I was driving home from the office the other day listening to a cd I’d rate as one of my favourites, and I was thinking ‘the guy who plays bass in this band is truly pushing the instrument in terms of technique, he’s a true innovator’, and that got me thinking...

I think there isn’t a week that goes by that either a client or prospective client tells me that their product or service is the most innovative, or that they want to position their product or service as the most innovative, and how the term gets banded about so much in today’s business world, so that inspired me to write this post on true innovators who both Karen and I respect, and may inspire you to learn more about them, or think about innovation in your business...

Oh, and if you know either of us at all and want to take a guess at who picked who, email us here and maybe we can think about a prize or something, just fer fun, like... So here goes, left to right:-

Isambard Kingdom Brunel
Not always successful in regards to the outcomes of his many projects, Brunel’s work still managed to often develop innovative solutions to longstanding engineering problems. During a short career (he died at 53), he still managed to produce many engineering firsts, such as the first propeller ocean-going iron ship, which at the time was the largest ship ever built, and the Great Western Railway. Posthumously, many monuments to Brunel exist in cities around the UK, there’s plenty of literature about him, universities and hospitals bearing his name and he made number 2 in BBC's ‘100 Greatest Britons’ poll, but most importantly, much of his work still exists today...

Tim Berners-Lee
The man who invented the Internet.... You're on it right now... ’Nuff said.

Alfred Hitchcock
A huge influence on many film directors, producers and actors in terms of innovation, vision and film-making technique. He also started a trend for directors to control the artistic aspects of their films without having to answer to the producer, and pioneered many techniques in the suspense and thriller genres. So ingrained in modern popular culture, his films have been remade and pastiched by countless thrillers and horrors, through to being parodied by The Simpsons and even mentioned in Eminem lyrics.

Bill Hicks
I found a fantastic quote on a web site that said ‘Bill Hicks became the yardstick that a generation was measured by’. An angry, angry, yet incredibly funny man, he found success as a comedian more in this country than his own, most likely due to his incredibly scathing comments on America, a country he still had a lot of love for. Sadly he died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 32, but his relevance and the power of his polemic still resonates today. Check out his DVD, ‘Totally Bill Hicks’. Recorded at the London Dominion Theatre in 1993, his routine on the Gulf War scarily has relevance today. In fact, his influence is such that MP Stephen Pound tabled an early day motion in the House of Commons titled ‘Anniversary of the Death of Bill Hicks’ on February 25th 2004.

Les Claypool
This is the bass player I was talking about earlier. He leads a band called Primus who are virtually unheard of in the UK, but are huuuuuuuggggge in the States. Over the last 50 years or so of the existence of the electric bass there have been some people who have done things with the instrument others can only dream of. Some notable names include Bootsy Collins, Flea, Larry Graham, Stanley Clarke to name a few, but Les Claypool has seriously moved the instrument forward in terms of playing by blending numerous musical genres with creative technique. A true innovator.

Posted in Design Business

Karen and I attended a Design Business Association seminar in Bristol on Marketing and Self Promotion which was extremely interesting. Alex Bane from Taxi Studios gave an insighftful talk on how they promote themselves as a company and the experiences they have gone through, which we found easy to relate to... It’s just we don’t have Coke as a client...

...yet!

Posted in Design Business

An old art college lecturer of mine used to say (in a Black Country accent) “knowledge is power”, so in keeping with Sir Francis Bacon’s famous saying, we drove down to London town for a Design Business Association seminar in Project Management.

Not that we needed to improve on the excellent service we offer our clients, but I like to deem seminars a success if I can come away from the event with at least one bit of information I can apply to our business straight away, which I certainly managed to do from this...

I’d highly recommend the DBA’s seminars to both design practitioners and clients alike who are on the look out for a bit of extra learning at no great cost. Check out their latest events here.

They don’t pay me to say that, either, y’know...

Posted in Design Business

The Plus Expo kicks off in Birmingham at the Wild Building, Floodgate Street, Digbeth from the 17th to the 21st. It’s a chance to see work by some of the city and region’s finest agencies. Unfortunately due to prior commitments (Roses Design Awards - Dave’s big head), we can’t make this year, but we plan to be present at Plus 08, which we’ll report from in full later next year.

Oh, and cheers to Pete Ashton for use of his pic...

Posted in Design Business