Ideas

The jars had nothing in them but tap water and food colouring. They shimmered seductively against a back wall – blue, green, yellow, red and orange – but that still didn't explain why people gravitated towards them, actually hovered around them, looking at one, and then another, and another ... the only explanation for that is the sheer power of the human imagination.

There was a time when it seemed we were destined design in two-colours only. Budgets were tight and the cost savings of printing in two as opposed to four (or more) colours were substantial.

Ironically, though, learning to make the most of what one could achieve with two colours lead to results that we still remain extremely proud of – examples of which include the catalogs we designed for the Netherlands Architectural Institute in Rotterdam, and the annual student prospectus we designed for the National College of Art and Design in Dublin.

The collecting mania of the enlightenment backed strict believers in the story of Noah and the Ark into a tricky corner.

As zoologists, botanists, amateur naturalists, and professional hunters scoured the earth, bagging and boxing every living thing – not to mention every trace of any once living thing – the creationists of the time could no longer overlook the growing mountain of evidence. How could Noah have possibly fit all that into one measly ark? As Sheriff Brody so eloquently said in the movie Jaws, you're gonna need a bigger boat.

We all absorb information differently; some people prefer imagery to words, others words to imagery. Some of us skim the surface for large nuggets of information, while others dig deep for the hidden flakes of detail. Making matters even more complicated, our individual habits change with the context and our mood. A skimmer one day may be detail obsessed the next; and a picture person can just as suddenly convert to the world of words.

Inspiration and ideas often come from the least expected places. Take for example one of our favourite books, the “The Complete Dog Book” from the American Kennel Club. We found it in the stacks of eclectic second-hand gems at Strand Books in New York.