Unfinished Business

Brighton-based developer Benjamin Hollway loves a burger in a brioche bun and joins me on Unfinished Business this week to talk about how young people feel excluded from some industry events and how conferences and meet-ups should cater for people who don’t want to or are too young to drink. Benjamin was shortlisted for ‘emerging talent of the year’ at the Net Awards and oh, did I mention that he’...

Designer and artist Brendan Dawes is back on episode 90 of Unfinished Business this week to talk about his recent commission by Mailchimp, Six Monkeys , which explores interactions with email through physical objects named after six famous chimpanzees. Before that though, we talk more about what’s happening with Geek Mental Help Week , including whether the word ‘geek’ takes something away from th...

This week’s an emotional episode of Unfinished Business . After talking about why a burger in a donut should never, ever have become a thing, Laura Kalbag and I discuss mental health issues in our industry. We talk about my own struggles with depression and depersonalisation disorder, issues that stem from my father’s own mental health issues and suicide.

This week on Unfinished Business , Harry Roberts and I have some pretty big, Boag-shaped, boots to fill after last week’s episode. Harry takes the opposite view to Paul about sharing personal struggles in a work context and worries about the impression that sharing give to prospective clients. Then we talk about how clients’ commissioning process for creative services is largely broken, the differ...

This week on Unfinished Business , I had planned to talk with Paul Boag about client briefs and managing expectations. But when we sat down to talk, we were both in the mood to talk about something much, more personal. We discussed how we feel about how Twitter has changed, Erin Kissane’s ‘Ditching Twitter,’ Dan Edwards’ ‘Treading through treacle’ and our general sense of melancholy about our indu...

In the second part of our icon designer double bill, this week on Unfinished Business , I’m joined by designer, illustrator the and iconographer behind Symbolicons, Jory Raphael . We talk about how we feel about the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus announcement, the design of the Apple Watch software and whether it looks at home on the watch’s hardware. We discuss Jory’s illustration work including his artwork...

Icon designer Jon Hicks joins me this week on Unfinished Business to discuss our experiences of recent conferences including dConstruct (me) and An Event Apart (him.) We narrowly avoid talking about our predictions for the upcoming Apple event and instead discuss how to keep work and home life separate, whether it‘s right to be connected to work outside work hours and how having an office can help...

This week on Unfinished Business , I’m joined by Cole Henley, technical director at Mud . We discuss his latest Freelance rates survey, how the results have changed over the last three years and what he’s learned from making the survey. I admire Cole’s Mud very much, so we talk about how to grow a business, when to hire new people and the importance of regular advice from someone on the outside. I...

Laura Kalbag and Ashley Baxter did a wonderful job hosting Unfinished Business for the last three weeks and this week Laura hands it back to me . We talk about how we interpret the ‘business’ theme of Unfinished Business differently and how that changes the focus of the podcast. As we’re both small business owners and we’ve both been on holiday recently, we discuss how we handle keeping on top of...

Ashley Baxter and Laura Kalbag are back for their final takeover episode of Unfinished Business . We talk about using social media for your business and whether writing and speaking are a scalable part of your business model. We had a couple of questions from Shane Hudson and Simon MacFadyen on forcing yourself out of your comfort zone and advice to a designer just starting out. This episode is sp...

Ashley Baxter and Laura Kalbag are back again for this week’s episode of Unfinished Business . We talk about the common myths around working for yourself, particularly as a solo entity working from home. We have some great questions from Elliot Davis, Simon Cox, and Shane Prendergast, resulting in us talking about photo manipulation and what do we both want to achieve before we retire? This episod...

While Andy’s on holiday, Ashley Baxter and Laura Kalbag take over this week’s episode of Unfinished Business . We talk about all things business insurance, including public liability, professional indemnity, business contents and copyright infringement. And it’s not boring, honest! This episode is sponsored by Devicelab , Perch and dConstruct . Get your ticket to dConstruct for only £125+VAT (£150...

Before we go any further, I need to let people know that there is absolutely zero business content in the show this week. (Thousands of people are thinking now, “when is there ever?”) That‘s because this is a spoiler filled ‘Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes’ cinema special episode with my guests and film buff friends Brendan Dawes and Jeremy Keith . It’s a wild show. We ask whether there should be a...

