07 Feb 10 Personal Branding – Coming up with a personal business card
Recently I found myself wishing I had a personal business card. It is unusual because I have various business personas for the work I do, but with some of the overseas government work I have been involved in, it is easier for them to buy into an individual, no matter where they come from, than an organisation from another country.
I may never get these printed, but the idea has driven me to think it through and there is probably a white paper waiting to happen at a more general level. In any event, if it never gets printed, at least it has a home here.
Once I started thinking about this I came up with the design shown. As with all designs, I don’t like to over-rationalise it – you hope it will speak for itself. But, briefly, being able to pull out the syllable ‘id’ from my first name, David, is handy. The id is the uninhibited and creative part of the brain. I am a creatively driven designer – I place emphsis on the psychology of design and usability in my work. So a psychological term referencing creativity is a bit of a godsend. The notion of a card being a kind of identity of I.D. is not lost on me either. For those that don’t get the rest of it, the card is my ID.
On the counter side, my surname, Yates, provides the opportunity to pick out the word ‘Yes’. The single most positive term in the language. And all that you want to put across: ‘I can do this’; ‘this is possible’; ‘all is good’; ‘Yesss! what a result’.
I like this for other reasons. I read once that John Lennnon first met Yoko Ono at an art exhibition. The central exhibit was a work of hers with a ladder in the centre of the room. At the top of the ladder was a magnifying glass and very small word painted on the ceiling. When you climbed the ladder, and looked at the word through the magnifying glass, it simply said, “Yes”.
I can’t say I like her music much and I don’t know anything about her art, but this resonates with me, as clearly it did with John Lennon.
So in a nutshell this is all about being creatively positive and so am I.
06 Feb 10 Dean Whitehead Superman
Superman's latest disguise - just lose the kiss-curl
Ever since Dean Whitehead joined Stoke City, I have had that distinct feeling that I have seen him somewhere before. Watching him flying round the Britannia Stadium this afternoon, I have suddenly worked it out, one kiss-curl short of a superhero. Dean Whitehead is Superman.
05 Feb 10 John Terry has been doing more than just Wayne Bridge’s ex.
Okay, at the risk of this turning into a grubby gossip column, here is a some grubby gossip. I found this on The Oatcake:
The Sun have a round up of the current John Terry rumours which will make the paper over the next few weeks:
- The Sun have lined up another EIGHT women who’ve slept with him in the last 18 months or so. Enough for a couple of weeks of front pages. Including FHMs own HSH, Tanya Robinson
- The front page today that Bridges ex, Vanessa, has slept with five members of the Chelsea squad is only the beginning. Two other Chelsea players – Gudjonsen and Drogba – were also sleeping with Bridge’s girlfriend at the same time as Terry.
- The Sun is also paying Vanessa 250k to dish everything including the fact that the mystery fifth Chelsea player is, depressingly predictably, Ashley Cole. Which should give Cheryl the excuse she needs to finally dump him (now shes no longer Racist Toilet Cleaner Puncher, but the new Nations Sweetheart)
- JT has also been sleeping with current team mate Hilario’s wife (who also has kids).
- Away from the bedroom, JT also owes Wembley a substantial amount of money for a box he owns and hasn’t paid for, even after he had mates in there racking up a 20k bill at the FA Cup final.
Question is, will he have the energy to lift the world cup in summer if we should win it?
04 Feb 10 Apple iPad – Guess the review – What can we learn from history?
Apparently Apple has launched its iPad – news has even made it to Worcestershire! Apple fans love it. Geeks hate it. Why is that so predictable? Or is it? I’m just predicting that’s what the response will be. I haven’t read a single review yet, so before I do, based entirely on twenty years of Mac use, here is what I think the conclusion will be:
If history is anything to go by, the iPad will be innovative in its own way – but not by some other people’s definition of innovative. It will probably disappoint the techno-purists because it will use whatever edge it has to satisfy some kind of mass market potential (and critically it won’t be Microsoft or Linux). And the same techno purists will be quick to point out that some gizmo or other does some or all of it’s functions better and uses some or other connectivity or processor or screen that ‘rocks’ (said in the way only geeks can pronounce it) while the iPad ‘sucks man’ (again said in John Major meets Michael Moore geek accent). It will extend the Apple ethos of the Digital Hub making it a natural add-on to the rest of the i-suite of things out there, which will again anger someone for some reason.
Basically, it will infuriate the anti Apple brigade simply because it will be made by Apple. That has always been enough to bring out IT geeks the world over to burn effigies of Steve Jobs.
Steve Wozniac, co-founder of Apple back in the day and ‘not bitter at all’ exile these days, will appear in some Tech mag and tell us how he came up with the idea in the first place, back in the 1980′s and it would be much better if it employed some unpronounceable concept that only he understands.
