Howells.

I considered writing a long, rambling piece about what I did, who I met, and where I went during 2011, but feared it’d end up being a terrific bore of a post. Instead here is a series of pithy bullet points that summarise my year. It’s still very rambling and indulgent but you might find a few nice links here. It’s mainly here as a way for me to remember a pretty great year of work, travel, and a new home.

January

• At the beginning of the year settled into my lovely new studio at Clerkenwell Workshops, having moved my workplace East from West London. It felt good to be connected to the tech/design community, having been a little at arms length for a while. My intentions for leasing the studio changed over the year, but that’s for discussion in another blog post.
• Did my first cyclocross sportive (the link is to next year’s event) using my Specialized Tricross for something other than commuting. Hated it. Cyclocross is an uncomfortable, awkward hybrid between road and mountain biking. Vowed never to do cyclocross again (and haven’t). Continued to commute on the Tricross.

February

• Randomly decided to visit an alpaca farm in Oxfordshire, just because I think alpacas are brilliant and the farm is near my parents’ home. The farm and its lovely owner was subsequently featured in various Channel 4 idents.
• Met Matt Judge in the pub for the first time. (Buy his new book, Design Assembly 3.)
• Spent Valentine’s Day with Cecilia in our favourite restaurant, The River Café.

March

• Attended TEDxObserver – a fringe TED event hosted by The Observer. It was a wonderful day, filled with diverse, inspiring talks. Enjoyed hanging out with my friends for the day without spending it in the pub, and briefly with Daniel Gray and Dr. B.. (Psst… the next TEDxObserver is due to fall on March 10th this year.)
• Went skiing with pal Jamie Aitkenhead in St Anton. Stayed in a wonderfully traditional Austrian hotel, that served incredibly indulgent Eighties-style cordon-bleu food.

April

• Met and started discussing what would have been my perfect project with a new client: a popular magazine. Turns out that working with large publishing houses is like squeezing blog out of a stone, and nothing came of it. I worry for the future of some our beloved magazine brands…
• Went to Secret Cinema, which I always love. The film – The Battle for Algiers – was not really what I wanted from a Friday evening drunken fun romp, but the setting in the Waterloo Tunnels was truly special.
• Spent the weekend in Alicante, near Murcia.

May

• Flew to New York immediately after the Royal Wedding, which we spent sitting on the sofa under a duvet watching the proceedings on TV. Provided a good excuse to drink champagne at 10am.
• Staying at my friend Miranda’s lovely little apartment on Charles Street, West Village, I met up with some wonderful people and agencies - some for the first time, and some who I had met before. It’s an exciting place to be involved in tech and design now, and I forever hope that a little bit of the optimism and opportunities will rub off on London soon.
• Spent a brilliant night at the lovely, 20s themed Clover Club in Brooklyn with Cameron and the rest of the awesome FictiveKin guys. It was great hearing about their adventured with Gimmebar and their other projects, and it was where the germ of the idea for Fiftytwo came from.
• Attended Behance’s 99% Conference. Most definitely one of the most refined and interesting conferences around, and I’m looking forward to next year’s for which I bought a ticket. Sadly it is now sold out.
• Saw Sleep No More for the first time: a mind-blowing, immersive, performance piece by Punch Drunk. Here’s hoping they next move to London.
• Dreadfully jet-lagged, attended Reverberations at The Barbican – which felt like the longest concert I’ve ever been to – in tribute to Steve Reich. I was specifically thrilled to see Max Richter live.
• Attended a D&AD talk with the guys from North Kingdom. Their work is sublimely brilliant, and it was fascinating listening to them talk and learning about their process and culture.
• Went for dinner at Pizza East, still one of my favourite restaurants in London, despite usually surly wait staff.
• Met up with Ben Stott, and told him about my idea for Fiftytwo, in Nude Espresso. I was excited that he agreed to help me with the site’s branding.
• Had dinner with the rather brilliant Chambers Judd at Bistrot Bruno Loubet, to celebrate the successful launch of a project that we worked on together.

