I keep seeing this: “People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are “The Advertisers” and they are laughing at you.

Building or creating something is always fun; there’s a magic in separate, inanimate, bits being combined to make something that comes alive through having a purpose and being used. I’ve been eyeing up building a guitar effects pedal for a while, but worried that my soldering skills would leave me with a smoking useless heap of resistors and solder. Luckily you can buy kits which come with detailed instructions , which increases the chance of having something working at the end. It does make it more a paint-by-numbers exercise until you are confident enough to strike out on your own, but a good way of building some confidence. It also takes the hassle of having to buy a pack of three hundred resistors just to use four or trying to find some of the more obscure components.

Branding is important for most companies, but if you’re in a market selling generic products, then branding is often the only way to improve profit margins. Branding has many purposes, but the most important are to identify yourself to your customers and proclaim that you’re unique. If you can make people believe you’re different then they’ll also be willing to pay a different price for your product. This is especially important for generic products such as food and drugs where you’re competing against products doing the exact same thing; think mineral water, out of patent drugs, flour, milk etc.

In 2001 Against Me! were two people, Tom Gabel and drummer Kevin Mahon. Much has been made of the evolution of Against Me!’s sound, signing to major labels and their biggest crime; success. But let’s ignore that for now. Crime was Against Me!’s first widely distributed release, originally a four track, it is now printed with an additional two tracks. The arrangements are raw and simple; Gabel’s guitar is clean, played hard and relentlessly. It struggles at times to keep up with his shouting, hoarse voice, that even when being pushed to the point when you’re convinced his throat must be coming apart, seems insufficient to persuade you of all the ideas bubbling in his head.

I made this in Inkscape after wondering if you could make a font out of a folded strip paper. On the whole I think it works, but there are a few areas I’m less happy with. As the shading increases with the number of folds, some letter are a lot darker (x, v and e) than others, which being straight don’t have any shading (I, i, l, !). I couldn’t bring myself to add false shading to represent a none existent fold. While it means the shading is consistent with folds, not all characters have the same brightness, making some appear more prominent than others.

I’m overjoyed to hear that the Bristol Festival (BrisFest) has been given the go ahead by Bristol City Council to hold the 2012 festival in Ashton Court . Last year’s festival was a huge success and I was fortunate enough to be able to volunteer in the week running up to the main event and help assemble the festival at the Lloyd’s Amphitheatre. Apart from one person, all the people involved in BrisFest are volunteers. I felt really privileged to work with so many enthusiastic, funny and generous people who work really hard to create something they love. I also organised and promoted a number of fundraisers in the run-up to the 2011 festival, held at Mr Wolf’s , one of the festival’s main sponsors.

How much difference can a typeface (1) make? If it’s loud, exciting, bright and high on impact perhaps it’ll grab your attention on a poster from across the room. But what about a subtle typeface, one that’s everywhere and the very definition of neutrality? The 2007 documentary Helvetica covers the history of the world’s most used typeface. Starting with its invention and rise across all mediums after World War II, Helvetica was the go-to weapon against all clumsy busyness in design which the International Style was fighting. It believed that being neutral would not distract from the message conveyed. It could be used anywhere for anything.

While Flying Off Course by Rigas Doganis is classic text on the subject of airline finance and marketing actually reading through Flying Off Course is hard work. From this 2010 published fourth edition of the book Doganis’ expertise on the subject is clear, even without knowing of his impressive experience to back it up. I’ve learnt a few details about how airline economics tend to work, or not, as is sadly often the case. This book brought all the different elements together in a well structured manner, covering: route restrictions, airline costs, demand forecasting and product planning. It gives a very complete picture with plenty of real world examples.

There is so much history in Berlin that looking at only what is there now is incredibly difficult. I’ve been to few places where the history and impact of different ages is so apparent. The biggest recent change has been the removal of the Berlin Wall which harshly and absolutely divided the city. Much of the construction work to re-unite the city is now complete and has been very successful in removing all trace of the wall. In some places brass plaques has been added that run along the ground marking its previous route, but in most places you can’t tell anything was there at all.

“I won’t understand what’s going on” “Don’t worry, there’ll be subtitles” I thought my colleague was joking. He wasn’t. A neat, green, two line, high resolution display hangs above the top of the curtain line. For each new line of dialogue or song a translation of what is said appears. For first time visitors to an unfamilier (or any) opera, like me, these two glowing lines are a lifeline. Without them you would quickly get lost, irritated and then distracted from being able to enjoy the whole experience. Your attention taken up with constantly trying to second-guess what the characters are saying and how that links to your vague memory of the synopsis you read the evening before on Wikipedia.