A wife who likes to mail in coupons and fill out little questionaires for marketers means we often get little gifts and samples in the mail. This week Gillette was kind enough to send us a FUSION. I thought they’d reached the pinnacle of shaving technology with my old Mach3, but no! Fool that I am I didn’t forsee the day when we’d be able to buy a shaver with 6 blades; five that do the nasty ol tree trunks and one blade on the end for the pesky bits under the nose.

I immediately anticipated that this Star-Trek prop looking device was a gimick and the fancier colourful handle and twice the blades would net me little in terms of shaving satisfaction…

But I must admit I was wrong. Blade on a stick technology has come a long, long way and it was the bestest, closest, shave I’ve had in a long while. I hear tell there’s vibrating ones which sounds awefully intriguing. I can only imagine what the safety razor will look like in 50 years at the rate the amazing science of shaving advances…how many blades will it have?…how many colours, plastics, alloys, and composites will the handle have?…how long and cool will its name be ? (can you beat Fusion Power Phantom?!! ).

One can only imagine how fantastically amazing it will be.

On my evening commute home on the train a guy sat down beside me and another in front and they proceeded to have a long conversation about their work.

They talked about how some,presumably, contractor would be coming in and making a ton of money that he didn’t deserve for how easy the job was and how long he worked, and how another fellow bragged about his salary all the time. There was a lot of discussion of salary and about this persons big ego and that person who could never be managed by so-and so but could be managed by the speaker. They talked about one team in a fued with the other team across the office, more disscusion about egos…And I’m rolling my eyes in my imagination about the work environment these guys work in.

Up until this point I figured they worked in some kind of cubicle office place or were middle managers in a factory or something. (Thats where’d I’d experienced that sort of thing in past jobs)

Then one fellow mentioned a QA guy that thought he was so great because he found a bug no one else did and going on to talk about dev and a guy who’s code was crap but because he finished what he was working on people thought he was a hero, which these guys obviously resented. They were talking about releases and code-freezes… I realised they must work in a place creating software of some persuasion like we do at Navarik. I was a little taken aback. Listening to these guys gripe and fuss and worry and gossip and brag and go on and on about their work helped me appreciate again the environment we have at Navarik.

There isn’t all that in-fighting at Navarik. There aren’t all those ‘corporate games’ you need to play many other places. People are down to earth and everyone is approachable. People are there to work and do their best job and I can’t for the life of me imagine anyone there having the same type of conversations about their co-workers as these two guys sitting beside me on the train. Everyone there is good at what they do and we do have our ‘hero’s’ too, but we don’t resent them – we respect them and they’re the go-to guys/gals when there’s something needs doing. You don’t have to wonder who to avoid that day or who needs to be kissed up to to have a good day. There just aren’t the same kind of politics these fellows were going on about.

The piece de resistance was when one of the guys said “well, all companies are like that” with reference to the corporate politics they were discussing… I was squirming in my seat…I so wanted to correct him on that point.

Here’s a logo I did for a clothing company that uses natural fibers (bamboo) in their baby clothes. They wanted a panda referencing the bamboo but didn’t want it to have an ‘asian’ look. It would be embroidered on a variety of garments so I wanted it to be simple but immediately recognizable as a bear. I was really pleased with how it turned out.