Weeknotes #3 – People, politics and plants
Last week
Last week started with finding out our team would be reduced for a few weeks at Lloyds. This would mean me stepping into the leadership space for a bit which is ironic after last weeks comments about me trying to unlearn that. I started the week feeling a bit anxious about how I’d handle that.
I was able to get a nice mix through the week though and spent most of Thursday sketching out wireframes to illustrate some service concepts. It felt good to be drawing again and having time to think something through properly.
It’s also been fun working with our graphic designer James this week. Alongside wireframes we’re working up fake adverts and we had to quickly invent a name and brand for our service. This got me thinking. Often brands are generated quickly so there is something to test with. These ‘quickly knocked together’ brands often stick around while people refine their product or service. What if teams put the same care and attention into refining their brand? I guess that’s really where Joy grew from but it’s interesting to see it playing out in a real world example.
It was also a difficult week in a lot of ways. As a team we’re still figuring out how to bring design and innovation approaches together and work in a more agile way. It’s funny because you’d think design and innovation would slot together nicely but someone recently reflected to me that perhaps it’s difficult because they are too similar. The politics involved with ways of working is something I’d hoped to distance myself from as a contractor but I’m sensing that may have been a naive ambition.
I also spent some of the week sorting through photos from the photoshoot I did with AquaGarden last weekend. Getting some new brand images for their website that better represent their values and some close ups of their produce. Again it was good to get back to being hands on. The less glamorous side of this being the hours I spent photoshopping my brothers hands after he accidentally welded some honeycomb to himself 2 days before the shoot!
The week ended with a lovely weekend filled with some of my favourite people and lots of London time. It made me realise how much I’m craving London at the moment. If you haven’t visits ArtAngel’s Sonic Ray I would recommend it for an interesting way to spend an evening geeking out on the intersection between light, sound and art.
Three things to take into next week:
- I had another chat with Maddy from Paiv Creative last week. We met through UpFront and there is a big overlap between our businesses. I’m really hoping we can find a project to collaborate and want to try and prioritise this for next year.
- Get into London more and do the hard work to find interesting things to do beyond eating and drinking.
- Wherever there are people there are politics. Maybe it’s less about hoping their won’t be any and more about how I handle and react to these situations.
