ISSUE 008

SOMETHING LOVELY
​that I saw

A very good friend of mine introduced me to the artwork of CJ Hendry, so when her "Flower Shop" pop up came to Brisbane I had to stop by. I typically prefer the 'real' thing but these were lovely and whimsical, and will make me think of my far-away friend every time I see them!

SOMETHING USEFUL
​that I'm trying

It's mid-year review time (blergh...especially for anyone working in any kind of corporate role!) and I came across the Situation-Behaviour-Impact model this week. It's a feedback framework, and was built for leadership training back in the 1970s by the Centre for Creative Leadership. I thought it was quite a good structure for anyone who finds themselves in a position where they have to provide feedback to someone, and might be struggling on how to frame it.

Using SBI, you name the situation, describe the specific behaviour, then explain the impact it had. This is a really simple and good way to avoid giving vague feedback or reassurance (which might feel like you're being kind or nice…but isn't actually overly useful to the person receiving it).

I'm trying to see if it also works when someone asks me to look at something (a proposal, a concept pack etc etc). So instead of telling a junior designer "the concept pack needs work," it's more like: "on page three, when you jumped straight into the visuals before showing how the space would actually function, the client had nothing to anchor the story to."

I've been on the receiving end of enough vague feedback to know how much energy gets wasted just trying to figure out what someone actually meant. Good feedback shouldn't have to come with a decoding step - the person on the other end should be able to spend their time fixing the thing, not reverse-engineering your comment!

SOMETHING INTERESTING
​that I read this week

I've been researching design history for some of my Instagram content, and came across the story of the incredibly fashionable wallpaper in Europe that, for most of the 1800s, was actually poisoning people ☠️

The pigment was called Scheele's Green, made with a compound of copper and arsenic. It gave wallpaper this rich, vivid green that nothing else at the time could match, so it turned up everywhere - drawing rooms, nurseries, even dress fabric.

The problem was damp. In humid rooms, mould would react with the arsenic and release a toxic gas straight into the air. People reported headaches, nausea, skin sores, and nobody could work out why, because the wallpaper was the last thing anyone suspected. There's even a long running theory that it contributed to Napoleon's death, from the arsenic laced green wallpaper in his final home on St Helena.

It took decades for anyone to connect the colour to the symptoms. William Morris, one of the most famous wallpaper designers of the era, spent years publicly dismissing the concerns, which is awkward given his family's fortune came from arsenic mines.

Turns out Kermit was right - it's not easy being green 💚

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