Any thoughts?

Sweet illustration

My housemate, Rocky Yip, did this. Sweet illustration that I'm going to put into production as a T shirt for One Man Band

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Some logo design for a friend

Back to college

Today I returned to college for the second year of the Product Design BA at St Martins. It's great to be back and really good to see everyone. Very enthusiastic about this year. Also very important that I stike a balance between work and the course. I really want to get the most of this. The word intense was used about six times by the course head to describe how this year's going to be. So I think things are about to get even more busy.

Side table

For me the design process involves the following steps - initial idea, excitement, lots of enthusiastic work, then I hit problems, frustration ensues, then I normally take a break, then it's perseverance, some more frustation and finally satisfaction.

The top that I designed for the bed side table in my room is such as thing. It took 4 hours on the laser followed by 3 hours of rubbing the gold into the etching and another hour of polishing and finishing. But now it's done, I'm chuffed to bits with it.

Some experiments

I absolutely love experimenting with the lasers. Trying out patterns and learning from each thing I do.


(it's also nice to be talking about design again rather than ranting about banks and parcel delivery companies)

One Man Band Hangers

Fresh off the laser cutter:

Cleartouch Wedding Stationary

For the past 6 months I've been working with Cleartouch. A really interesting company that produces laser engraved wedding stationary. I have designed a new range for them from invitations to table numbers. I am photographing the product and also overseeing the redesign of the website which is set to relaunch in a couple of months. A nice project to be involved with, particularly as I have been trained on the lasers and get to design my own products.


Once the website has relaunched I will then oversee the marketing and PR. I think this is where I'd like to set up my company one day - as one that helps small businesses to develop a range of products and then market those products to the public.

HSBC: The World's bullying bank

Just had a call from HSBC practically demanding that I pay money into my bank account. I have a student account with them and am in my interest free overdraft. Unless I pay some money into the account I will start to incur interest. She wanted to know what day I planned on paying the money in how I would be paying the money in. Is this kind of harrassment even legal?

From a brand point of view this isn't exactly sensible either. All of the banks offer students accounts with interest free overdraft - the thinking being that people tend to keep a bank account for life and one day those poor hard up students will become fully fledged salary earning, debt ridden mortgaged members of society - profit for the bank in other words.

The phone call has completely damaged my opinion of HSBC - a bank that demands money two days before I return to uni. Today I swore that I will close the account as soon as I graduate. And at some point in the future when I have a bank balance again, I will write to them and recount my experience of today and tell them they will never see a pound of my money or my custom.