Sometimes it’s so good to ditch the Mac and go make things for real; scribbles on paper, paint; sandpaper; rough hands… Nice.

More about what it is later.

The finished product here:

So reading this today about the extra work created for French Diplomats by Carla Bruni-Sarkozy popping over to the UK last week made me smile.

…said Jean-Claude Forestier, assistant attache for cultural affairs at the French embassy in London:

“It has been crazy here, with all the international media enquiries about Carla…”

“…We have been working absolutely round the clock, from 9am to 3pm, just to keep up.”

Probably not even time for a glass of red with lunch at the moment…

Thanks Mayo. And bear in mind today’s date.

Watched a great documentary on BBC4 last night about David Ogilvy.

Short of knowing Ogilvy had the best shade of red this side of the Economist I knew little about their history.

Ogilvy was behind this line, At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in this new Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock. This is probably the most famous in advertising history.

He appreciated long copy, and I really liked his reasons for doing so. When they won the Shell account in 1960 the ads he came up with were copy heavy. He said it gave the brand a professional feel, one backed up by plenty of research. I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit lately for a piece I’m doing about writing in advertising and branding, so good for more ideas.

Ogilvy was also a champion of lists. I love lists, and run my life by them, so too did he, and to be sure his third wife Herta knew he really wanted to marry her he wrote her a list headed I love you because:

Another great hour of BBC goodness.

Tonight Cadbury’s aired their new ad, a follow-up from Gorilla.

Great timing gives us a tongue-in-cheek insight into just what’s been going on at T5 - baggage handlers pissing about racing down the runway when they should be sorting Ms. Goodmans’s bags. Good on them.

The ad, which runs to the classic Don’t stop me now, winding up as some chap floors it in his pushback tractor, is as good as Gorilla in my eyes. Very quickly recognisable as Cadbury’s after the last.

Like it.

So in just a few months, all things going well, I’ll have a product design degree.

Then I’ll get a job designing stuff, using all the skills I’ve learnt to do all the user testing, get the aesthetics just right and draw it up in CAD when it’ll get manufactured. Where? well if you do what I just did and take all the electronica on your desk and look where it’s made, it’s more than likely Asia; China et al are the workshops of the planet.

Frightening then to see the affects of my future actions on this country after watching Manufactured Landscapes with Mayo tonight. The sheer scale, speed, precision of manufacture and its affect on the landscape is awesome and terrifying in equal measure.

The film follows photographer Edward Burtynsky on his visits to China, which I found it really depressing. Probably because I have a conscience, but as a product designer I am the problem here, and the potential solution.

Every designer should see this film.

Film Trailer here. Edward Burtynsky’s TED talk here and his website here.

I signed up to Ocado ages ago, but never tried it, and with impending dissertation hand-in (we’re talking sub 30 days now) I don’t have time to cycle to the shops every other day so the prospect of food delivered to our fridge seemed a good one.

Ocado always seemed a bit different, they’ve been sending me cheery emails for a year or so, including this one that Dan talked about here. So I gave it a go. The first thing that’s weird about shopping online is that you’re not distracted by the stuff at the end of aisles, so you have to go in there with a game plan; what you’re going to eat and when.

Normally I’d amble around the supermarket with my iPod in my ears picking what I fancy, but you can’t really do that online, so I had to imagine a virtual supermarket layout in my head to get everything I needed, maybe there’s an idea here for a future online shopping, sure they’ve thought about it though.

Anyway, as it stands the Ocado site is really easy to use, I like the way food is categorised, and I like that the search is really human. Type in moosly and it doesn’t ask you “Did you mean Muesli?”, it just shows you some stuff that you could eat for breakfast. Nice.

But, it gets better. You can choose your delivery slots by the hour or just by when there’s another van in the area to keep fuel wastage down. I like that sort of common sense.

Then, an hour before my delivery, a text to tell me Timothy will be along shortly in a van that looks like a strawberry.

Good work Ocado, are the other supermarkets this good online?

Easy you say, but in that 30 seconds I’ve got to get the bike inside, not drop the shopping, take off gloves, close the door again, (because the alarm panel is behind it duh) and tap in the code.

I’ve got this down to 24 seconds, but what always slows me down is picking up mail. Now I don’t mind if it’s something of worth, but it’s usually junk-mail.

We were getting about 6 pieces a day; take-away fliers and free papers and it all went straight in the recycling bin.

Fliers annoy me firstly because they’re wasteful, but also because they’re a sort of invasion of my space.

So what to do about them?

As most of the junk didn’t come from the postman there didn’t seem much point registering here.

Instead I tried a sign on the door.

Two weeks in, no junk mail. Nothing at all.

It might make me a miserable git but I don’t have time for junk mail, infact I’ve only got 30 seconds.

Download the sign and try it yourself.

Now and again I think about stuff. Not usually ground-breaking stuff, but stuff I’d like to put out there. So from now on I’ll put it here.

I think we’ll kick things off with a few rants, some things I’ve come across and liked, and the odd word on design. In the mean-time find some more about me here or some visual stimulation here instead.

Phew, I wrote something.