June

• Attended the private view for Kai & Sunny, The Flower Show at Stolenspace. I love their work, and look forward to having a number of their pieces framed.
• Went to Barcelona, specifically to attend OFFF. Despite it’s flaws, OFFF is one of the best conferences out there, and gave me the opportunity to meet and hang out with Glenn Garriock and the guys from FormFiftyFive, Darren Firth and his lovely (now) wife, and Leigh Hibell.
• After eating at Quimet & Quimet (an experience I won’t forget it, probably for the wrong reasons) – took a road trip with Cecilia to the coast.
• Cecilia moved into my tiny apartment as we start the search for a new place to move to.

July

• Inexplicably visited the alpaca farm again. I really do love alpacas.
• Went wine tasting with my father in the middle of Oxfordshire. Who knew there were vineyards in the middle of the English countryside, let alone vineyards that produce very nice wine indeed.
• Attended a Barts Choir concert at Cadogan Hall, featuring my friend Olivia and conducted by Ivor Setterfield (who mentored Goldie during the TV series, Maestro).
• Watched Princess Mononoke at The Barbican with Sally and Simon: one of Studio Ghibli’s greatest animated films.
• Attended a BBQ hosted by Nicola and Steve of Up My Sport – a sexy new London-based start-up who actually have a solid business plan and a nice site designed by Jason Reynolds and developed by Rik Lomas.
• Celebrated my and Cecilia’s 3rd anniversary by having dinner at The River Café. (It really is that good.)
• Attended Elliot Jay Stocks and Keir Whitaker’s Insights Tour in London, and watched talks by Tom Muller and others. It’s an interesting, casual format, and I hope they do it again in 2012.
• Spent the day filming with the guys from Stereo, who produced a great video of me for the Getty Images Digital Spotlights campaign (even though I have only seen it once, and cringed most of the way through).
• Popped over to Sweden for a day, mainly hung around Malmö.
• Bought a dining table from Unto This Last, who make beautiful hand-made furniture.
• Had my 30th birthday party in the garden of my parents’ house. A lovely, warm summer’s evening with a small crowd of wonderful company. I don’t do birthday parties much but this was superb.

August

• My actual birthday, on August 4. Spent it in the pub: bliss.
• Attended Field Day. I loved it in 2011, but really didn’t like it this year. Huge crowds, obnoxious youth, and a questionable sound system. Bailed out early and drank cocktails in The Worship Street Whistling Shop, which is a lovely prohibition-style bar in the City.
• Moved into a lovely new flat in Barons Court, from Parsons Green. They say moving is stressful, but other than sweating like I’ve never sweated before, it was an absolute breeze.
• Flew to Los Angeles. I was invited by Scion to check out their new car – the iQ – but stayed a little longer to check out the city that I haven’t visited since I was a kid. I really enjoyed it and felt like I had an extraordinary adventure, navigating the city without a car. I got horribly sun burnt, after taking an impromptu trek through the Hollywood Hills, and then cycling the length of Manhattan Beach to Santa Monica, and back. 2012 resolution: use sun block.

September

• Attended dConstruct with Rik Lomas. Superb talks by Don Norman, Kelly Goto, Frank Chimero, and Kevin Slavin. You can read Rik’s review of the event on his blog: he did a much better job than I attempted.
• Went for dinner at The Fat Duck, in Bray – Heston Blumenthal’s flagship restaurant. One of the most extraordinary dining experiences of my life. The hype really is deserved.
• Attended The Future of Mobile conference, with a very hungover Chambers Judd, who had just launched their awesomely addictive iPhone/iPad game, Ready Steady Bang.
• Visited the future home of the London Design Museum as part of Open House. The Commonwealth Institute is due to be refitted by John Pawson, and will be a truly magnificent space.
• Met the supremely talented Emil Olsson, as part of his brief visit to London.
• Bought a beautiful piece by Von.