Over time, the release version will prove to be underpowered and comparatively slow, lacking in memory and it will be unstable until about version 1.3. This is because everything Apple make is a great idea but a bad execution in it’s launch version. It then burns out quickly or the screens break or some such disaster befalls the early adopters. The second version is more robust, but the software is flakey or the connectivity is poor. You don’t really get a polished version out until third time around – which will be good. However, for all it’s early problems, it will capture people’s imagination better than any of its rivals have and it will redefine the market place for these devices.
Several niche companies and several large companies will file patent infringement cases on its technology, interface or other aspects of it. These will variously go on for years and no one will remember what they were all about when they eventually get settled.
It will be plaigiarised – or perhaps I should say it will inspire Microsoft and others like Nokia, Dell, and a load of firms from China – who will claim they were working on their version of it all along. These will get launched about a year later and spontaneously look remarkably like Apple’s product. They will be called ‘ePads’, ‘xPads’ and ‘MyPads’. Everyone will then get sued by Always Ultra who whose own iPad product will do something completely different. All the Windows based clones will be really fiddly, stuffed full of lots of features and complicated interfaces. They will impress the editors of computer mags but inadvertently reinforce the Apple iPad (or whatever it gets called) as a people’s favourite.
A final word or warning: You will need to watch out for slightly insecure and over-paid people conspicuously taking their Apple iPad to the pub and making sure everyone can see they have one.
13 Jan 10 Rohan diving into the dim and distant past
I got a Facebook message from Mark Palacio a long-time friend who I met about 25 years ago when we both worked at Rohan. The Rohan Blog, Rohantime has a carousel on it’s home page with a picture of me diving off a cliff into the sea in Malta while directing a photo-shoot for Rohan.
Click to launch full size image
It was Feb 1988 Blue Lagoon Malta, shooting a catalogue with Paul Howcroft, Adam Croxen, some models and the photographer Mike Heffernan. The photographer said the shots were a bit wooden and I was standing on the cliff top above the sea and I said, “If I jump, can you get a shot”. He got out a 35mm motorwind camera and at the last second I decided to just dive off the thing. Long way down, it hurt, soaked all my money and ruined my watch – but it was used as the catalogue cover. It was a good time. We stayed in a castle in Malta and it was at that time that Paul Howcroft promoted me to become Rohan’s Marketing Manager.
Given the mayhem of litigation that took place between Rohan and me, Paul, Adam and Mark a couple of years later, it is hardly surprising that they declined to give me a name check!
It’s interesting how Rohan crops up from time to time as I go through life. I got contacted on the 30th anniversary by their designers looking for any Rohan samples I may have had. I was contacted by newspapers both national and from Skipton (where Rohan launched). About three years ago, I was stopped after a presentation and asked about my time at Rohan by someone I had never met before.
There was a lot of bad blood for a long time between me and Rohan, but it would be good to get to know them again. I can see that Tim Jasper (who I first met when he was a customer at Rohan’s Bristol shop) is Brand Director at Rohan and the founder, Sarah Howcroft is back there working on Social media for them.
12 Jan 10 Stoke fans Wiki revenge on ‘horse faced, dutch prick’ van Nistelrooy
After Ruud Van Nistelrooy appeared to rubbish the chances of Stoke City buying him or, more likely, taking him on loan in the January 2010 transfer window, an offended Stoke fan took revenge by altering van Nistelrooy’s wiki page to read as follows:
Ruud Van Nistelrooy is a horse faced, hay eating, dutch prick who currently (doesn’t) play for Real Madrid. There’s a picture of him over there on the right. Go on, have a look…..a face only a mother could love. If he’s better than Stoke City Football Club, I’ll eat my own arse.
A picture for posterity needed to be published (click image or this link to launch full size):
06 Jan 10 Stoke 3 – 2 Fulham
For weeks now Stoke have been threatening to give someone good hiding and it was very nearly Fulham. While recent results suggest Stoke have been going through a dip in form, the results are deceiving. I don’t want to come across all Tony Mowbray, but there are times when Stoke have been breath-taking this season and still lost. There were plenty of critics competing to damn the tactics last season. More disappointing, this season, even with a change of approach, commentators reluctantly eulogise about Stoke through gritted teeth. For Stoke fans listening to Gary Linekar raise his eye-brows weekly to announce the last game on MOTD, with a big sigh “…and now to The Britannia Stadium, so switch over to Newsnight, it’s more entertaining”.
