My son has started playing chess (or chest, as he used to call it when he was cute) at school. So I thought I'd buy a chess set. The problem is, if one is design savvy, that they are all rubbishly old fashioned and anachronistic. Except this on. Designed in 1923 by Josef Hartweg when he was in the Bauhaus School. Each piece represents how that piece can move on the board. It's beautiful.

Recently we completed the identity for Hôp Namô a Vietnamese street food restaurant which just opened in Boxpark Shoreditch. Namô is a well know restaurant in Hackney with a great reputation for top quality Vietnamese food and Hôp Namô will be no different. The food is made from traditional recipes with a modern twist. It's delicious and a very nice place to spend a long lunch or just grab a quick bite. You can have a look through the identity we created here and don't forget to pop by for a bánh mì and to check the place out.

I like this. And I don't like books. I like Kindle. But I like this.

Buy it for your Nan for Xmas.

http://kapitza.com/products/organic-book

We've done a couple of events for Freedom from Torture now and they're always brilliant. This one was no exception. We did the catalogue, invites, signage and website for their 2011 Art Auction. A special event which raises a substantial amount of the money needed to keep their doors open. Art was kindly donated by established artists such as Julian Opie, Antony Gormley, Jake & Dinos Chapman, Quentin Blake and Paula Rego to name a few. The final figures aren't in yet but based on the furious bidding on the night it went very well!

And hey, they even painted a 12 foot tall mural of the event logo 3fish created on the wall outside!

Have a look at art.freedomfromtorture.org to see the work that was up for auction.

www.freedomfromtorture.org

I might be shooting myself in the foot here, but I passionately believe in open source. Ideas that further the course of man should not be owned by anyone, but be accessible to everyone.This flies in the face of a company that charges for ideas. If everyone has access to the idea then there is no value on it. And we sell ideas; not pretty pictures. It's a dichotomy.

That said, today I listened to a Radio 4 programme that was an anology for that. It talked about a different discipline, but the root causes and effects are the same as in the design world.

Listen to it and make your own mind up.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/i/b017mrbd/

Air France and KLM Royal Dutch Airlines are targeting the African and Chinese communities in the UK in a bid to attract people visiting friends and relatives abroad. 3fish worked on 3 creative routes across the 2 airlines including direct mail, mobile advertising, and online digital media. It goes live today. To read the press release in Marketing Magazine, click here.

I love minimalist design, I love things that make sense and I love things that make me go 'how did I live without this before?'

My iPad was the last one I got, my macbook was the one before that. Now I have my new wallet designed by Kristen Wentrcek in Wintercheck Factory. It's brilliantly simple and very easy to use and that's why i love it. Gone are the days of sitting slightly sideways due to a wallet full of receipts and useless tat.

The fact that it can only hold a few cards and notes and that's it makes it great and I've learned to not carry everything I've ever owned around with me. They're out of stock as I write this but pick one up if they come back at their online store here.

First(ly) I appologise about the missing gerrunt in the title of this post. I didn't add it on purpose, to make a point, but no one will realise so I'll carry on.

iOS 5 is very good. No suprise there. Every time Apple upgrades its OS (either on its mobile devices or on Mac) it's a winner. I particularly like the quick use camera function and the iCloud photo streaming.

But this isn't an iOS piece, it's a 'I can't believe I've used an app that actually works in a very different way, but it still works very well' post.

Check out the LinkedIn app for iPhone. It is nothing like any other app I've used and it works really well.

Which is unusual. 

Life is pretty good here at 3fish and a big part of that is the amazing projects we get to work on. Often they take us on a whirlwind journey of paper sizes, pixels and pantones. Occasionally they take us somewhere else. 

One of the last projects I was fortunate to work on was for the Freedom from Torture event at the top of the BT Tower. The event was to celebrate the 20th anniversary of John McCarthy's freedom. 3fish created the invitations & handouts for the morning flight pass, a wondrous trip to the 34th floor and the evening event, an auction in aid of Freedom from Torture also held atop the tower. The event was a sellout and it was pretty clear that all who went were thrilled by the experience.

Head over to http://www.freedomfromtorture.org/feature/5404 to check out photos of the event and see the good work they're doing.

I found this schematic while I was Googling 'Lego Minifig Images'*. Pretty obvious I suppose. But there is something extraordinarily beautiful and perfectly formed about the maths and design and beauty of the Minifig. My son and I have about 400 of them and I have an obsession with making famous people Minifigs.

I love them.

* BTW, I don't really know why I was Googling 'Lego Minifig Images', I was bored I think.

Actually MS Word has a lot of good points. As a wordprocessor, it can't be faulted. Well it can, but that's just me being churlish. As a design tool, however, it is the worst piece of crap ever coded.