I’ve been looking forward to speaking with Sara Soueidan on this week’s episode of Unfinished Business for a long while, not least because I’m a huge, huge, fan of her work. She’s been writing what I consider to be the best articles about CSS and SVG. We talk about those, yes, but we also talk about what it’s like for her, living and working as a web developer in her home country of Lebanon. We di...

Ashley Baxter ’s back on Unfinished Business this week . We talk about the reasons why she’s speaking in public more and how it may help her to promote her new business. Speaking of promotion, we discuss her $99 tweet sponsoring experiment, how buying tweets works and whether it worked for her. We also talk about how to move on when you feel like you’ve reached a plateau, in business as well as in...

This week on Unfinished Business , impresario, organiser of Flash On The Beach and more recently Reasons To Be Creative , John Davey offers me some fatherly advice on how to handle a personal dilemma and what not to wear at Alex ’s upcoming graduation. We talk about the Reasons To Be Creative conference, how he finds and why he chooses so many new speakers and his unusual elevator pitch approach....

Designer and artist Brendan Dawes joins me again for the 75th episode of my “one-sided, biased, poor quality personal soapbox .” We talk about the people who have inspired us the most in our working lives and Bren tells me all about how the famous designer and filmmaker Hillman Curtis helped him to get started. It’s an inspiring story. I’ve also reinstated the after hours film talk spot that Anna...

This week on Unfinished Business , Sean Johnson and I talk not only about Laura Nevo’s “Dear Visual Design” open letter but also how wrong the people who thought I’d criticise Laura are. While I disagree completely with Laura’s message, I appreciate her writing it, not least because it helps sum up everything that I think is wrong about how we talk about web design today. Sean’s not just along for...

Jeremy Keith joins me on this, episode 73 of Unfinished Business . Although I try to steer clean of provoking him by not talking about moon landings, we disagree about just about everything else. Fish tacos, things that scientists haven’t done yet and I think they should’ve and what makes advertising fascinating to me and hateful to him. It’s a lively show. There are sparks. I think you’ll like it...

A slight change of format for this week’s Unfinished Business . Laura Kalbag wanted to know our experiences of working with our partners—she’s just started working with hers—so she emailed Sue some questions. I hadn’t heard her answers until Laura read them on the show, but I think that makes for interesting listening. I’ll publish Sue’s full answers on Stuff and Nonsense later on in the week. Tha...

Ashley Baxter is back on Unfinished Business this week and we start the show by talking about why she started a podcast with some other fella . We discuss how businesses should be authentic on Twitter and if a brand can justifiably spend 45 days planning a tweet about cheese. (Mmmm, cheese.) We round off this week by talking about how working with other people can affect your fitness and diet and...

Illustrator Josh Cleland joins me for episode 70 of Unfinished Business this week. We discuss about how I’m struggling with an idea for the next version of the Stuff and Nonsense header and I baffle Josh by talking about vintage British adverts, including the PG Tips chimps and Cadbury Smash’s famous Martians.

On Unfinished Business this week , I’m joined by designer and artist, the one and only Brendan Dawes . Bren and I talk about data inspired art and his Cinema Redux pieces. As we can never get together and not discuss films, so we talk about the greatest westerns of all time, the True Grit remake and Django Unchained. Plus, being ‘men of a certain age’ we reminisce about childrens TV from the seven...

On Unfinished Business this week , and with us both fresh from the Net Awards, Laura Kalbag and I talk about our experiences there. I explain why I don’t feel at home in the web design industry as it is today and how its conversations no longer reflect my interests in design. After last week’s ‘giant’ misunderstanding about speaker fees, we also talk about the responsibilities that speakers have t...

On this week’s (early) episode of Unfinished Business , Ashley Baxter ’s back to talk about her brand new business, Insurance By Jack . We talk about why she started the business and some of the challenges she’s already faced. No ‘Ashley’ episode would be complete without her “Baxter’s Scottish Slang Word of the Week.” What is it? You’ll just have to listen to the show to find oot. Oor sponsors th...