We’ve been down to London for the weekend. I’ve finished off a book I started last summer and have never got round to finishing fully (that last chapter, man, but for completeness’ sake), read another from start to finish, and also started another, The Inevitable by Kevin Kelly, which has got me pretty excited already, just several pages in. Here is a grab:

Today we went to the Design Museum. A first chance to visit the museum in its wonderful new building and last chances to see the New Old and Beazley Designs of the Year exhibitions. A great place to go, and the kids got a lot out of it – fatherly apprehension I had dragged them around something against their will and they would hold it against me in later life abated as we left.

I was reminded about last April, out in New York. Hard work, but really engaging. And I blogged about a particularly fun weekend I had, seeing a lot of designy things. Usually I splat these on Twitter or Instagram, but I liked/still like the idea of compiling those artefacts into a collected blog post. Here’s one of those posts from NYC. And here’s the other. I always forget to do this/that.

So, this post is a collection of Some Things That Caught My Eye. I put the images on my Instagram account originally.

What is ‘good’ design? sign on the top floor of the Design Museum. [View on Instagram]

Sinclair ZX Spectrum – and a paddle in the bottom right. [View on Instagram]

I think old age starts at… (Not my reply by the way.) [View on Instagram]

Transport, reminding me of my time at HMRC, working in ‘real’ government. [View on Instagram]

Lego wheelchair. (More here.) [View on Instagram]

Open source way-finding icons for refugees, on display at the Beazley. [View on Instagram]

MullenLowe’s excellent ad campaign for the Samaritans, on display at the Beazley. [View on Instagram]

Pokemon Go? Pokemon no. (Again, not my reply.) [View on Instagram]

Better done than prfect poster, on display at the Beazley. Erik Spiekermann blogged about his work here. [View on Instagram]

“The Eames House, created specifically to meet the designers’ needs… was built with off-the shelf components.” I love Charles and Ray anyhow. But again, starting with the needs before finding an off-the-shelf solution. Off-the-shelf is cool, but it has to meet needs discovered first. [View on Instagram]