Being a part of the LGBTQ+ community stopped being a criminal act in all 50 US states in 2003 (!) That's TWO THOUSAND AND THREE for those in the back.

Socially conscious marketing is a real mixed bag in the 2020s…

Sure, it’s all easy in theory. Follow your heart, live your dreams, blah, blah, blah. But how do you make it happen in real life?

Working remotely creates challenges that we’d have never imagined back in the fun workspace days. When you’re no longer breaking biscuits together, you’ve got to find other ways to connect and communicate…

On the 29 of April in 2011, Prince Willy and Kate tied the knot. While it’s a bit jarring to realise it was ten years ago, it’s easy to remember as the world was bombarded with glossy mags and tabloids. Then the Independent came. A minimalistic sketch by Tracy Emin called The Kiss was splashed across the cover. In a sea of literary madness, this beautifully simple sketch stood out from everything else… 

You can’t be good at everything. Seriously. Sit in the thought. Linger with it and relish in the idea of you being absolutely rubbish at something. Whether it’s making tea, playing tennis or maximalist design, it is oh-so-very okay to be totally shit at some of the tasks that lie in front of you. 

Welcome to 2021. These days, women have rights that would make their grandmothers green with envy… and, hopefully, their granddaughters green with nausea. Frankly, it’s still a pretty mixed bag. So what is it that makes us power houses ‘intentionally invisible’?… We dig deep and f*#k the soft language!…

The echoing sound of a ticking clock is enough to leave any creative type straddling the line between genius and madness. Perhaps life was different for the Renaissance poets, painting flowers in sun-soaked fields, but for those of us busting our arses in the twenty-first century, creative work comes with deadlines. But, thats a good thing, right?

Locked inside of our sanitised abodes, we’ve all been feeling a bit nostalgic. And big brands are looking back too. We’re seeing retro fans and design nerds loving that brands are holding onto their roots. On the other side, we’ve got critics calling them out as copycats.

And us? We can't wait to rip the sexy new clothes off those burgers and chow down...

COVID has taught us that we are perhaps not as dependent on the internet as we might have thought. Social distancing has shown us that sending kissy emojis is simply not enough…

It was a fantastic year for dogs, who didn’t have to be alone for one single second. But things were a little different for us humans. Beyond the massive arses that so many of us have developed, we have gained a few cultural blessings. Before you go back to scrolling Netflix let’s pause to give thanks to a few positives that have happened in this COVID-era.

Some people may not remember their college peers but Carolyn Gammon was a beacon of light quite literally, with a giant mass of curls on top of the smallest head I think I’ve ever seen. Carolyn was and still is one of the few people I am most grateful to for sparking my career in design.

How do you truly connect with clients and the brands they’re passionate about? If you said by asking them to put on their most uncomfortable clothes and sit in a boardroom for two hours … well, I could only assume you sell office chairs or orthopaedic shoes… 

So, what do smart brands do in response to copy cat companies like Aldi? Well, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em! Why not just crack open a beer with the enemy? That’s just what the newly made-over BrewDog did…

Ever heard of the seven per cent rule? Also, known as the Mehrabian theory, this simple rule states that, nobody gives a… shih tzu about what you’re saying. The remaining per cent? Well, that’s just about how you look.

In today’s edition of Who Is Buying This Rubbish, we travel to Finland where shoppers are queued outside of Lidl waiting to fight tooth and nail to get their hands on the latest trainers. Lidl is now an unexpected source of sneakerhead obsession…

Divisive cultural topics can be so nuanced that developing an informed personal stance isn’t always simple. Creating a brand voice that is political, effective, and sincere feels like hunting unicorns for a living. Luckily, as we’ve all found so many times in our lives, the answer is sitting in the freezer…

We live in a time when wearing something other than pyjamas is noteworthy. We used to throw away 32 kilos of clothes every year and now we can’t even go into a shop and put our grimy mitts on all that rubbish we don’t really need. So, does this mark the death of fast fashion? Are we moving into a world of sustainable style and maybe even slow-moving design?   

Out of nowhere, a surplus of time and a faceless villain was dropped onto our laps. So we panicked. We obsessively consumed news, obsessively consumed netflix and obsessively consumed every consumable in the kitchen - not to mention the alcohol. It’s time to get back to business. More than anything, it’s time for reinvention.

Welcome to the surreal world of social distancing. Here we sit, united but separated, to see how Coronavirus will change the world. All of this is having a monumental impact how brands interact with their customers. How does social distancing and design connect?

We are living through a defining moment in history. If textbooks are still a thing in 2060, they will be talking about us. They will see us as a generation of innovators. We will be the survivors who pushed through to the other side and transformed the world in the process.