I have the pleasure of being the Creative Director for a great group of people called Noise Inc. We love what we do and hopefully everything we do is loved. We couldn’t do half of the great work without smart people and smart facts and insight. So what better way to give something back to our friends this year than a fact-filled Christmas-themed infographic!

If you want to share it, just had, here’s a handy short link http://bit.ly/twNyNF to the page on the Noise Inc site.

Enjoy, and Merry Christmas!

I had to quickly knock up a quick leaflet for a street party and couldn’t find a cartoon firework that fitted the design. I ended up doing a quick hack in Photoshop so thought I’d post it. It’s not the best and literally took 5 minutes but if it helps, great! Feel free to download it and use it in your own designs.

DOWNLOAD the zipped Photoshop file.

And if my last hex crossword post wasn’t enough, here’s a hex colour word search too. Does life get any better than this? Right, no more, I promise.

So you think you know Kung Fu hex colours? Have a go at this little crossword to find out if you’e the Rain Man of the colour world.

And if you think that’s hard, I was originally going to make it for sequences or DNA…

In a world where ‘lol’ is used every other sentence, this was a genuine, real, proper lol moment. Didn’t think they actually existed these days. Possibly could have turned into a lmao with a few beers on the go. The proximity of chair prevented a rofl.

Now go and do it yourself.

I did Chemistry exams when I was at school. I love the idea of chemistry but sadly, when it came to the nitty-gritty of the exam questions, my intelligence wasn’t quite up to the job. If I’m honest, I loved chemistry for the chemicals. Magnesium ribbon, sulphur powder, hydrochloric acid and real sodium that went bang in water. Brilliant stuff. I was the same with physics although slightly more successful.

I think there needs to be a separate strand of exams based on enthusiasm. I’d have passed chemistry with a A+ and I still would today. I think it says something about the explorer spirit more the the technicial. My kids love impromptu ‘kitchen chemistry’ sessions where I invariably blow something up or make something change colour. If I could pass an ‘enthusiasm exam’, I’d love to teach kids about the fun bits, the useful bits, the bits we’d need if we had to fend for ourselves in the middle ages. We’d all know how to vulcanise rubber, make gun powder, make stainless steel from iron, construct batteries or even refine oil into petroleum.

I’m seemingly not alone. A recent explosion (no pun intended) of popular science programmes on TV as well as a fair few internet crazes have brought ‘enthusiastic science’ to the masses. I salute you (and list you below by-the-way)…

• Mini-videos of all the chemicals in the periodic table from Nottingham University.
• Mythbusters TV show in the US
• Brainiacs TV show in the UK
• The Mentos and Cola thing
• QI (Quite Interesting) from the BBC
• HowStuffWorks website
• Curious Minds web shop in the UK
• And of course, the internet… but not sure what the link is!