After regular writing and then a couple of sporadic, painful posts a few months ago, it’s time for a more positive catch up for 2017.
The dark water creature of grief has gone back to its cold depths, where it > Read more
Inspiration
Time Out
Two whole weeks free with nothing planned: perfect! I can finally catch up on my photo organisation, ancestry research, house tidying, the next category of KonMari, cleaning out the art cupboard and the kids’ school drawers, writing posts > Read more
AI Weiwei’s new perspectives
Nothing says new perspective like a table with two legs up on a wall! Before going to the Ai Weiwei show at the Royal Academy, I hadn’t seen any of his pieces in person. It’s a powerful show which > Read more
The delight of discovery
The kids got their own email addresses this week. This follows the 9-year-old asking for a domain, lookdasame.com, for his birthday. How 2015! We set up the domain together and I put up a basic site with an animated > Read more
There’s a starman in the sky
From Kent Le, Fashion Marketing Lecturer at University of East London and PR Executive at Grain Creative.
The first time I listened to “Starman” by David Bowie was when I saw the play “My night with Reg”. (The play > Read more
Twenty-eight refugees from Afghanistan
From Michael Mettler, Architect, Zürich. Furniture website at www.maude.info.
Yesterday I encountered a group of 28 refugees from Afghanistan on a train. After some initial hesitation, they started to unwrap their story, pulling out mobile phones and showing images > Read more
Tips to designers who are starting out
There’s nothing more daunting than a blank page. There’s also nothing more exciting than a blank page.
When you are first starting out as a designer, whether on your own, in-house or at an agency, everything is exciting and daunting > Read more
Team reviews and personal goals
Over the past few weeks we’ve been holding our quarterly team reviews at Grain Creative. Though the channels of communication are always open at Grain, it’s good to take the time to focus on each person and make sure > Read more
Interview with Elizabeth Emanuel on creativity and inspiration
In 2014, my company Grain Creative worked with Princess Diana’s wedding dress designer, Elizabeth Emanuel, when she was launching her new brand, Art of Being. Elizabeth kindly agreed to an interview for Design & a Dog on her > Read more
Do you need a path to follow?
I’m not talking about Photoshop paths, which are quite useful in their own right, but: what’s the objective of having objectives?
True to the blog’s name, Design and a Dog, this question of having a goal and a path > Read more