France, 1925
Le Creuset

Cooking certain things very slowly makes them taste very good indeed.A heavy cast iron pot is just the trick.

Our Le Creuset, called Nigel, regularly dishes up such delicacies as melt-in-the-mouth roast lamb and stoved potatoes. 

Right now I’m working with a client to fine-tune their yellow/orange-coloured logo. We’ve got something we’re happy with on screen, but achieving it on print is quite a bit trickier.
Most of the usual tricks- matching to swatches, speccing a Pantone ink, etc work well for volume printing but are an unlikely prospect with a small local printer.
Also, the yellow/orange shade is a tough one to get right in print.We’ll see which of my range of options work out- we may have to be realistic and choose a shade which is more ‘flexible’.

UK, 1921
Unknown

At first, I thought the filofax ‘personal’ paper size, which bears little relation to the ISO ‘A’ series, was a little odd. Now I know it’s a great size for carrying around and fitting it all in. Top tip- use a pencil to write in it, so you can easily rearrange dates and update addresses.

Good because

Doesn’t need synchronising, or referring to a user manual- you just write in it. I do enjoy the writing and scribbling part!

Germany, 1908
Melitta Bentz

Surprising that one of the most minimalist ways of brewing coffee is also one of the best! Note that Bentz was repsonsible for the idea of the paper filter, not necessarily the plastic cone.
(Via About.com inventors)

Good because

Best taste, and very easy to clean!

Switzerland, 1929
Carlo Schmid

Why is this a classic?

A simple 2mm clutch pencil first produced in 1929 and altered very little since. Solidly made from aluminium, with a clever repointer built into the end cap. Here’s an image of a very early version for comparison:

Good for

Writing and sketching

Watched Die Another Day on arrival in Norfolk. Bond at Christmas is a bit of a tradition. Now, every Bond film stretches credulity a fair bit, but I thought this one was sillier than usual (think car chase round a hotel made of rapidly-melting ice in Iceland, where the cars don’t show a scratch!). It was worse for it.

One of my family will be getting this exciting voucher for Christmas- but who?  

I’ve recently taken on production of our college magazine, Lampanelle. I’ve come up with a new mark for it,here’s a sneak preview:  

The new cover image is the ceiling of an otherwise ordinary conference centre in Vienna.

Read about it here

My favourite tip:

I popped ALL the keys off to allow the keyboard to completely dry (either draw, write down where the keys go, or take a picture so you can put ‘em all back in the right place)     

There speaks the voice of experience!