Paper Wraps Stone

I’ve recently worked on an enjoyable project for Arjowiggins Creative Papers, collaborating with designers Build and printers Generation Press.

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Paper Wraps Stone is a limited edition gift that showcases 20 Arjowiggins creative papers throughout a 226-page notebook.

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Michael Place at Build asked me to write something on the theme of paper as a physical medium for creative thinking and ideas. The piece appears in full at the end of the notebook, but was deliberately written to be used as fragments throughout the notebook, so it becomes like a cut-up poem in itself.

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I particularly like the way Build treat the words, arranging them in ways that add to the meaning, and turning it into an (appropriately) concrete poem.

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As on previous projects, Build worked with printers Generation Press, and the result is as crisp and satisfying as things produced by Generation Press usually are. 

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The book is being distributed by Arjowiggins and you'll have to ask nicely for a copy if you want to read/view/touch/sniff the whole thing – more pics and details here.

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Design: Build
Print: Generation Press

With thanks to Christophe Balaresque and Florence Douek at Arjowiggins Creative Papers.

Sideways Interview

I've recently been interviewed about the making of Sideways Dictionary – an online tool that explains technology using analogies, produced by Jigsaw in association with The Washington Post. Here is the interview.

SuperHi is an excellent venture by developer Rik Lomas, aiming to make learning to code fun and intuitive – worth checking out. The interview was particularly enjoyable as it was done by prolific writer-tweeter-designer Daniel Gray. 

On a Sideways note, it was great to see the project recognised at D&AD and picked out by the D&AD President as one of his top ten projects of the year. 

On purpose

A belated post to point you to an article I wrote for the June/July 2017 issue of Creative Review on the brand purpose movement. Here is the article.

Topical politico-literary humour

This will look out of date in the five minutes that it takes for the news cycle to move on, so I'd better blog about it now. 

Reading James Comey's opening statement to the Senate Intelligence Committee, in advance of the hearings later today, I was struck by the similarity in tone to Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day. 

See if you can identify the source for each excerpt – the great Timothy McSweeney was good enough to put it on his Internet Tendency.

Interview in Lecture in Progress

I've been interviewed on the new Lecture in Progress site, talking about how I got started, building a writing ecosystem and other things. You can read it here. 

On the same site, I've contributed a short piece about side projects, which I don't really like calling side projects. 

Lecture in Progress is a new initiative by the people behind It's Nice That, gathering together practical insight from people across the industry. Well worth checking out and supporting.