But then tonight it came together, in a way that I hope proves to be a tipping point. Three goals from the The Good (Tuncay), The Bad (Ab Faye) and The Unexpected (Mama Sidibe) actually flattered Fulham who should have gone in at half time 5-0 down. Stoke were hard, yet sophisticated in defence with Ryan Shawcross easily managing Andy Johnson and hinting at why Stoke have, this week, placed a £20Million hands-off label all over him. Huth showed quietly why he is a German international and Ab Faye seems to have rid himself of the kryptonite poisoning from which he has been suffering of late. In midfield Stoke were just magic. Tuncay flitted between midfield and attack always creating things and remaining unplayable. Etherington must have been spending his born again time at Stoke chatting with club ambassador Terry Conroy, because he looks like the best winger Stoke have had since that time. Liam Lawrence returned to great effect and all in all, the team massacred Fulham in the first half.
I have declared that the second half did not take place. Tuncay did not get injured , Fulham did not score twice, one of which was not a magnificent looping shot from 40yards and this was not Fuller’s last game for Stoke.
Great night to be a Stoke fan.
30 Dec 09 Goodbye CorporateMag Theme
About a year ago I found and liked the look of the CorporateMag Theme and so decided to use it for this blog. But having done so, I found it was broken in places and the developers had pretty much abandoned it and its users to their own devices. Fortunately I have some devices and I was able to fix all that I needed to fix to make it work properly. I was happy to post my repair work back on the theme’s web page and ever since I have been running a kind of clinic for other users who cannot work out how to fix the broken bits. And yesterday morning another of these arrived:
Hey Dave, I was hoping you could help me out on using the corporatemag theme. There doesn’t seem to be documentation anywhere on how to use it. I figured out that I need to use the custom field of “thumbnail” on posts to get the featured posts images loading on the homepage. But how do you get the content previews showing for your Pages on the homepage? And how do you get the image carousel to work? I can’t seem to figure out how to get either of them working. I’m assuming it’s with the simple use of other custom fields similar to “thumbnail”. Can you share what custom fields you use please? I would really appreciate it!
So I had a quick look and lo-and-behold it all broke again.
So to cut to the chase, but I am giving up on CorporateMag Theme and no longer able to help out others with it any more. I am instead installing the beautifully pared down Google Chrome Theme from Smashing WordPress Themes
19 Dec 09 Wonderful, wonderful #Copenhagen
Wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen
115 people hit town
To squabble and fight
Over the global blight
Then clink and drink one down
To wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen
Where Barak barracked Jaibao
Then he sailed away
And nothing had changed
Singing Copenhagen, wonderful, wonderful
Copenhagen for me
16 Dec 09 Rage Against The X Factor
#Xfactor I read that Simon Cowell said that the Facebook campaign to get Rage Against the Machine’s (RATM) 1992 song, Killing in the Name, to Christmas No 1 ‘stupid’ and ‘cynical’…”
Which of course it is, but to be even handed about this, the use that Cowell makes of mass media is cynical.
Cowell has his own private TV channel-to-market. He overwhelmingly uses it to manufacture pop stars for his own label, and promote other artists of his. He also times the whole thing to cash in on the most lucrative time for music sales. This is overwhelmingly to his benefit and no one else – cynical would you say?.
What makes me sad is that while The X Factor is aired, there cannot be another proper Christmas song like Merry Xmas Everybody (Slade), Happy Christmas – War is Over (John and Yoko), I Believe In Father Christmas (Greg Lake), Stop The Cavalry (Jonah Lewie) or even White Christmas (Bing Crosby). Those songs have some lasting appeal and seasonal poignancy, but the X Factor ‘product’ is generally forgettable or even disposable, as are many of the ‘stars’ manufactured by the show. YTou don’t think so? Series 1 – Steve Brookstein; Series 2 – Shayne Ward; Series 3 – Leona Lewis; Series 4 – Leon Jackson; Series 5 – Alexandra Burke; Series 6 – Joe McElderry. While Leona Lewis seems to have cracked it, it’s about time. The others are all very distant memories and one suspects that Alexandra Burke will be next years Leon Ward and this year’s winner, Joe McElderry, will ultimately be another Shayne Ward.
I have no specific problem with Joe McElderry. I am sure he is a nice guy, he does have a good voice, he looks like Donny Osmond did when he used to activate hormones in teenage girls and at least Joe has won a ‘talent competition’. Or has he? Cowell says the RATM campaign is aimed at him. I rather think it is aimed at the thing he has built. “Is this a singing competition” judge Danii Minogue asked before judging against the diatonically deaf duo of Jedward. However, in a previous week, having savaged their every performance, Cowell kept them in the show at the expense of Lucie Jones, one of the better vocalists in the competition. Cowell’s cynical support of Jedward was clearly to maintain ratings and ad revenue, because they were less talented, less entertaining and less likely to win than any other act. FFS they were booed every bloody week.
So, while I don’t really like the Rage Against The Machine single (you are not really meant to, it is acid in the eyes sort of art), but I hope it succeeds. Not for its own merits, but to open up the future possibility of some proper Christmas songs which are not so cynically mass marketed.
