now is the splinter of our discotheque

A very lovely mailer. Three A2 posters from Jim (one of the nice men of 26), designed by Elmwood.

don't say too much

John of 26 tipped some other 26ers about this post on Dave Trott's blog about the dangers of over-communication. Excellent stuff.

extra-curricular

If you're by any chance braving London's West End to go Christmas shopping over the next couple of weeks, stop by the Covent Garden Piazza if you can. The SpinVox Wishing Well will be there for the next couple of weeks. It's a collaboration between voice-to-text company SpinVox and design communications agency Freestate - the idea being that passers-by call in their wishes which will then appear as text in real time on the walls of the Well. As a member of 26, I was invited to write some of the several hundred pre-loaded wishes that appeared when the Wishing Well first launched (cheers Rishi). Very fun and quite a striking thing, don't you agree? You can read more about it here or here.

words' work

Don't know quite why, but I've been inspired to get a couple of long dormant writing projects off the ground this weekend. Suspect it has to do with these two things I've enjoyed in the past couple of weeks. First, my love of all things Stephen Fry has reasserted itself. I follow him on Twitter (and, as with thousands of his other fans, he was kind enough to follow back). And I've just started getting his vodcasts. Whatever the media, I love the fact that you're just as likely to hear his verdict on the G-Phone or some other piece of kit as his love of Oscar Wilde or Anton Chekhov's stories. Or even, if you're up to it, a reflection on structuralist linguistics. What a dude. Then there's this, the first annual 26 speech. I couldn't be there myself, but as you'll see from this vid, it was a corker. Philip Collins, a former speech writer for Tony Blair, took to the lectern for the inaugural speech, about, ironically, how to write a great speech. No, it's bigger than that; what emerges is a meditation on great writing that can be applied to any form. For example: “It’s not the words but the facts that make us shiver. The emotional effect comes from the restraint that allows the subject to be its own witness.”
Annual 26 speech 2008 from Tom Clarkson on Vimeo.