Best thing about the studio?

As a freelancer you make your home office space the best you can, but the fact the business is really just you, the laptop, a phone and access to the internet the studio can be anywhere you want to work. Like at a park table overlooking the beach or from the comfort of a cafe and good coffee.

Worst thing about the studio?

The flood or famine nature of work as a freelancer. There are times when you are totally swamped and others where there is only a trickle of work coming in. Those are the times when you get to catch up on paperwork, self directed projects for your freelancing business, or on all the latest design books.

1. It’s geeky, but I love:

My collection of design toys for my desk. They find themselves photographed all too often and start a lot of conversations. Normally along the lines of ‘where the hell do you find such twisted toys?’

2. A gift

One of my most treasured gifts lives on my desk at work, it is a gift from my wife of a framed photo of us together with our daughter not long after she was born. It lives on my desk and is always positioned so I can see it whilst working.

3. Something everyone always comments on:

My transmetropolitan action figure of a two headed smoking cat. From a distance or from the side it looks normal, get up close and you realise there is so much more to it. I have had lots of people ask where I got it from. Then I get to introduce them to the transmetropolitan comic and the writer Warren Ellis.

4. An item I couldn’t work without:

It used to be my sketchbooks, they travelled everywhere with me for everything from drawing ideas down to putting crazy ideas and article topics down as I had them, now it’s the iPhone. It replaces my old digital camera, my iPod and the notepads I used to carry in my back pocket for writing out chapters of my book on design on the train to and from work. Now I have all that as well as being able to read books, email, access to social media networks and the ability to write my articles directly in the admin/author section of the websites I write for. I would have to go back to carrying a big satchel to fit everything if I moved away from it!

5. Favourite book:

The Sin City graphic novel by Frank Miller. It is black and white gritty illustration for a dark story. I still prefer it over the others in the Sin City range, and obviously 300 is up there as well. I was following his work from the Hard Boiled stuff he did with Geoff Darrow, if you haven’t seen that series, you need to go get it. Darrow adds so much extra detail to each page it is amazing what you will find.

6. I made it:

The obscure comics I was putting out when I was younger. The plan is to find a copy of each of them, scan them in and have copies available on the web as PDFs for people to check out.

7. A present to myself:

Hands down it is the last season of Red Dwarf. It was the first choice I made when looking through the iTunes store for things to help relax me after a busy day of work on the train ride home.