If you keep shouting, you are not making communication any better. You only remove talking and whispering from the system. I find our society a bit noisy. I just would like to contribute a little silence.

– Bruno Monguzzi

(This post is part of my Lifelist project, where I attempt to complete 100 amazing challenges whilst I still can!)

Another lifelist item is crossed off the list! In fact, another state is crossed off the ‘Visit all the US States’ list! Check it out here!!

A designer has to have the hide of a rhinoceros, the neck of a giraffe, the memory of an elephant and the persistence of a woodpecker

– Alan Fletcher

(This post is part of my Lifelist project, where I attempt to complete 100 amazing challenges whilst I still can!)

Another item has been crossed off the Life list! Check it OUT!

Good design is innovative

Gives a product utility

Is aesthetic

Makes a product easy to understand

Is unobtrusive

Is honest

Is long lived

Is consistent down to the smallest detail

Protects the environment

Good design is as little design as possible

– Dieter Rams

(This post is part of my Lifelist project, where I attempt to complete 100 amazing challenges whilst I still can!)

Number 51 on my Lifelist is to visit all of the States of the USA. I took a recent roadtrip across 5 States on the East Coast to try and lower that number.

Read a short summary here!

Every Friday, I round up some of my most favourite links that I have been recently checking out. Here are this week’s pickings:

- An invaluable resource; Jesse James Garrett’s Visual Vocabulary for Interaction Design, outlining “a basic symbology for diagramming information architecture and interaction design concepts, and providing guidelines for the use of these elements.”

- Why is Checkout Abandonment on the Rise?

- This is an awesome infographic: East Meets West, looking at the differences in Eastern and Western mentalities

- The Definitive Guide to Organising Your Life and Getting Rid of Clutter

- A Beginner’s Guide to the Business Side of Freelancing

Hope you are on course to having an enjoyable and productive weekend. Catch you all on Monday!

I have recently got involved with The Sketchbook Project, an initiative run by the Art House Co-op. According to the website, “its like a concert tour but with sketchbooks” – how much fun does that sound?!

So the deal is, you sign up for a Moleskine sketchbook to be sent to you, and you gotta fill it up with sketches & drawings and send it back by a certain date. You also have to pick a theme out of a list that you will be using as inspiration for your sketches. After all the sketchbooks are returned, they go on tour across America! Wow!

So, the theme I picked was “I’m Sorry I Forgot You”. My black moleskine sketchbook arrived in the post on Friday, and I am absolutely ITCHING to get started.

If this sounds like your creative bag, click on over to the Sketchbook Project website to find out more. You are able to sign up until the end of October, but the quicker you do, the quicker your sketchbook comes and you can get creating!

(This post is part of my Lifelist project, where I attempt to complete 100 amazing challenges whilst I still can!)

A new Lifelist item has been crossed off. Head on down to this page to check it out!

Although fantasy and make-believe flourish in childhood, they rapidly atrophy as one is moulded to fit the adult’s grey consensus of reality.

A child, out on a walk with its mother, suddenly points and cries out, ‘Look, a purple cow.’

The mother, perhaps rather tired and domestically harassed, snaps, ‘Don’t be silly.’

And then delivers the crunch line:

‘There’s no such thing as purple cows.’

So the child, a vagabond in the backwoods of rationality, is brought up to see the world in the prosaic terms of grown-ups and eventually forgets it ever saw a purple cow.

Now purple cows walk around unseen by anyone.

– Alan Fletcher