Last April I got a three month old labradoodle from the RSPCA. Today she is a year old and she is the best thing ever. The photo above perfectly captures one aspect of Izzy’s personality, she can be very calm, thoughtful and observant. On the other hand she can tear around like a loon and clear a four foot fence like she was stepping over it. One thing is for sure, I would not be without her.

Okay, so I’m not much of one for tv reviews but I wanted to write about my response to the new Sarah Michelle Geller series, Ringer. I loved SMG in Buffy, so I thought I’d give the series a go, and she is great. But it feels like a guilty secret, so this is kind of my confession.

As a tv series, it’s not well written and it’s not well put together – the special effects in the first episode when the main character and her twin sister inexplicably go out for a ride in a speed boat are clunky, as is the script. It is soapy and overly complicated with more plot twists than you could sensibly justify in a forty five minute show and they’re all a bit, well, cliched.

So why am I even bothering writing this? Well, it has SMG, Ioan Gruffudd and that guy who played the dad in Life Unexpected and they’re all pretty good, watchable actors that add a weight and legitimacy to something which is, essentially, slightly mysterious fluff. And, much like a soap, you kinda want to know what happens next, no matter how ridiculous or unlikely it might be.

Objectively good places to work rarely end up being so; in their faultlessness, quiet and well-equipped studies have a habit of rendering the fear of failure overwhelming.

Alain de Botton (The Ideal Live/Work Space According to Alain de Botton on Unplggd)

Apart from the obvious distractions of home working – pets, family, the ability to chain-drink tea, I can see obvious benefits and pitfalls, some of which are one and the same. If you usually work in a studio with other people, sitting at the same desk and looking at the same wall, I think a change of scenery can bring a refreshing change in perspective. It can allow you to think differently, access a different range of resources and inspiration. It can afford you a more relaxed working environment, which is not always beneficial, but can be if you are disciplined enough. I tend to move my workspace around the house depending on the task in hand: drawing, and checking proofs at the dining table where I have space for my drawing board, or to spread out sheets of paper; web building on the sofa where I can have my laptop on my knee and feel comfortable, warm and relaxed for the inevitably long time I will be sitting working; studio with desk for drawing on the mac, photo editing, etc. where I need to use a mouse or pen and tablet.

So that’s how I work, but I’m also fascinated by other people’s workspaces – what they gather around themselves to inspire and motivate. There’s this great thread on Behance where people are posting photos of their workspaces – mostly computer stations, but there are some artist and illustrator’s studio spaces too. The Guardian also did a series which ended a couple of years ago called writer’s rooms which featured writers in their workspaces along with an article about their working practices which made fascinating reading.

If you have a photo of your workspace on flickr, tumblr, facebook, whatever, please feel free to post a link in the comments section, or email me and I’ll do a post of some of them later in the week.

I have read books as if my life depended on it since I was a child. I can see that there is a fine balance between experiencing the word outside and learning about the world within, but I cannot undervalue the importance of being exposed to new ideas. A lecturer said to me once, when I was back at University, that there were three types of people: those who talk about each other, those who talk about things and those who talk about ideas. I strive to be the third type of person (although, as a designer, the ‘thing’ requires discussion as well as the ideas behind it) and I cannot help but judge a book by its cover – there are people who spend their lives engaged in the kind of design that relies on you doing just that. But the real, honest to goodness, joy of books – for me – is that they are a direct access to someone else’s world. To their way of seeing things, describing things, and of solving problems. And that ability to understand other people’s worlds, and to communicate directly to them in the appropriate way, is what makes me a good designer. I couldn’t do that without books – talking to people is important too, but it is knowledge, language and imagination, all of which is fed by reading, that makes me good at what I do.

Reading makes us rich in the things that really matter.

So, I have been building a new website to showcase some of my personal work. So far it hasn’t actually got the portfolio section done – so my work will be on various social networking sites. You can visit the new site here or you can see my commercial work at www.ideafuel.co.uk

Ps. Alfie has moved.

Books I’ve bought/books I’ve read

Very much like Nick Hornby’s column in Believer magazine, I am going to record the titles of those books I have bought, and those I have read, along with comment, review and potentially, justification for these.

Bought
Go slow England – Alistair Sawday
The moneyless man – Mark Boyle
Free – Katherine Hibbert
The age of absurdity – Michael Foley
AA 50 walks in the Peak District
The pleasures and sorrows of work – Alain de Botton

Read
The Age of Absurdity – Michael Foley

There’s a prevailing theme influencing my book purchases at the moment – it is a dissatisfaction with modern life, with hearing people talk about shopping and Eastenders all the time, with working hard all week, only to be too busy, or too tired to enjoy my free time. I am reading about contemporary thinking on modern society and its obsession with luxury, celebrity and entitlement. There have been some interesting television programmes recently tackling these issues, as well as long-running newspaper columns. I am not looking in these books for an answer, I am looking for inspiration and, I suppose, comradery. I am looking for the voices of people who agree with me, who share my concerns and ideas.

The walking book is for places to visit to escape the relentless consumerism, the slow England book is to plan my next getaway.