Hey! Surprise, here's a Friday edition of the Twotone newsletter!
How are you doing? I've been onboarding new colleagues, kicking off new projects, traveling to the USA to see my kids, squeezing in a #12hoursofmay overnighter & even preparations for getting married next month! 🥰
The ways in which May has been wild could be a whole issue on its own, so it's certainly not ironic this subject line rhyme caught my eye. 🙃
Well, it was inspired by Matthew Jones of Accept & Proceed. He made a pretty relevant (to me) post on LinkedIn about a designer named Harvey Ball. In 1963, Harvey created the design for the ubiquitous Smiley, the forerunner to every single emoji we know today. 🙂
Jones' post tells this story:
"An insurance company in Massachusetts hired [Harvey] to create a design to boost the morale of their employees. He got paid $45; it was so popular people started printing it themselves and putting it onto anything they could, hats, tees, badges, posters...
Harvey never trademarked the design... and partly because of that, this mark has brought global joy, it’s a shorthand for ‘happy’, and has been adopted by movements and cultures worldwide. It was a symbol of the UK’s acid house scene in my youth."
Jones' point? Harvey’s Smiley shows, in our globalised world why design is so important. It cuts through all barriers, all languages, and resonates deep across borders.
The iconic but ironic part? Harvey may have designed the Smiley but sure looked sad doing it, haha!
My take, menial & even cheesy aspects of projects can lead to legendary work and, as Jones puts it, even invent culture too. So put your best foot forward and consider each opportunity as a chance to contribute to manifesting the future you want to find yourself in. After all, "where attention goes, energy flows!"
as always, thank you for reading & sharing,
Jon
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📷 Banner image is another B&W snap by my daughter of my son
Cycling
Radiohead, Foo Fighters and more create new custom charity Brompton bicycles
13 artists have worked alongside Brompton to create charity bicycles to raise funds for live music crew affected by the pandemic.
I can't wait to finally go to a concert again! The lineup of artists involved in this is pretty wild, too!
The Berlin Ring becomes a car-reduced zone? A petition wants to achieve this
An initiative you know I support on the Ampler blog:
Berliners have started collecting signatures in a campaign for a car-reduced city center. This would make the city much more bike-friendly.
Social Ride Out - BACK ON TRACK | Giro d'Italia edition
We just kicked off with Ride Out Amsterdam & will be riding with them next Saturday now that Covid restrictions have relaxed enough to allow group rides again! Hope to see you there!
Business
99 Additional Bits of Unsolicited Advice
often, these lists make it into the intro. But this one is here.
Always fun to peruse & hopefully pick a few to use!
Hat tip to Peter of Let's be Fwends for the link!
Adam Stones new book: Influence
Thank you Adam also for the shoutout in your book!
Jon Woodroof runs Twotone, a successful cycling PR and sales agency. Building up his business from scratch, networking was crucial to getting established. And his key to networking success, he says, is kindness; doing things for people with nothing expected in return. He says: “Try and find out how you can help the person you are speaking to. If you can do it on the spot, even better. By offering them value, you won’t be forgotten in a hurry.”
FYI: the book is out in NL next Tuesday but not in the rest of Europe until 17th June.
Offline Matters Cards: Truth or Dare?
Do you dare to step away from the social media mandate? Are you ready to challenge yourself beyond the automatic solutions of creative work today?
The tools on the cards in this Truth or Dare-set are designed to challenge creative minds into unfamiliar places of thinking.
use code: PLAYTIME for a discount! :D
and, if you don't know it already, Jess (the creator of these cards) has a great newsletter too!
Friends
We All Have Our Reasons | Rapha
Cycling is many things to many people. For some of us, it is everything, an endless obsession. For others, it’s a smaller something, a partial presence. The one thing we all have in common is an ever-evolving relationship with riding.
I last raced with Owen back in 2016 in Bristol and was delighted to see him pop up in this short film. Worth the few minutes to watch it!
Kill The Hill | Mallorca 06 Nov 2021
Jan Eric of MA-13 is putting on this event in November. Looks like it will be a blast & I'm tempted to compete!
Kik Kong Industries / Visual Design
Kike is a friend of mine.
We play music together on Fridays & will be working on N+1's upcoming launch in Spain together too!
This is his new website. Check it out & follow him on insta!
Radness
Going Without Knowing: Geoff McFetridge × Norse Projects
Going without Knowing coulda been a subject line rhyme too! Oof! ; )
Well, to inspire this collection, Geoff & the crew from Norse Projects went on a bikepacking trip along the base of the Sierra Nevada mountains.
From the range, I dig the workcoat but it's waaay outta my price range + my old Vulpine one still works just fine. 😀
That being said, watching the 16mm film they shot along the way is inspiring & free too! ; )