Having just eaten an intern’s worth of company expensed Thai Friday food (alot) I’m going to use company time to blog.

Not a bad way to polish off my time at (untitled), a nice little digital agency in East London (cycling to work in 20 minutes?  Win).

Whilst I’ve been subjected to hours of radio 1 – not limited to but including the hour-long Michael Jackson stream helpfully continued throughout the day via office itunes – I’ve also been blogging (quite intensely), twittering, and blipping my little heart out (the latter not particularly difficult).  I’ve done some wonderful stats, report write-ups, research, and admin. I’ve watched a wonderfully creative design for an installation and website come together.  And I’ve also sat in on a creative meeting which descended into grown men playing neopets.

I inspired Dudley to spend half a day keenly organising post-in notes which in some way was the start of a pool league (foiled only by hot weather and glue). We’re sticking with the new table football.

I met Mr Fish called Rocket, and found an arty cardboard ‘christmas card machine’ lurking around the studio that Dudley’d made that got incorporated into a Christmassy website last year. I am a big fan of cardboard and nonsensical craft (combined) so this gets much love.

The studio’s right by Whitechapel gallery which we had a stroll around during a lunch (with perplexing mannequins) and it’s also opposite Brick Lane so I’ll be nosing around the free range design show going on there later.

The studio itself is pretty nice. It has the white walled, wooden floor look, with a couple of fat pillars around to hold the ceiling up. It should look ace with the illustrator Toby Triumph coming in next week to draw all over it. It makes me want to grab a fat marker pen and get busy on my walls at home (see awesome dinosaur design).

Beermaster on my last day, could be worse.

Some Street Drumming on Oxford Street I saw last week. Enthusiastically smashed a bucket halfway through and made a snare out of change in a bucket – can’t really have been doing that badly then.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jXnvLYz8Tg&hl=en&fs=1&]

We work in in the top floor of a building that looks like it’s trying to be a warehouse. Perhaps it is a warehouse, and maybe I haven’t met enough warehouses. It has some wooden floors I like, big spaces, some pillars and white walls.

@tobytriumph is coming to draw on the walls. He has a website unsurprisingly called tobytriumph.com and did the illustrations for hopfarm.comwhich are nice. We got asked for suggestions. I would like a diplodocus stegosaurus. I have drawn him with some shoes.

This is the result of a cultural enlightenment trip during a lunch break to Whitechapel Art Gallery.  The artist liked Mannequins.

Some were dressed in space suits and lay on the floor, and some wore other things and lay in other positions. One piece was very yellow and involved some netting, a trolley and some pipes.

I’m not sure I did.

Other highlights.

• A baby-faced head with a helmet.
• Stacked objects.
• Brightly coloured plastic strips

Nice photos from this man, a Mr Max Dworkin. Fond of having people jump mid-air with regular expressions in front of big natural things. One photo (here) reminds me of my first car. I used to come home and sit in it because it was ever so exciting. I used to listen to music and fall asleep from excitement.

This was my afternoon.  It may be star wars lego which everyone’s seen but I don’t think I’ve seen better. Apparently the guy has a thing for lighting, which might explain why. My next thrilling plans involve continuing the argument with my yahoo log-in details (it’s a short fight that lasts about 10 minutes. I inevitably loose). From balakov on flickr.

Another good use of graffiti.  (near aldgate east)

Clark Kent and a fat man in a puffy silver suit are trying to convince me that IE8 is the solution to madness in the new Microsoft ad today. Yes, it’s more in-your-face entertaining than the Google Chrome ad, and there’s a crafty face in a monitor whispering about decorative bowls but rather than rush to check IE out, I’m more likely to stay using my current Chrome browser to watch this nice ad again. It’s not groundbreaking, but it makes me smile.

posted at: (untitled)
via: the guardian

I may still be having confused fights with my new mac’s keypad (where is the ‘home’ button please?), but yesterday I had a play at furthering my ‘London chic’ side.  My bike’s just been fixed after a string of tedious punctures, which took a long time to fix since my bicycle capabilities stretch to removing the quick-release wheels.  Helpfully, a few friends have told me I’d be mad to cycle on London roads, which is tosh.

So I cycled off to the Super Contemporary exhibition at the Design Museum on the South Bank.  It’s essentially a big time line with designs, events, people and news that have shaped our perception of design that goes around the room, which is really quite nicely done and reminded me a bit of the Science Museum in the way that when I was younger I discovered that information stuff didn’t have to be dull.  It was pretty browsey and lightweight, which was quite nice because there were lots and lots of brightly coloured small things to look at (I am a sucker for brightly coloured things, especially if made out of paper it seems).

The nicest part was from a couple of companies asked to make maps of London.  A few were pretty standard – not bad, just the sort of thing I’d have leapt to do in a silly crafty girly way e.g. pictures stuck around parts of the map to indicate memories.  Airlift, a company I feel quite unintelligent not to have heard of, made a lovely map which ignored the logistics of London but was very impressive.  A hand-drawn St Pancras monster was roaring, small people were discussing cheese on the Eurostar, and ‘the Devil and his Cock’ made an appearance.  The photos are a bit full of reflections, but my favourite bits came out legibly.

This was a nice big sculpture of Trafalgar Square with a big raised garden field.  Nelson ends up being a statue, and there’s also some funky slides at the top.

There was also a chalkboard that said Protect me from my Protectors above it. We didn’t need protecting, so played noughts and crosses instead.

There was an upstairs with more design ‘stuff’ that centered around big clever designs – something about big modern designers pushing boats and stuff.  My favourite parts  of this section (and I suspect here that my version of good art isn’t the same as everyone else’s) were the child that sat on an installation, some dangling coat hangers, some sort of robot with page-tabs for shoulders, and the screen that said erection on it.  Unfortunately I couldn’t take a photo of this joy since the TV blurred and fuzzed at my camera, but I did of the child, much like a skulking anoraked man.

We then proceeded to spend as much time in the gift shop as in the exhibition. And then we went home. by which I mean the pub.

Last Saturday, after cursing my tiny car and dumping half my belongings in a charity shop, I moved from Brighton to London.  I’ve learnt a few things (such as East London pick-up lines are crap) and seen a few things that made me smile.

The best was the exploding water main on the first day.  I had to get out of my car to excitedly photo it.  For some reason it suddenly felt like 1980s San Francisco (this could be explained by my not living much in the 80s, and never having visited America).  I couldn’t help but notice a distinct lack of small children running amok.

Having moved in, logic dictated I head to the pub.  Apparently Bow is (or seems intent on becoming) a trendy little place..  Not only a little bit chic with big lights and a Habitat bookshelf, but they also have Balderdash and Monopoly.  The barstools seemed to be made of itchy cow fluff, and the bartender didn’t have a facial function that wasn’t extreme grin.  These appear to be the only down-sides.

Halfway through the week Kingston College got renamed by way of a paper sign.  I liked it.

I had an exciting venture with a Chinese pancake thing in the park.  It involved me eating it and taking photos of this unusual object. It was a good venture.

I discovered graffiti with my name.

I located the largest chip in the world (Centrepage by St Paul’s)

I discovered the pickled mud fish.

And lastly I found a particularly unfortunate photo of Lorraine from the Apprentice in the Metro.