Some very creative people, a few of whom I have the pleasure of knowing, have spent 18 months or so telling themselves a beautiful fairytale about creativity in times of economic austerity.

They say “the best art is created during recessions/crisis/cuts/depression” and they hope their work matches up.

And that’s lovely. Really. But it’s part of an amazingly naive ‘Big Apology’ we’re all living in. It’s exactly the same kind of voice that said, in 2008, “You know what, I think a recession will be good for us, just you wait.”

Lunacy. Why on earth do we celebrate the amazingly stupid idea that peak art is found in times where most of the population – though often not the successful artists by the way – are living hand to mouth? It’s just a myth, one that makes funding cuts to schools more bearable; “It’s okay, they’ll flourish under austerity.” Again; lunacy.

Shouldn’t we be championing the kind of strategic investment that means we can sustain cultural brilliance? Shouldn’t we be fighting to make sure that the hubs around which creativity (in all disciplines, from illustration to engineering and back again) are protected?

I’d rather that than look back in thirty years and remind myself that ‘design/art/music/writing was better back then’.

Applying this to the ‘Silicone Roundabout’; do we want a place – a sector – that graduates want to go to, or do we want it to be a place people stop at before going to San Francisco?

Comics; Do we want showcases like Solipsistic Pop to be the thing people do before North American publishers notice, or should they have the kind of long-term legacy that leaves people jealous?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying either of those are more important than schools, the NHS or having an infrastructure than can weather further economic turmoil; I’m just asking you to find a less offensive bedtime story.

You can now order the Phone Mobile from the Design By Me store.

I tried to build the version with claws, but the Digital Designer didn’t have the right components. So I made sure you get this cheeky chap to make up for it.

Order one here.

Not to matter. I’m publishing a slightly different version here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Go and make a t-shirt for yourself.

Be Honourable! by Matthew Sheret is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at matthewsheret.com.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://matthewsheret.com.

Part of my modest haul from Comiket. A pleasure to meet Dan again, at a really great event. He drove his students a heroic distance to be there, but it looks like everyone got quite a kick out of it.

It’s Last.fm’s first major advertising push, rolled out on the XTP network on the London Underground. I’m really pleased with it. Seeing it in the flesh – and seeing the response to it – was pretty awesome.

I recently “discovered” Abe Books, which was dangerous. A few clicks later and I managed to fill a few of the holes in my B.S. Johnson collection.

I say a few holes… I’ve now got pretty much everything published by him. And by ordering these I’ve collected some strange version of his final words.

It makes it very difficult to know how or when to start on these three books. By finishing them I somehow close a chapter on Johnson, and for a lot of reasons I don’t want to do that.

Two of these books finish with one particular poem, “Distance Piece”, which as his final printed words are tough to read through.

As Johnson becomes a person I have read I wonder if these words might linger, if that sensation might hang, perhaps in a way I’m sure Johnson would label as “the detritus of the religious feeling”.

Wouldn’t it be good if there was a servo control app for the iPhone and iPad? Where you could tap in some on/offs, forward/backs and control a motor or motors via bluetooth or wifi or the headphone port. Then your iPhone or iPad could drive itself around. And Matt’s Lego iPhone stand could drive up to him and tell him to get typing.

Which of course I read using this

The post-script to making this stand is that I didn’t remember until half an hour later that I’ve actually got a dock for this phone anyway. I got caught up in the creation and customisation of this familiar, and it’s not unrelated to these three pieces of context:

1) The Girl had been away for a few days, and I’d been alone in the flat a lot

2) Before and after a full day at the (new) job I’m still doing freelance projects. The further removed from my laptop these projects are the better for my attention span and my enjoyment

3) I really like playing with Lego

Separating, or at the very least augmenting, a ‘companion’ element from screens feels important, but in quite a natural way.

Basically, why aren’t there things at Maplin’s I can plug this in to yet?