That is why I love, and almost universally use, OmWriter.

It's simple. It's beautiful. It doesn't try to help you. (MS paperclip asks: you look like you are creating a bulleted list, shall I format it for you? I reply: NO FUCK OFF.)

It's just a simple way to marshall your thoughts to write clearly and simply.

And it's coming out for iPad soon.

I'm getting it for that too.

OmWriter

I get through a lot of notebooks in the course of a year. When they are full, I keep them for a bit. Then eventually throw them away. The problem is that some of them have info in I occasionally need after I've binned them. This could be the solution. An electronic notepad with a 1-bit interface, an editable OS and connection to my Mac. Perfect. Plus it's a bit of tech, which is always nice. It's out soon apparently and looks like it might launch at only $99. Too good to be true?

That's the problem. As many people who are hailing it as the next revolution in human/computer interfacing are accusing it of being a hoax.

I hope it's not.

noteslate.com

Pixels are your friend. And this pixel watch is as cool as cucumber frappe. Especially at 9, noon, midnight and 3 o'clock.

I like Japanese things. I like to play my ukulele. I like the 'make your own ukulele' kit my eldest son bought me for my birthday. It's a Japanese idea and the translation of the manual is really funny. I'll scan it in and post it here soon.

The design of the whole thing is great though. Well done Sam. (And Naomi.)

The Future Beauty exhibition at the Barbican runs for another fortnight or so.

Go and see it, it is beautiful and inspiring and full of the energy that is so often missing from design today. I could write a thesis on its greatness, but I think you should just go.

http://www.barbican.org.uk/artgallery/event-detail.asp?ID=10771

I have a guilty secret. It is something that has caused me considerable ridicule and lampoonment from my work colleagues at 3fish. The fact is, that in a graphic design studio where everyone uses Macs, I choose to use a Microsoft mouse.

Yes, you heard right. Microsoft.

Is it because I have a secret love of PCs? No. When I’m in front of a PC I’m a little ashamed to say that I am virtually clueless as to where anything is, or how to do even the simplest of tasks. 

Is it because I harbour a deep-seated resentment towards Apple? No. In fact quite the opposite. My first computer was a Mac. At university we were all taught on Macs. Now I use a Mac every day at work and would never even dream of using anything else. Like almost everyone in the office I have an iPhone, which I love.

My girlfriend once even accused me of having Stockholm syndrome whilst we were talking about my affection for Apple. (For those of you who don’t know, Stockholm syndrome is the psychological phenomenon wherein hostages express adulation and have positive feelings towards their captors.)

As if to prove her point, a while ago at 3fish we decided to commemorate 25 years of the Mac with a series of desktop wallpapers to give away as freebies to clients and friends. I decided to do a take on the famous Milton Glaser ‘I Love New York’ logo, replacing NY for SJ and the heart symbol for the Apple Logo. If you haven’t already guessed, SJ refers to Steve Jobs, the charismatic co-founder and CEO of Apple. If you’re interested, the wallpaper, along with all the others designed by the fishes, is available to download here.

Anyway, we digress. All this is just a roundabout way of making the point that my use of a non-Apple mouse has nothing to do with some kind of anti-establishment sentiment. (And yes, I think it is fair to say that Apple has now become the establishment, having recently pushed past arch-rival Microsoft to become the world's biggest technology company.)

Rather, my gripe with the Apple mouse has more to do with its design. Now, I realise this is a pretty strong statement to make – especially when directed at a company as fanatical about design as Apple. Even more so when you consider that Apple are widely credited with having invented the mouse.

The problem I have is this – while the mouse is clearly beautiful, it doesn’t fit that well in your hand. The shape is a perfect ellipse, but the cavity of your hand when you hold a mouse is not. Sure, you can hold it and move it around, but a mouse is a tool that many people use all day every day. It becomes tiresome to use.

You might even say the guys at Cupertino are sacrificing ergonomics in favour of aesthetics. Less ‘form follows function’ more ‘form follows emotion’. And who can blame them? It’s a philosophy that has worked brilliantly. Can you imagine Apple being quite as successful if their products weren’t so achingly beautiful?

In a way, I wish the cavity of my hand was perfectly elliptical, because sometimes I do look down at my mouse and think “you should be a pure white orb and not a grey plasticy funny-shaped object”.

Until that day comes however, I’ll settle for my not very beautiful (but very functional) mouse made by the good people at Microsoft. 

Unless, of course, I get an iPad…

I am truly ambivalent about Ikea. Some things it sells are truly great. Most things ware out after a week. These hand puppets are £1.99 each and make me smile. Great design at a great price. What more could you want?

PS I plan to use them in a presentation soon.

