Blog: Ged Carroll | renaissance chambara

  • Brand clichés

    Brand clichés have been in the background of my career in agencies, all the way through. I am sure that brand clichés will continue long after my career is over. I started off writing copy for technology clients. Short pithy marketing copy and longer thought leadership pieces, opinion editorials and white papers. Back when I…

  • Vicki Dutton

    Vicki Dutton (or Vicky Dutton) was a fashion pioneer. Dutton was married to an Irish-born British civil servant working under the first Lee Kuan Yew administration of a self-run Singapore. She was a Malay woman living in Singapore. Singapore was recovering from the Japanese occupation, but there were still a large amount of social and…

  • A Hackers Mind by Bruce Schneier

    I eagerly anticipated reading A Hackers Mind, being a long-time follower of Bruce Schneier’s blog. A Hackers Mind caters to the well-informed individual. Schneier commences by defining what constitutes a hacker, delving into the essence of hacking and its widespread prevalence. Subsequently, Schneier takes us on a journey into a hackers mind, guiding us through…

  • Six hundred pairs + more stuff

    Six hundred pairs of Nikes in a custom-built house The six hundred pairs of Nikes are owned by a Japanese lady who now is head of marketing for Ugg in Japan. Previously she’d spent over 20 years in sales and marketing for Nike. Her house was designed around her shoe collection and the double height…

  • Razors for strategists

    What are razors? Razors are one of a series of tools that I use for problem solving. They sit alongside the idea of ‘chunking’ that is breaking a problem down into more manageable and solvable constituent parts. Razors aid in decision-making and analysis. Razors are rules that guide your way through a problem, or ‘cut’…

  • February 2024 newsletter – No.7

    February 2024 newsletter introduction Welcome to my February 2024 newsletter which marks my 7th issue. I hope that your year of the dragon is off to a great start. The number 7 is a bit of a mixed bag, depending on how you look at it. In the old testament, the 7th heaven is where God’s…

  • Y2K

    Early last year, fashion started to pillage the late 1990s and early 2000s for fashion inspiration, which became a Y2K trend on social platforms and in the fashion media. But this divorced Y2K from its original meaning. Y2K was technologist short hand for a calendar problem in a lot of legacy systems that were designed…

  • Hong Kong measurements

    The train of thought to this post about Hong Kong measurements started with a friend’s class learning do-it-yourself skills. I had rented an apartment when I lived in the city and had no need to do home repairs myself. I wondered past hardware stores, saw metric drill bits and rules. Metric My supermarket-bought groceries had…

  • Pipes by Yahoo

    I discovered something at the end of last year. The belatedly missed Yahoo Pipes was, in fact, officially called “Pipes by Yahoo.” I made that mistake, despite being well-versed in the brand guidelines, having spent a year working there with a copy consistently at my side. Now, why this journey down the memory superhighway? That’s…