Blogging and all that Malarkey

This week on Unfinished Business, Harry Roberts and I have some pretty big, Boag-shaped, boots to fill after last week’s episode. Harry takes the opposite view to Paul about sharing personal struggles in a work context and worries about the impression that sharing give to prospective clients. Then we talk about how clients’ commissioning process for creative services is largely broken, the differences between an open conversation starter, an RFP and a brief and how we, as designers and developers, can help clients to commission what we do better.

In the 1960s, advertising legend David Ogilvy offered advice on how clients should choose an agency in his book Ogilvy On Advertising. In it, he wrote:

This week on Unfinished Business, I had planned to talk with Paul Boag about client briefs and managing expectations. But when we sat down to talk, we were both in the mood to talk about something much, more personal. We discussed how we feel about how Twitter has changed, Erin Kissane’s ‘Ditching Twitter,’ Dan Edwards’ ‘Treading through treacle’ and our general sense of melancholy about our industry. Then we talk about how, contrary to what we often hear, our industry is filled with acts of kindness. We discuss how we maintain our optimism and the steps we take to protect ourselves emotionally. If you think you know Paul and I from our public personas, I think that you’ll be very surprised by this episode. If you haven’t listened to Unfinished Business for a while (or at all) I urge you to listen this week.

Last years’ Handheld Conference in Cardiff was an incredible event. A bearded me even got to push a dalek with my friend Jon, as well as deliver a talk and host a sell-out workshop. This November I’ll be back in Cardiff for Handheld’s successor, The Web Is… I’m a last minute addition to the speaker line-up (again) and back workshopping with a new ‘CSS3 For Responsive Web Design’ workshop.

In the second part of our icon designer double bill, this week on Unfinished Business, I’m joined by designer, illustrator the and iconographer behind Symbolicons, Jory Raphael. We talk about how we feel about the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus announcement, the design of the Apple Watch software and whether it looks at home on the watch’s hardware. We discuss Jory’s illustration work including his artwork for the 5by5 podcast network and of course, those long shadows. Finally we talk about making a business from making and selling icons.

Icon designer Jon Hicks joins me this week on Unfinished Business to discuss our experiences of recent conferences including dConstruct (me) and An Event Apart (him.) We narrowly avoid talking about our predictions for the upcoming Apple event and instead discuss how to keep work and home life separate, whether it‘s right to be connected to work outside work hours and how having an office can help with work/life balance. Of course, all of this is just a thinly disguised ruse for what we really want to talk about, Doctor Who. In the after-show section, we look back at Matt Smith’s final episode, talk about Peter Capaldi’s new Doctor so far and if Doctor Who needs longer than one hour per episode to tell a good story. Oh. And Clara bloody Oswald.

I spent last Friday in Brighton attending the tenth, but my first dConstruct. It was a fabulous conference, in an elegant venue, thoughtfully organised by Clearleft and masterfully presented by Jeremy Keith. Every talk was excellent in different ways and all of them had been brilliantly curated by Jeremy, following, loosely in some cases, the theme of ‘Living With The Network.’ I’m writing a new talk and dConstruct was exactly the inspiration I needed.

This week on Unfinished Business, I’m joined by Cole Henley, technical director at Mud. We discuss his latest Freelance rates survey, how the results have changed over the last three years and what he’s learned from making the survey. I admire Cole’s Mud very much, so we talk about how to grow a business, when to hire new people and the importance of regular advice from someone on the outside. If you like the business side of Unfinished Business, you’ll love this episode. What’s an episode of Unfinished Business without some talk of comics or films? In an after-show special, starting at 1:11:30, Cole and I talk about vintage 2000AD comics, Harlem Heroes, Flesh and of course, Judge Dredd. I want to know if Stallone’s Judge Dredd film a guilty pleasure and why, oh why, doesn’t Hollywood make films from classic 2000AD stories?

Like, I guess, everyone else, I now know more about ALS than I did before the Ice Bucket Challenge. The campaign has been hugely successful, has raised awareness and ten times more money than was raised last year to help combat the disease. Of course charity didn’t start and doesn’t end with the Ice Bucket Challenge and so my friend Paul Boag challenged me, Rachel Andrew and Carl Smith to:

Over the last few months, we’ve been working with a client on the design of a mobile analytics ‘web app.’ I’ll show more of it when we add it to our portfolio, but because lately one or two people have asked me about how we choose colour palettes, I thought I’d share how we came up with the colours for the Elemez app.