[ photo courtesy ]

Week 41 and life continues apace. It’s been a disjointed month with so many bank holidays and short weeks, but the weather’s been glorious and whilst I love my work, the chance to enjoy long weekends and London in the sunshine never goes amiss.

Vodafone is storming ahead, mainly working remotely but with a couple of trips to Dublin – I’ve been there several times for business, but only ever been to the airport, the client offices and the cab between the airport and the office. I know Dublin is meant to be awesome – I hope to find an excuse to go back and actually get to see something of the city at some point! The project is progressing nicely, and I’ve actually got a couple of proposals to write for some more potential work with them, so…so far so good.

The rest of my weeks are spent with the marvellous chaps at Friday: lots of awesome super-secret innovation work for HSBC, thinking about exciting digital futures for business banking. Plus some thinking about getting the nation gardening for the RHS. Workshopping, sketching, keynoting a-go-go.

As well as working with a truly brilliant bunch of people, I get to enjoy the fabulous Friday decor – last week the office was festooned with some awesomely hideous royal wedding tat:

[ photo courtesy Matthew ]

As well as some delightful fresh flowers:

[ photo courtesy Matthew ]

And the new agency Trophy Wall*

* these may or may have previously been the contents of a Croydon golf club’s trophy cabinet that was purchased on eBay

[ yes this photo is courtesy Matthew as well ]

In other news:

• I started my Introduction to Product Design evening course at Central St Martin’s. All super interesting and stretching a v. different part of my brain. I am still appalling at drawing, but having lots of fun.
• Did my first VAT return. Yes the life of a freelancer is truly rock ‘n’ roll. Well I say I did it, actually FreeAgent did it for me. Praise be for web apps that just work.
• Had fun beta-testing Bloom Studio’s utterly gorgeous new iPad app Planetary – which is now in the App store, free to download, and getting coverage all over the place. Highly recommended.
• Got very meta reading about the ‘inside out’ movement of weeknotes (the brainchild of my friends at BERG) in the Evening Standard: The ‘inside outers’ are a London design firm changing the world of business.