Kathryn Tyler – an unusually capable designer forced to settle for mediocre communication, in a typical designer’s conundrum Special skills highlighted One Sunday I was revelling in end-to-end re-runs of Kevin McCloud’s Grand Designs series, featuring some of Britain’s most ambitious self-build projects, with intrepid individuals ploughing through the design and construction of their dream homes, often via nightmare processes. The one that caught my...

IdeaPaint – a paint product marketed via an eBook about collaboration. Paint portrayed as a communication capability … The white wall challenge As part of one of my building projects in early 2013, I was looking for simple white paint for office walls. Nothing fancy, nothing exotic and nothing that’d break the bank. I started wondering about the idea of saving money by getting...

Science fiction delivers intriguing new ways to describe what we mere mortals are up to – and a different perspective on intriguing conceptual fundamentals I warily admit to having a wobbly weakness for good sci-fi, fully aware that such a foible can risk getting me branded as an intellectual lightweight fleeing from reality. This prompts a scramble to emphasise that only certain selected...