Lucy and I are delighted to welcome Anna and Gareth of Able and Game to the Guest Blog! Able and Game create hilarious and unique greeting cards for every occasion and also have great gift items like mugs, tea towels and calendars too. Gareth and Anna have created an incredibly entertaining series just for The Design Files this week – The Trials and Triumphs of Life!  They’ve also put together a sweet giveaway pack too [see the details here!]. – Jenny x

Gareth and I are super excited to be guest bloggers this week. We want to send out a big thank you to Jenny and Lucy for letting us loose on their lovely blog and to Emily Green for last week’s guest blog goodness.

This week we are looking at the trials and triumphs of life. The small things we often overlook are something we love to celebrate by featuring them on our greeting cards.  The more mundane the better – some of our most popular cards feature circumstances that don’t often get much attention.

The Trials and Triumphs of Work

Gareth and I recently made the transition from working from home to working in our own studio.

When we were looking for spaces we decided we would both need our own space to keep things sane. I’m messy, listen to the radio and like the office to be warm. Gareth is tidy, likes to watch Eastenders and often has the window open despite it being winter, so you can see why separate offices are important. As we are so busy we communicate via instant messenger, often using our own language called Smashlish where we just smash at the keyboard quickly.

Can you come in and check this drawing?

Becomes

candk hyou come isn nn chek thoss drawongg///

…and despite me often thinking I’m going to have to repeat myself, he always seems to understand.

Having been self-employed for over three years I forget what meetings are like. I recently attended one where words like KPIs and quorum were bandied about, and I realised that many workplace meetings just go around and around in circles.  I drew this diagram during the meeting, and had a new found understanding as to why people like Anna Wintour only allow for meetings which are 7 minutes long.

Staying motivated when you’re self-employed can be hard at times. Gareth is organised with task managers and schedules, whereas I’m more of a scrap of paper on the desk type of person.

I think I have seven systems to track my work and don’t use any of them all that well, much to Gareth’s annoyance. They include a list stuck on the wall, a diary, Google calendar, a desk calendar, a downloaded task manager we don’t use and a downloaded task manager we do use and finally a pretty sketchbook. I also have a wall planner that needs to go up, but sadly no “hang in there” cat poster.

- Anna and Gareth x

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