Erretres: Exciting News

05.02.16 — Burnley

Hello there blog follower, or should I make that a hearty hola…

I’m currently out in the beautiful city of Barcelona, enjoying the sights and savouring all the shellfish I can get my hands on, but the real news I have to impart comes from the capital of Spain itself – Madrid.

About a fortnight ago I had a battle with my laptop and iPad, in an attempt to get a Skype connection set up with Madrid-based strategic design studio Erretres, with whom I was excited (and very nervous) to have been offered a chat. Having sent them a copy of my portfolio in an envelope also full of my favourite sweets, sarsaparillas, I was very happy just to have been offered the opportunity to speak to them!

After a plethora of problems getting through to Erretres, I was finally able to chat about my work (in English) and then answer a few questions (in Spanish [argh!]). It was lovely to be able to chat to my favourite studio, but I didn’t really expect much to come of it – nobody expects to be accepted to work on their dream placement!

A few days ago, however, I received an email I never thought I would – I have been offered a six month placement working with Erretres in the beautiful Plaza de España (The Plaza of Spain) in the heart of the city. Obviously I immediately replied and accepted – and now I’ll be living in Madrid for six months in just over a week’s time!

Obviously with my poorly-timed holiday (oops!) everything will be a little bit rushed as far as getting out there over the next fortnight, but I’ll be sure to report back once I’ve settled in the city and have found a spare hour or so to get a new blog post out.

This means that my Barcelona blog post will also be delayed, but it’ll be worth it – prepare for updates over the coming months from the centre of the Iberian perninsula!

Obviously working in a Spanish studio in Spain means that I’ll be speaking (and hopefully drastically improving) my Spanish on a daily basis, and so I’m hoping to begin more frequent updates on the Spanish version of my blog and my Spanish website in general. If you’re interested in Spanish or know a little yourself, do feel free to check those out!

Until you hear back from me again, then, I guess it’s a hasta luego from me!

Karting & Packing

01.02.16 — Burnley

The weather has gone from festive and cute to pretty damn nasty, and so I present a moody photo of me looking miserable to kickstart what is otherwise a very optimistic little blog post…

Anyway, I am obviously not here to moan about the weather but to tell you about a few things that are going on in the ever-changing world of Ollie Briggs.

Firstly, battling through the winter cold, I headed back to Leeds for the day to meet up with Rhea and have a huge catch up over a delicious Venezuelan Arepa in Trinity Kitchen! I then went on to visit Rhea’s accommodation for her time in England, an English school, and met an amazing bunch of people from across the globe – and we all had a great laugh at my northern accent!

Secondly, my final day working on my Design Council & Burnley Arts Centre project came and went just this Friday! It’s been a lovely few months working with he team at Burnley Arts Centre and the Design Council, and this evening I enjoyed a delicious meal (where I treated myself to a filet steak) to celebrate! I will miss the team very much, but my sister’s Christmas present was sure to keep my mind off things… Karting!

Yes, just the other day me and my dad headed down to Colne to speed around a huge indoor karting track for half an hour, which was amazing fun, and something really different which one doesn’t really do every day!

Before heading out on the track with a petrol tank precariously situated in between the legs, we were run through the basics of karting and the significance of the flags and warning lights – but before we knew it we were out on the tarmac and ripping around the converted mill as fast as our karts would allow.

Sooner or later though, (and as was inevitable) I wound up forming part of the tyre barrier after the huge U-turn you can just about see above. After being rescued, however, I was soon back out zipping around at a slightly more sensible speed – but perhaps too sensible, as all too soon the red lights flashed and we headed back into the pit stop where I was told I’d come fifth out of 12. Could be worse…

Winter Finally Hits

22.01.16 — Burnley

With the British weather being predictably unpredictable, our winter has begun to rear it’s chilly head now that January is nearly over. No fear though, for it gave us the opportunity to don some gloves, strap weird bandana things to our faces, and head out over the whitening hills.

I do apologise in advance for the seeming drabness of this post – I popped most of the photos in greyscale, as the dusting of snow and the dreary skies rendered colours utterly pointless for the most part. Anyway – we soon crested the first (big) hill, and the winds were picking up, and so with mountain rescue on speed-dial, we slipped and slid our way down to the reservoir…

Like I say, there really isn’t all that much interesting to see – if you’re not a fan of snow then this might be the worst blog post you have ever read (in which case please don’t be mad, just head here and bask in the warm glow of the Spanish sun instead. That’s better.)

As pretty as I found our little winter amble over the dunes, we were all very pleased to be back in the central heated haven of Worsthorne. As ever, though, I was’t one for staying stuck in at home twiddling my thumbs for long, and headed into work, where I took joyous pleasure in splashing around in the car park puddles and probably looking like a total moron to everyone sat in the foyer looking out.

Today has been a busy day of working away and sorting out my huge archive of old projects, photos, and files, and so I decided to get up and away from my desk for a few minutes to take some photos of a lovely sunset which I could see forming outside. With my huge Doc Martens however, by the time I’d gotten into the fields it was already pretty dull, and so I instead took the opportunity to play around doing some light drawing for the first time ever!

