I deactivated all my social media accounts a couple of months ago. Instagram, Facebook, Bluesky, LinkedIn, the lot. It was in an effort, along with other measures, to get on top of some mental health issues I’ve been dealing with for a while. This post isn’t about living with depression though, it’s about the widerContinue reading “Conundrum de dum: musings on deactivating social media”
Category Archives: Culture
Graphic commons: A memory drift
Date: 18.05.2025Distance: 4 milesSteps: 9150Start: 11:50Ground covered: Town centre and feeder streets It’s been a while. Four hours to kill in the East Midlands gave me time to visit a town I lived in for five years in the 1980s, exactly 40 years ago. The intention wasn’t nostalgia, but that naturally occurred as memories jarredContinue reading “Graphic commons: A memory drift”
Too much pressure: 2 Tone and typography
My introduction to graphic design was staring up at a Beatles poster on my bedroom wall aged 8, wondering why the vertical stroke of the T dropped below the baseline of the band’s name. I had no understanding that what I was pondering was actually called typography, nor that the words graphic and design existed.Continue reading “Too much pressure: 2 Tone and typography”
Nostalgia aid
This month, Just For One Day: The Live Aid Musical, opens at The Old Vic in London. While in 1985 the focus of the original Live Aid was all about raising money for famine-struck Ethiopia, despite Just For One Day giving 10% of all profits to The Band Aid Charitable Trust, nostalgia appears to beContinue reading “Nostalgia aid”
Graphic commons: transmission
I found this tape in the shape of a cross on the floor of a Waitrose store at an M1 service station last weekend. Such yellow and black tape is typically synonymous as a health & safety hazard warning for when a surface is unsafe, and used “for excavation, trip hazards, low hanging objects andContinue reading “Graphic commons: transmission”
Finding Bob Linney
I didn’t think I knew Bob Linney. It turns out though that I did—he was the mysterious designer behind a print that had been hanging in our house for some time. Bought by my wife from an antiques centre several years ago, his London Brass poster had hung on our landing wall until, on movingContinue reading “Finding Bob Linney”
Insidiousness
In response to the worldwide epidemic of COVID-19 there is an inevitability to the words …And Wash Your Hands, replacing …And Carry On, as the coda to Keep Calm and Carry On posters. Given that news of the spread of the virus has the ability to produce widespread panic, any populist measures to get health messages across toContinue reading “Insidiousness”
The times they are a-changin’
I recently wrote here about frustrations I was having with how my iPhone displayed album sleeves on its Music app. Since then I’ve been somewhat forced to sign-up to Apple Music to get over this, (and other), issues with the app. In doing so it feels like I have made a major shift in someContinue reading “The times they are a-changin’”
Proposing the Graphic Commons
This text was first published as a pamphlet of the same name in August 2017. It is republished here for the first time online. Copies of the original pamphlet, as a numbered limited edition of 300, are still available on request. Please get in contact if you would like a copy. This essay introduces theContinue reading “Proposing the Graphic Commons”
Led by donkeys
In living through the nightmare that is, (possibly), the final stages of the UK being in the European Union, it is difficult to see outside of the political, media and social storm that is raging around us. Looking back on this post, after whatever Brexit becomes, readers will, I suspect, be aghast at just whatContinue reading “Led by donkeys”
Nigel Ball 