I purchased Tom Peters “Design” from his Essentials Series this past weekend. It’s refreshing to read a book that someone spent some time thinking about size, colors, design and of course thought provoking content. The book got my attention right from the start and made me really stop and think about design in my life. Why am I attracted to certain things, services, people and why am I so un-attracted to others. In the first part of the book Tom Peters talks about wishing he could take you on his adventure of “love and hate, and never neutral.” Leading to his conclusion that design is right at the Heart (and SOUL) of business.

I’m going to take Tom’s advice and start a notebook of cool things and crap.
So I’ll start here with a few things I love and a few things I hate.

I meet my parents for breakfast every other Saturday at Stax’s Omega. It’s just a local diner restaurant. But I love the feeling I get when I have these breakfast get-togethers. The cup of coffee in a real coffee mug, eggs, bacon, hash browns, greek toast. Veteran waiters that understand customer service. And then there’s the conversations with my Mom and Dad. It’s the first thing I wrote in my book, it might not say a thing about design but I love it.

Black ultra fine point Sharpie. I always have them in my pocket. The perfect pen to write on anything, napkins, paper, cds, myself. The only bad thing about them is my own stupidity forgetting to take them out of my clothes pockets before I wash them.

Front-pocket billfold from BKE/Buckle. I hate to sit on a billfold. And I hate to have to dig in the seat of my pants to pull it out. The front pocket billfold looked cool, but more important to me is the function. It clips to my pocket. And it forces me to not carry so much crap around.

My favorite guitar a cherry red Gibson SG. The style is timeless I guess that’s why they just reissued the 61 SG. I got hooked on the looks and sounds of Alice Cooper guitarists Mike Bruce, and Glen Buxton and I’ve been a Gibson fan ever sense.

A couple things that have made it to my hate list. The shower door made by a brand name company in my new house. It sucks. Closing the door now requires pushing it closed at the handle and the bottom or it just pops open during the shower. I can’t tell if it’s terrible design or a bad install job. But my builder is going to fix it.

I paid a lot of money for my iPod. But the headphones that come with it leave a lot to be desired. I can put up with the mediocre sound quality, the problem is if I exercise or do anything that results in sweat I can’t keep them in my ears. Maybe they should offer an upgrade iPod with ear buds for a little bit more. I would go for that.

Paying for Wi-Fi access in hotels in big cities. It doesn’t make sense to me that I pay $9.95 to $15.99 for 24 hours of internet access, while I’m paying $270 a night for a hotel in Chicago. Compared to staying at The Radisson in downtown Knoxville, TN and Wi-Fi is free.

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