• Well, I failed to write one of these for nearly a month. Month-note. And I’m only writing this because I’m procrastinating. All the wrong reasons. Anyway…
  • So I ordered 48kg of bread flour. I have to admit I was reluctant to join the droves of newly working at home ‘oh, I’ll make sourdough’ people, but I couldn’t resist. My youngest daughter loves baking, and I thought this would be the perfect thing. As I mentioned about six weeks ago, we got a pretty decent start going and have set about making two batches of two loaves a week, half of which we deliver to our self-isolating in-laws.
  • I think I did ok not succumbing to the panic buying early on, but the bread flour was another thing. And then I just kept on ordering it. Four sacks of the stuff. FOUR! I’m going to package some up for the neighbours.
  • This last month I finished up some consulting on typography for Babylon Health. It was a fun project: tight brief, tight deadlines. The unfortunate thing was it coinciding with lockdown and the children being off school, and also the company trying to figure out how to work remotely effectively. But it went well. I worked with some smart people who asked the right questions and pushed me in the right direction.
  • Babylon used Figma, as are a lot of orgs now, to align and share their work. For those reasons, I can see why. The collaboration, opportunities for co-designing, shared component libraries, prototyping. It has it all. And it’s good value for money. That said, I used it solidly for six weeks and today I cancelled my subscription. I just could not get into it. As a design environment, it felt all wrong for me. I’ll be sticking with Sketch and Abstract for the time being.
  • Started work on a new project that I’ll be talking about soon. Bit of a dream gig, actually. It’s a project I started a number of years ago, and was meant to resurrect as a side-project but never had the time or inclination to do it. Something always got in the way and, eventually, I knew it would take a certain set of circumstances to arise for me to seriously have a crack at it. Well, amazingly, they did. At the moment, all I’ll say it’s a type specimen project. A community resource for type designers, foundries, and other designers. I got started this week, and I’m getting more excited about it by the day.
  • Speaking of new apps, I’ve also given Notion a good try this week and, after a whole day of learning and setting things up, I think it’s clicked. Just as a way of managing tasks, associated with calendars and deadlines, coupled with projects, it’s really nifty.
  • I’m going to do better on this week note thing. Next week, there will be another. Promise.