Unfinished Business

Designer and artist Brendan Dawes joins me again for the 75th episode of my “one-sided, biased, poor quality personal soapbox.” We talk about the people who have inspired us the most in our working lives and Bren tells me all about how the famous designer and filmmaker Hillman Curtis helped him to get started. It’s an inspiring story.

I’ve also reinstated the after hours film talk spot that Anna and I started in the early episodes of Unfinished Business. This week Bren and I talk about briefly about Her, the fabulous Stalingrad (2013) and Luc Besson’s totally terrible 3 Days to Kill starring Kevin Costner. It’s a funny segment although I’m clearly no Mark Kermode and this show is obviously nowhere near as good as something on the BBC.

Thanks to our sponsors this week, they were Big Board and the Shropgeek Revolution Conference 2014. As always, you can support Unfinished Business by supporting them.

This week on Unfinished Business, Sean Johnson and I talk not only about Laura Nevo’s “Dear Visual Design” open letter but also how wrong the people who thought I’d criticise Laura are. While I disagree completely with Laura’s message, I appreciate her writing it, not least because it helps sum up everything that I think is wrong about how we talk about web design today. Sean’s not just along for the ride, he has plenty to say about user experience, the Net Awards and why he hates football. The berk.

As always, we have two fabulous sponsors, Hover and Macrabbit’s Espresso. Get 10% off both when you use the offer code unfinished at the checkout.

Jeremy Keith joins me on this, episode 73 of Unfinished Business. Although I try to steer clean of provoking him by not talking about moon landings, we disagree about just about everything else. Fish tacos, things that scientists haven’t done yet and I think they should’ve and what makes advertising fascinating to me and hateful to him. It’s a lively show. There are sparks. I think you’ll like it.

We have two excellent sponsors this week, Shopify and Logical Elements’ ‘PHP for Web Designers’ training course. Tickets cost just £295, but listeners to this show can get one-hundred, yes one-hundred pounds off by using the offer code unfinished at the checkout.

A slight change of format for this week’s Unfinished Business. Laura Kalbag wanted to know our experiences of working with our partners—she’s just started working with hers—so she emailed Sue some questions. I hadn’t heard her answers until Laura read them on the show, but I think that makes for interesting listening. I’ll publish Sue’s full answers on Stuff and Nonsense later on in the week.

Thanks to our sponsors this week, they were Gather Contentand Forge. As always, you can support Unfinished Business by supporting them.

Ashley Baxter is back on Unfinished Business this week and we start the show by talking about why she started a podcast with some other fella. We discuss how businesses should be authentic on Twitter and if a brand can justifiably spend 45 days planning a tweet about cheese. (Mmmm, cheese.) We round off this week by talking about how working with other people can affect your fitness and diet and why working from from home might be the best thing for some people. And let’s not forget Ashley Baxter’s Scottish Slang Word of the Week. “Heffer.”

Thanks to our sponsors this week, they were Vanamco’s DeviceLab, Big Board and Perch. As always, you can support Unfinished Business by supporting them.

Illustrator Josh Cleland joins me for episode 70 of Unfinished Business this week. We discuss about how I’m struggling with an idea for the next version of the Stuff and Nonsense header and I baffle Josh by talking about vintage British adverts, including the PG Tips chimps and Cadbury Smash’s famous Martians.

On Unfinished Business this week, I’m joined by designer and artist, the one and only Brendan Dawes. Bren and I talk about data inspired art and his Cinema Redux pieces. As we can never get together and not discuss films, so we talk about the greatest westerns of all time, the True Grit remake and Django Unchained. Plus, being ‘men of a certain age’ we reminisce about childrens TV from the seventies and why the writers of The Banana Splits must have taken a lot of drugs.

We have two excellent sponsors this week, Shopify and Logical Elements’ ‘PHP for Web Designers’ training course. Tickets cost just £295, but listeners to this show can get one-hundred, yes one-hundred pounds off by using the offer code unfinfished at the checkout. Plus, you’ll get a 20% discount on any other course if you book them before the end of May.

On Unfinished Business this week, and with us both fresh from the Net Awards, Laura Kalbag and I talk about our experiences there. I explain why I don’t feel at home in the web design industry as it is today and how its conversations no longer reflect my interests in design.

After last week’s ‘giant’ misunderstanding about speaker fees, we also talk about the responsibilities that speakers have to themselves, to an audience and to an event and the people who’ve organised it. It’s a lively discussion. We talk about swearing, why private agreements between speakers and conferences should remain confidential and why speakers should play their part in supporting an event, before, during and after it.

Laura, I and everyone who makes Unfinished Business, wants to say an enormous “thank you” to everyone who voted for our show and put it in the final five top podcasts of 2014 at the Net Awards.

I also want to thank our sponsors this week. They are GatherContent and Hammer For Mac. As we always say, please support Unfinished Business by supporting them.

On this week’s (early) episode of Unfinished Business, Ashley Baxter’s back to talk about her brand new business, Insurance By Jack. We talk about why she started the business and some of the challenges she’s already faced. No ‘Ashley’ episode would be complete without her “Baxter’s Scottish Slang Word of the Week.” What is it? You’ll just have to listen to the show to find oot.

Oor sponsors this week are the fantastic Ghostlab and Logical Elements’ PHP For Web Designers course. Get £100 off when you book using the offer code unfinished

Dan Davies is back on Unfinished Business this week to talk about what he’s learned in the five months since he switched from front-end development to user-experience design. We discuss how his agency is improving communication between designers and developers, his interview series about workflow and more and how he was once replaced by a fibreglass rhino.

We have two excellent sponsors this week, Perch and a new sponsor Hover, the best place to buy and manage your domain names. Get 10% off your first purchase at Hover with the offer code unfinished.