418QE

welcome to 418QE, musings on design.

now I know

Published: July 16th, 2014

For those of you who have asked me if I created another Christmas Snowflake book for my nephew, I have. I was just remiss in posting it. As each year passes it gets a little more difficult to create a brand new book and figure out what the idea for the new one should be. However I did complete this fourth book for Nathan, or “Baby Nathan” as I like to refer to him. As usual, this book was fun to work on, but what was different was the fact that an idea for this book came to me rather quickly, unlike my ideas the last few years.

now I know excerpt

Design For Care

Published: July 2nd, 2014

Last year I had an opportunity to work with Peter Jones on a ground breaking book about approaching health care with a human-centered design approach. Many of the methodologies introduced new tools and techniques that would easily improve the lives of patients, allowing them more participation and better interactions with their caregivers and doctors. The book I am referring to is called Design For Care – Innovating Healthcare Experience by Peter H. Jones.

Design For Care

Damn proud of the PM’s plane

Published: June 18th, 2013

After publishing Keith Branscombe’s article about the PM’s plane, which quite honestly mirrored thousands of comments in the newspapers and on television albeit with far more flare, I was lucky enough to have the designer of The Government of Canada CC1-150 paint scheme email me a short but polite “Drop me a line”. So unlike the general media whose articles were written on a solely political slant (which I actually blame for igniting the firestorm of comments), I asked Jim to write me a rebuttal. He has easily exceeded my expectations by sharing some of his knowledge on his rather unconventional design niche in aircraft paint scheme design.

Polaris CC-150

Another federal design disaster

Published: June 11th, 2013

My good friend Keith Branscombe is at it again. A couple of days ago he sent me a beautiful rant about the Canadian Government and its lack of thinking when it comes to branding our national image. This time it is about the new paint job on the Prime Minister’s military Airbus jet, the Polaris CC-150. He has graciously allowed me to publish it. Enjoy!

RCAF logo up close

Designing Health Care Solutions

Published: February 17th, 2013

It’s great to have modern health care in Canada, but we all know and have experienced that our Health Care System is excessively administered and not properly designed for people to understand and be empowered to lead their own health initiatives. In fact, we all have all found it to be overly confusing and too complex even for simple tasks. Have you often wondered if health professionals feel the same way? And how could designers help?

Health Care Design – Do you remember ParticipACTION?

Fun in the Snow

Published: December 9th, 2012

Usually my day is filled with similar strategy and branding issues for various companies. But things are slowing down as Christmas approaches even if the snow has yet to fall. For the last two years I have produced a children’s book for my nephew Nathan about the life and times of a snowflake. The first book was about the Life of a Snowflake, and the second dealt with his dreams. Now I am no illustrator but I do the best I can and I think that this year’s book and my third in the series turned out better than ever.

Fun in the Snow Book Excerpt – Snowmen always seem friendly to me.

Strategically speaking

Published: May 16th, 2012

I was asked the other day about strategy and what that meant for client engagements. Obviously an open ended question, with few parameters. There was no use case study to help construct a foundation nor was there any sense of timeline for this imaginary engagement. So I gave my best response at the time but I have been thinking about ever since.

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welcome to 418QE, musings on design.

now I know

Design For Care

Damn proud of the PM’s plane

Another federal design disaster

Designing Health Care Solutions

Fun in the Snow

Strategically speaking

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