The Power and Danger of Cute
There is a word we use constantly and carelessly, yet it carries strange weight. That word is cute. We say it about babies and puppies, a quirky café, a friend’s new partner, a colleague’s business idea. And sometimes, when we say it, we mean something slightly cruel. A Compliment With a Sting “You’re cute.” Depending […]
Creativity needs friction
Orson Welles said the enemy of art is the absence of limitations. He was right. The best creative work rarely comes from a blank canvas and a generous budget. It comes from a wall. A constraint. A competitor stealing your caterpillar cake. When M&S sued Aldi over Colin, most brands would have gone quiet and […]
Google Analytics Grew Up. It Just Made You Work For It.
There was a moment around 2023 when a lot of us looked at GA4 and quietly wondered if Google had lost the plot. The Universal Analytics switchover was forced, abrupt, and the replacement felt like it had been designed by a committee who had never reported website performance to a client on a Monday morning. […]
A day using the Claude AI: what it actually looks like
Content warning: we’ll use some CSS, PHP, and Front-End Web Developer jargon. Some non-developers may need coffee before reading this post. You have been warned! In this post, I am talking about Claude as in the chat interface rather than Claude Code proper, which I may do a separate post on. You will see the […]
The Yes Machine
Why AI flattery is the biggest risk in the room
You Are Training Your Audience to Ignore You
More content. Less relevance. Already Forgotten
Can AI Damage Your SEO? It Depends on How You Use It.
The question comes up constantly, and the answer businesses want is a clean yes or no. It isn’t. Whether AI damages your SEO has nothing to do with AI and everything to do with the quality of what you publish. Let’s start with what Google actually says. Google has been consistent: it does not penalise […]
AI Can Build It. But Can You Trust It?
I’ve used AI to build a spam monitoring system for a WordPress multisite, a booking system for sports pitches and courts, and a handful of custom plugins. It handled all of it impressively. Fast, functional, and far quicker than writing everything from scratch. I also recently rebuilt a landing page from the ground up for […]
The AI Tools I’m Actually Using Right Now
Every designer and developer I know is quietly building their own AI toolkit. Here’s mine, as it stands today. My Everyday Toolbox ChatGPT is where I start when I need to think something through. It’s good for research, pulling together context quickly, and working through ideas before I’ve fully formed them. I use it like […]
Why Your Website Shouldn’t Try to Sell
(At Least Not Right Away)