October

• In New York, with Jamie Aitkenhead and Nick Defty of YCN. We stayed at a stunning loft on Bowery and Grand, which can be rented on Airbnb.
• Ate and drank our way through some of our favourite spots in the city, and went to see Sleep No More again.
• Watched the movie Drive, hungover in a Chelsea cinema – easily my movie of the year.
• Hung out with Nitzan, and some very special New York design folk like Eli, Allan, Able, Mark. Eli tells me the idea about N.Y.P.D., which I love.
• Had lunch with Matias and Zach from Behance. They’re up to some very exciting things there and I’m excited to see what they do next.
• Brooklyn Beta: so good, I wrote about it on a separate blog post. I won’t repeat how awesome it was here.
• Met Joseph Cohen, the CEO of Coursekit. They have just launched their service and will absolutely kill the education management/content provision market. It’s a wonderful, exciting product, and Joe is a super nice guy.
• Met Dom Goodrum, who had to contend with me battling an awful hangover. Luckily the breakfasts at Prune are magnificent.
• Attended Typo London, courtesey of Design Assembly. A superb line-up of talks that may or may not have been related to typography.

November

• Attended the launch of my friend Eli’s Archizines project, which curates the world’s best architecture magazines. Walked out feeling very proud of him.
• Discovered Chiswick, and loved it. Which means either I’m getting older or really want to move further West.
• Flew to Belfast for the Build Conference with Chambers Judd. After a so-so start it turned out to be a superb event, with Wilson Miner being the highlight for everyone.
• Went to see Jerusalem, featuring Mark Rylance as the lead. Everyone said it was the very best theatrical production ever created, but I thought – other than Rylance, who played a great character – it was distinctly amateur and dare I say it, a touch dull.
• Watched Mark Beaumont talk about how and why he cycled 18,000 miles around the world. His talk inspired me to do one or two legs of the upcoming World Cycle Challenge, but have since changed my mind: while it is a great opportunity, it’s a very long time to commit to a year in advance.
• Attended the IQ2 “If” conference, which felt like a sadly under-attended, but wonderful, version of TED. An exciting diverse array of speakers and topics, covering science, arts, culture and media.
• Moved out of my office, having decided not to renew its lease. The reasons are for another post.

December

• Started the month with a mini-holiday, staying at Babington House in Somerset. Beautiful interior food, decent food, and a a nice bar; the experience punctuated with a lovely muddy country walk. The hotel itself is part of the Soho House group, and so is a slightly pastiched Londoner’s idea of what the countryside is all about.
• Visited my wonderful ex-studio mates, Rik Lomas, Al Monk, and Sev Furneux at their new office on Scrutton Street.
• Attended the Visual Editions/Vitsoe collaboration opening night, drank a nice gin and tonic and admired the wonderful books which sat atop the even more wonderful shelves.
• Went to the launch of Design Assembly 3 at Wolf Ollins, and had plenty of booze with Tom Muller, Leigh Hibell, Gui Seiz, Ben Stott, Sneaky Raccoon, Sawdust, Mat Dolphin, Graphic Drip, Very Own Studio, Benji Holyrod, Jamie Long, Ben Stott: it was a great turn out for a brilliant cause.
• A difficult handover meant a late start to It’s Nice That’s conference, In Progress. A wonderful series of talks by interesting players. For me the main take out is that old school advertising agencies like Wieden + Kennedy London and Saatchi + Saatchi have absolutely no idea what they are doing, and are extremely worried about the future.
• Went to the second Secret Cinema of the year: I can’t say what the theme or film was as it will play into the new year, but it was a wonderful, well-executed experience.
• Had Christmas Drinks with other fellow independents like Ah Studio, Nate Vanderende, Chambers Judd, et al at The Slaughtered Lamb, followed up by a meal at Morito, which is steadily becoming my second most favourite restaurant in London.
• Watched Gary Hustwit’s Urbanized at The Barbican. I loved it, even though the scope was perhaps far too broad to fit into a single movie.