A friend and I get lunch regularly from the same cafe round the corner. Within a few days of first going I branded it as ‘Surly Sandwiches’. The food is good, the prices are better, the service is efficient and you can rest assured that 90% of the time you go there you won’t get a smile from the staff.

Others might find that a poor level of service but for me it represents the pinnacle of consistency – if I’d become accustomed to beaming staff and cheery greetings then I would have been most disappointed the day they failed to hand me a sandwich with a smile. Instead I adjusted my requirements and have them consistently met.

Conversely, set the bar high and you’d best make damn sure you keep leaping it. Hell hath no fury like a person who’s expectations you have failed to meet (catchy). When the usually impeccably courteous staff of John Lewis decided to upset my wife by quibbling over a late delivery, the only way John Lewis could see to fix that little error was to gift us money – an expensive failure to launch.

So, don’t overestimate the importance of being happy. Don’t underestimate the importance of being consistent. Don’t go changing.

Unfortunately, the videogamer in me can only see the striking similarities with this: art from Bethesda Software’s Fallout 3 – a game about a post-nuclear-apocalyptic world in which the only law is the survival of the fittest/best-armed.

I’m not sure this is the message they’d like us to take away.

Anyway, must dash – got to get hold of a Land Rover defender, lots of baked beans and a geiger counter.

(This is absolutely not a political post by the way – just graphic design-related! If you’re undecided about where to put your vote I strongly suggest you visit Vote For Policies.)

• A – Amazon (they get far too much of my money)
• B – BenGilman.com
• C – CrunchBase (researching the market…)
• D – Digg
• E – Engadget
• F – Football365 (seeking Arsenal news)
• G – Gmail
• H – HSBC
• I – IsItFunnyToday? (the best way to find web comics)
• J – Joystiq
• K – Kongregate (I spent a few lunchtimes playing The Last Stand)
• L – lovemoney.com
• M – MoneyStrands (becoming a daily visitor)
• N – BBC News
• O – OpenX (the ad server for lovemoney.com)
• P – Playfire
• Q – QuakeLive (the other lunchtimes…)
• R – Reddit
• S – Twitter Search
• T – Twitter
• U -TechCrunch
• V – Virgin Media (probably complaining about slow broadband *sigh*)
• W – lovemoney.com (all the Ws)
• X – Xkcd
• Y – YouTube
• Z – Zoopla (window shopping)

I’m not sure it’s a particularly insightful window into my world – it’s surprising how few websites start with Z though…

A few months back I was tweeting about the fact that I’d won a MailChimp t-shirt in their online draw. At that moment a mysterious Twitter account named @hipstery started following me. A few clicks later and I was concluding their checkout process. Don’t talk too loudly about it, but Twitter marketing works.

The concept

In a nutshell, The Hipstery “liberates you from the burden of choice” – specifically, you tell them your t-shirt size, fill in a fancy-dan quiz about your tastes and their t-shirt scientists go find you a t-shirt and dispatch it to your door. The t-shirts are sourced from various cool designers and are usually from rare, limited edition runs.

The delivery

A couple of weeks later (The Hipstery are in Germany and the UK post were probably on strike) a mysterious brown paper bag dropped through my door. In fact, it didn’t drop through my door at all. Instead, a red “sorry you were out and we can’t stuff a t-shirt through your letterbox” card arrived and I had to take a trip to the Royal Mail depot to collect it. So, eventually…

So the mystery is slightly compromised by the fact that the envelope is carrying The Hipstery’s branding but it was the start of ‘the experience’  – not something you usually experience when buying things online.

The grand opening

Using the time-honoured combination of my fingers and opposable thumbs I tore open the package to reveal the goodness inside.

As promised, the primary part of the delivery was the mystery t-shirt – on arrival it was wrapped in a natty plastic bag that is missing from this picture.

The cotton goodness

So, what of the t-shirt itself? What had the t-shirt scientists selected for me? In an attractive shade of grey, my selection was the runner-up of the 2006 London Design Festival’s t-shirt design competition, The Draw – “London Spirit” by Blaise Coutaz. You can read an interview with its designer over here (warning, that link is a PDF, abandon all hope ye who click). The t-shirt is cool and unlike something I might have chosen for myself – all good things.

Here’s a poorly-montaged close-up of the design.

As well as the t-shirt there were two old postcards…

Unexpected but standard enough? Except for the strange coincidence that at the time of the delivery I was wading my way through Mary Shelley’s The Last Man, in which the main protagonists reside in Windsor Castle, the subject of one of the enclosed postcards. Ooooo…

The conclusion

The Hipstery is an excellent way to acquire a t-shirt, I will shop there again. Go forth to theHipstery.com, buy yourself a new t-shirt, feel the burden of choice lifted from your shoulders. Many thanks German friends.

Struggling for a tenth? Or a ninth… or a second? No problem!

Face it, your readers don’t have time for ten of anything. In fact if you’re honest with yourself only one of your ‘tips’ is actually any good, right? So cut the fat.

Some suggested titles:

• “One essential tip you need to…”
• “One step to a better…”
• “Top one reasons why you should…”
• “One person to follow on Twitter…”
• “One reason why…”
• “The One Point Plan to…”
• “One overused thing…”
• “One thing to stop doing now…”

Go forth, blogging super-stardom awaits. Thank me later.

(Thanks @lolmorrisson and @sporticia!)

It’s nearly February and 2009 is in full swing… unlike my blogging. Still, there’s no time like the present.

I’ll shortly be publishing a big post on the subject of brand guidelines and as soon as I’ve ironed out some bugs I’ve got a whole new blog design to launch.

Happy New Year – stick around!

“Make an impression of a lady from the highest circles”

…which obviously makes me think of this:

…which I can only imagine, wasn’t the intended result. I imagine they wanted me to buy a watch or something.

Wordle discovered via SimpleBits.

[(CC) photo from Max XX]

To put it simply, the German language (naturally) describes the sounds made by animals with different words. As the related article puts it:

Have you ever heard a dog actually bark “bow wow” or a rooster enunciate “cock-a-doodle-doo”? Only some serious cultural conditioning leads us to believe that’s what they’re saying.

So the next time you need to discuss politics with an Angeln Saddelback, remember, it’s grunz grunz.

The topic was ‘If your money could talk, what would it say about you?’ Apologies for the shocking accent (and rather lame joke).