Although I've been in the creative business for 22 years, I actually trained as a physicist. And I still have a soft one for all things maths and the like. So when I discovered this app, I nearly died and went to calculatory heaven.

The i41CX+ iPhone, iPod and iPad app.

The webiste is atrocious, but the app is ace (and at £14.99 with the printer module, which you need, that is a big ace, this is not a 59p thing that is okay but throwaway, this is serious)

http://alsoftiphone.com/i41CXplus/

It is a simulator of the CLASSIC (and I mean classically revolutionary) Hewlett Packard 41CX calculator launched in 1979. When I went to university I wanted one, but couldn't afford it, it was about £300 in 1984, more than a car. It was available until 1990 and people actually collect them and everything.

It comes with a set of retro and modern skins and works like a dream. Proof that design is more than aesthetic. Design is what something does.

If you aren't maths-savvy you might find it actually hard to use as a calculator, but if you have even half a maths brain get it, you'll never use the in-built Calc app ever again.

But just look in the window of our office, you'll soon work out that I like 80s stuff.

A few weeks ago we launched a quiz for KLM aimed at the gay community:

www.theklmgaygetaway.co.uk

It's doing quite well so far ...but this Saturday, the legendary Mr Stephen Fry was kind enough to twitter about it, creating a HUGE surge in interest.
Thank you Mr Fry!

It has been a while since our last post but during that time 3 fish in a tree turned ten. To celebrate, the studio put together a small run newspaper, each of us contributing a lovely page design.

I have just attended a seminar on diversity in design and whilst it turned into a seminar on ethnicity, not diversity, I did learn some pretty interesting facts:

93% of people who work in design in the UK are white*

68% are male

60% are younger than 40 years old

65% earn less than £20,000 a year

Now I don't know what constitutes * 'design in the UK' but these figures are awful. We all have a duty to try to change these statistics and make design a more equal place and a fairer place for everyone.

I'll let you know what we plan to do to help.

At 3fish we have a pretty clear view of what makes good design. We aren't minimalist, but we do kind of believe that form follows function. The issue is that if you want your 'function' to be 'everything under the sun' you end up with something like this.

(BTW, this is a real Swiss Army knife available in the States for $999.)

It's the 25th aniversary of the Apple Macintosh this year, and where would we be without them? Erm... the same probably but we'd be using PCs instead. Not that we're Mac Anoraks or anything like that (well... maybe some of us are) but we do love our Macs.

We've cellebrated by designing some desktop patterns/posters for your pleasure. Have a look on our site: www.3fishinatree.com/downloads/desktops .

...super.

This week we'd like to introduce you to Tom. He's a recent graduate from Nottingham Trent University (Where our James went). So far he's worked out great, being a good laugh and doing some cracking work with Matt and Rick. You can view some of his mad cat skills here.

When the time comes we'll show what the 3 of them have been working on, we think it looks ace.

Our D&AD Award Winning Director Matt Dent (what a mouthful) is this months guest writer on the 2nd best design blog on the web Noisy Decent Graphics. He's already written a few articles and a little bird tells me the next article is going to be based on patterns - released this Saturday. Jump over and have a look there's some great stuff up.

I was lucky enough to pick up two pencils in complementary black and yellow colours at the recent D&AD awards for my coin designs produced for The Royal Mint.

It was a stoopidly stoopidly brilliant night. I ended up sharing a table with Chris Doyle who produced his own identity guidelines who collected a yellow pencil, Asbury & Asbury who dissected corporate spiel and assimilated them into gorgeous poems who collected a yellow pencil, and Troika, who produced the hypnotic digital sculpture the 'Cloud' for British Airways, who also collected a yellow pencil.

What company. So where do I go from here?
It's gotta be horse whispering hasn't it?

Our site went live a little while ago. We're rather pleased with it to be honest. Nice clean layout, fancy slidey bits that work but actually make the user experience richer rather than get in the way.

It should work for everyone too. In Safari, Firefox, Internet Explorer and even on our iPhones. That's quite an achievement especially as it works in Internet bleedin Explorer 6: the bain of our lives.

Back in the dark ages, web design was tough. Getting layouts working consistently across all browsers especially Nutscrape (sorry.. Netscape) was a dark art. Not so much anymore, it's fairly straight forward and most web browsers are fairly tolerant of our fancy code.

CSS layouts and web standards have made the world a happier place. Unless you use IE6. It's rubbish. We support it because we have to, but it takes soooooo long to twist and tweak our websites to work in IE6 we either have to keep things simple (spoiling the fun for everyone else) or stare at lines of code until our eyeballs bleed. We really should be charging extra for this.

So PC users... please upgrade to IE7 or Firefox. You'll feel much better for it.

If you feel the same way as we do, join the facebook group click here.