Check out Moto's wonderful site.

Reminds me of the work of Joshua Davis, one of the very best things in the US design triennial at the Cooper Hewitt in New York. He's an artist who designs vectors, brushes, palettes, etc., but then lets the software do the composition.

We talk internally about the importance non-linear experiences online, but I don't believe they are an imperative. One can have a compelling linear experience online, but the quality of the narrative has to be high - something which rarely happens online. It is most interesting to me when experiences combine both an interesting momentum and a serendipity.

Peter Morville, author of the O'Reilly books Information architecture and Ambient Findability has a blog, and an interesting model of social information architecture.

I just read a book called, 'You are here: Personal geographies and other maps of the imagination' by Katharine Harmon
She talks about how humans have an instinct or need to map the world - both to create sense and possibility. To make a cartography of the world to make it known and real whether it's corporal, physical, psychological.

'Maps intrigue us, perhaps none more than those that ignore mapping conventions. These are maps that find their essence in some other goal than just taking us from point a to point b. They are a vehicle for the imagination, fuelled up and ready to go. We look at these maps, and our minds know just what to do: take the information and extrapolate from it a place where they can leap, play, gambol - without that distant province of our being, the body, dragging them down...that particular terrain of imagination overlaid with those unique contour lines of experience.'

'Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn.'

Gore Vidal

On speaking

In June I'm speaking at the Online Marketing Show in London come along and cheer or watch me go wildly off-topic.

On autochrome

Fantastic programme on the BBC last night about Albert Kahn, the French philanthropist who commissioned thousands of photographs (many in colour) documenting the devastating effect of WW1 on France.

On flight.

Yesterday I took a dive down a flight of stairs at Vauxhall tube station. I wasn't paying attention and tripped over some woman's rolling suitcase and was suddenly in flight. I'm a bit sore and bruised, but fortunately relatively unharmed. Even more fortunately, no one was in my path - I could have killed someone.

I was thinking today that it's a shame that one doesn't really remember the sensation of being mid-air on those rare occasions that our bodies are hurled into flight. I remember hitting the ground and feeling the wind knocked out of me, but don't remember what it was like to have body and feet off the ground for those few nanoseconds. Shame that.

On 'When languages die'

From Language as design objects

"Of course these languages are endangered!" someone will inevitably crow. "English or the other major languages are informationally more efficient!" This isn't true. For example, what information is encoded in the English "my nephew"? For sure, it's a male person. But (as Harrison writes) "is he related to me by blood or marriage? Unclear. Is he older or younger than me? Unclear. Is he the son of my sister or my brother? Unclear. Is he the son of an older sibling of mine or a younger sibling? Unclear. Is he a boy or a man? Unclear." Taken in absolute terms, English isn't so efficient: we'd need a separate book to list all its major inefficiencies."

Upcoming D+AD events

Busy week for D&AD.

For the President's Lectures we've got Weiden and Kennedy sharing their insights and experiences on Monday night and Pentagram partner and design writer Michael Beirut talking about Pentagram on Tuesday. They're sold out, but I'd recommend begging or borrowing (but please, no stealing.)

The annual D+AD awards dinner is on Thursday. I'm curious to see who won this year. Yesterday the executive judged the Student of the Year and were all impressed by the outstanding quality of the work, but more on that after the winners have been announced.

Spring cleaning

Cleaned about 400 songs off of my iPod and now it positively gleams...

Currently enjoying:

Sarah McLachlan, Touch (and happy memories of college)
Tori Amos, American Doll Posse
Nico Muhly (classical music with attitude)

Recently purchased

Because I can't visit a place without buying books:

Mythologies, Roland Barthes
L'aventure sémiologique, Roland Barthes
Cours de linguistique générale, Ferdinand de Saussure.
An anthology of 20th century French poetry and a book on the painter Ingres.

Bonjour from Nice!

I'm in NIce, on the Cote d'Azur on holiday. It's paradise all around - lovely sea, lovely people, great shopping a bit of culture and a mild but sunny temperature. Spent three days in St Paul de Vence for a consulting meeting. We worked hard, but also ate at two Michelin-starred restaurants, L'Abbaye and la Colombe d'Or. We stayed in a charming resort, Le Mas de Pierre and had a conference room with a view of the collines. So it's hard to complain that most of the data analytics we discussed went right over my head.

Now, should I go to Monaco today or not?