Week 3, and time to slowly reveal my codename system.

Codenames, then. They were a thing we used at Berg, and lots of my colleagues and peers use them for referring to projects. They might sound a bit macho and secretive, but they do fulfil a useful purpose: it’s nice to give things a name before you’re in a place to reveal them. It makes writing about upcoming work much easier, too: things now have a single name, rather than a vague description. It took me a while to find a theme – I didn’t want anything too SF or militaristic, which is hard when you’re trying to find good codenames – but in the end I found a big enough list of names within a theme, that also had the requisite poetry to it; it makes me smile every time I pick one. +5 points if you’ve work out what they’re named for.

A few interesting meetings this week – talking to my friends at PAN Studio about potential collaboration, and working on a pitch (which my pipeline document tells me is codenamed Detling) with Rachel Coldicutt at Caper.

I also spent a day doing some work for Makielab – an exploration of a small problem space, to help with some decision making. It turned into a battle between me and geometry, but it moved a few things on, so I hope it proved useful.

And finally, I pushed the RSC project through to what, I hope, is its conclusion. That meant: picking up a second batch of laser-cutting, printing some posters, and finishing up the promotional materials.

The promotional website has not been too complex – a single-page site covering off the main elements of the project – but I’ve also put a chunk of time into a short explanatory video. Video always takes longer than you realise, but I’m pleased with the results; I hit “export” on Friday afternoon on the final thing. As well as learning quite a lot about Adobe Premiere, I’ve been reminded of how much better a film looks when it’s got good audio. The 69p clapperboard app I bought for my phone was worth every penny. Filming, still photography, and editing, took up most of the rest of the week.

And, I hope, we’ll launch the thing formally in a few weeks. I’m really excited to show you what I’ve been up to; I’m very proud of it.

November is looking quite healthy; next week sees the first two days of four total through Storythings (“Cheriton” in my pipeline spreadsheet). I’m still trying to pin down December’s work – get in touch if you’re looking for the sort of stuff I do (or: ask me if you don’t know what it is I do).