In 1972, two scientists were given a design brief unlike any other. Create a message that can be understood by an intelligent civilisation that has never encountered human life, has no knowledge of our languages, symbols, or culture, and may not find it for two million years. No target audience research. No user testing. No […]
Tips 26–50 of #The50 things every creative should know. If you haven’t read part one yet, start there. I’m revisiting the full list on Clear Design Thinking — looking at what’s held up, what hasn’t, and what I’d change.
#The50 was the most widely shared thing I’ve ever published. Compressed into Twitter’s then 140-character limit, the list went viral — it crashed my site, circulated across the industry, and brought in thousands of followers ready to be disappointed by my aggressively inactive account. I’m revisiting the whole list properly over on Clear Design Thinking […]
A business card designed to sprout alfalfa when exposed to water and sunlight. The idea was simple: give potential employers something they’d keep on their desk rather than lose in their wallet. It was a student project, it opened a few doors, and then I filed it away and got on with my career. That […]
In 2011 I attended a lecture on information design delivered by the author and journalist Mark Ovenden. Organised to promote his book Transit Maps of the World, Ovenden presented a deep-dive into transit maps’ shared design template: Henry Beck’s 1933 map of the London Underground.
I built my entire career on one sentence I read sitting on a library floor. In my second year of art college, I slipped and smashed into a library bookshelf, knocking a book to the floor. Picking it up, I was immediately grabbed by its bizarre title: Forget All the Rules You Ever Learned About […]