Unbillable Hours: A peek inside the design channel
Unbillable Hours is our weekly round-up of what we're doing when we're not working on client projects, plus our most-talked-about Slack links.
Welcome to this weeks design focused Unbillable Hours. Prepare yourself for spelling mistakes galore, a glance inside the #design slack channel and recommendations for where to eat whilst getting your lid did. Hold on tight.
What’s been occurring in the design slack channel
The Bloomberg redesign has been a hot topic this week. It’s certainly a bold move, whether it’s to your taste or not. We particularly like the 404 and 500 error page.
Matthew Milan has written a thought-provoking piece about the future of design consultancies and value we can add to in-house teams.
It is now possible to register to vote using Gov.uk. The 11 step form is a delight to use, something we’ve come to expect from GDS.
Alex Schleifer, AirBnB’s new Head of Design, believes ‘design-led’ companies don’t work. Find out why here.
A couple of obligatory Apple links: One about creating art and photography using your iPhone and a multitude of apps (most of which we use!) and the second about about the exciting prospect of the new Photos app and some hints towards an interesting new interface.
Richard Pope also sets a challenge for web designers in 2015.
Elsewhere… what we’ve been reading
The messaging app Line branches out and launches an online grocery delivery service in Southeast Asia.
13 cool things you might not know you can do with Slack. Our favourite thing is setting Slack to secretly remind you about anything. Simply type '/remind me' and the thing you want to be reminded about and Slack will privately remind you to do it. Just like Siri... except more reliable.
Oh, and Yoda made an appearance on Slack this week.
Under Armour buys MyFitnessPal for $475M.
Gensler propose bike and pedestrian paths in London’s abandoned tube tunnels. Interesting idea (in terms of cycling safety) but we're happy walking overground.
What we're eating
Raffi delivers a Made by Many Cake Club winner with his delicious lemon curd shortbread.
A Game Of Thrones-themed pop-up restaurant will be open from 13-15 Feb at the Andaz Liverpool Street Hotel to celebrate the release of season 4.
A pop-up cheese bar is opening in a Dalston hair salon… no-one knows why.
What we’ve be watching and listening to
Rachel’s been compiling a playlist of all (well at least some of) the music we share in the #music-i-like channel.
The making of Daisy Jacob’s ‘The Bigger Picture’ is well worth a watch
A suspicious mini-van has been spotted driving around San Fransisco. There’s speculation that it may might be a prototype of a self-driving car from Apple.
We learnt how Strategy dog can sense Alfie (her dog walker) from all the way across the canal.
And finally...
Hackaball's Kickstarter campaign is just around the corner. Get a sneak peak at what to expect by following @hackaball on instagram. For more, check out Rachel's post here.
That’s all folks.
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