For those not in the know, light drawing is where you take a long exposure photo (so the shutter is open for a few seconds), and then using a torch, you can draw shapes in the air! With typography being one of my interests, I decided to try and draw a rather curly iteration of my name – and I’m quite pleased with the result!

This may end up as some kind of experimental typography project, I have yet to decide…

That’s all from me for the evening, however, as I have just smashed a couple of sad looking bananas into a milkshake, and I plan on now consuming that whilst watching some car-crash TV before bed. Bliss.

Eating & Cooking & More Eating

15.01.16 — Burnley

In a furiously quick series of events leading on from a busy Christmas, the main theme seems to be the sheer amount of delicious food that I have somehow managed to consume. I am definitely not one for a New Year’s diet…

Things began with an amazing New Year’s surprise for Luisa, where the whole graphics gang (Rhea, Izzy, Me, Emily and Lu) were reunited in a surprise reunion! With no idea that Rhea was over from Dubai, and Izzy up from down south, Luisa hosted a great party and we all saw in 2016 together (with a bowl of spicy Spaghetti Bolognese in hand…)

Soon thereafter I was back at home, cooking up some batches of chilli and tapas dishes, as a sudden craving for all things spicy and garlicky seems to have taken over.

After some time gorging myself on an array of Hispanic dishes at home, I headed back over to Leeds once more to meet Luisa and Rhea for an old favourite – the Belgrave Street Feast! Once there, I loaded up one the best jerk chicken I’ve ever tasted, and we settled down for a chat and a catch up…

Luisa’s boyfriend Woody joined us before long, and we all had a good old chat whilst I saw some footage from “Back To The Future”, a film I’ve still not seen to this day… I was informed that it was the second film, and that I was looking at a vision of 2015… Interesting. All too soon I had to leave, however, and head back to Burnley.

Back in Lancashire once again, it was soon my mum’s birthday – (age withheld for fear of my life). For this, me and Ellie had bought her a lovely Skagen watch, but I took the opportunity to make a lovely lemon cake, and decorate the house a little for some surprises provided by my dad…

My dad’s surprises included the lovely bunch of flowers seen above, but most originally (and in the Lancashire spirit) consisted of a birthday cake – or should I say pie! My dad had been to my mum’s favourite restaurant and ordered a huge custom cheese and onion pie, which went down a treat!

That evening, however, there was no time for pie, as we headed out for a lovely Italian meal to celebrate. Visiting one of our local favourite hotspots, we were joined by my auntie and uncle, my sister’s boyfriend and my partner in crime Danni…

A lovely meal of prawn cocktail, cannelloni and birthday cake ensued, and we all returned home suitably stuffed. I should really now try to loose some weight, however I know that that shan’t be happening so long as there’s cake and pie lingering around downstairs! I leave you with a photo of Burnley looking beautiful in a touch of winter sun…

1 Year On

04.01.16 — Burnley

Today is the 1 year anniversary of the launch of my full website, meaning that my blog has now been running for about two and a half years!

To commemorate a year of making the internet a bit more green, I’ve made a list so you can take a look over some of the coolest things that have happened…

My lovely little website has done me quite well for the past 12 months of adventures, and having my own space to share a multitude of projects and all sorts of things has been a godsend – but I’ve developed a this year and learned much.

The original design approach for my website was for optimum legibility, simplicity of the highest order, and easy navigation. I like to think that my stripped-back design has ticked all these boxes, however I’ve come to realise that it’s been at the expense of other important considerations.

The green, for example, has meant that an overview of my portfolio doesn’t reveal much in the way of how varied my projects and their styles can be, and it can sometimes get confusing when titles and links are the same colour.

My rigid width main column on desktop and tablet have kept my text in a state of optimum legibility, however on today’s increasingly large displays, lots of space is seen to be wasted.

The pop-open menu was removed earlier this year to facilitate a contact button, however this has meant that new pages are easily lost. My mobile website layout leaves a lot to be desired.

Behind the scenes, though, is where things have gotten really messy. With new pages (such as Travel and Photography) being added after launch, and with my initial coding structure and architecture, it’s been a real challenge to update, maintain and add new pages anywhere outside of my blog. Assets go missing, I get confused where I should be putting files, and updates are always a bit of a clunky disaster.

My problems doubled with the introduction of the Spanish version of my site, which is a duplicate of the English version, and so isn’t always kept as up to date as I’d like. Having the same file in two places is an absolute nightmare when it comes to version control…

All this can only really mean one thing – it’s time for an update. The coding definitely needs an overhaul and so what better time to have a stab at a redesign for the next two and a half years?

I will be posting blog posts frequently during the forseeable future to outline my progress, and I’d love your feedback on Facebook, via Twitter, or in an email.

I’d also like to thank the 5,000+ of you who visited my blog this past year, and everyone who’s left such lovely comments. I love documenting what I’ve been up to, and would continue to do so if nobody read this and it was just as a personal little account of things, but it’s really humbling to have you all on board.

Here’s to the next quarter of a decade!