I have three markets coming up in April and May - starting this Sunday at Kings Cross.

I’ll have some prints that haven’t been on sale before from my Raving series - and plenty more. The table sizes are different to what I’m used to so I’ve been testing the setup at home:

I’m now all prepped. So all I need to do is turn up and not forget to wear my long-johns (#husterlife).

These markets are full of really great illustrators and makers. A lovely arvo out in some fun locations too.

If you do swing by, say to me the secret phrase of:
”Excuse me - where are the toilets, I’ve soiled myself” for 3% off any purchase.

Here are market details:

Crafty Fox - Kings Cross
Sunday 12th April
👉 Info

N4 Makers Market - Stoke Newington
Saturday 25th April
👉 Info

Creative Ground - Walthamstow
Saturday 9th May
👉 Info

In other news

A huge thanks to everyone who backed my playing card project on Kickstarter. It received over 700% of the required pledges and is now in production.

It’s a nerdy concept where cards of data can be brought to life online:

And finally

I’ve bought an old suitcase.

And I’ve started experimenting with a Raspberry Pi - the world's smallest computer.

I have a dastardly idea.

More to follow.

Well, well, well, if it’s the people who read all the way to the bottom. Here’s an update on the friend I made in Pret over xmas who took a shine to my dog Monty. I know his name now: Dave. We say hi. It turns out he makes music, and his album is coming out very soon. And no - he’s not this Dave (bet you didn’t expect that one).

Annoyingly, I haven’t got any more info on him to find his album but as soon as I do - I’ll be posting it here for everyone to enjoy.

Over 200 people have pre-ordered my unusual playing cards on Kickstarter.

Instead of normal cards, they look like this:

As a subscriber, it’s my duty to tell you that:

a) sales end Sunday

b) this is likely the only print run

c) Nintendo was originally a playing card company. MAKE OF THAT WHAT YOU WILL.

👉 Learn more + grab your pack

And I built this

It’s an app. It scans each card’s data - and renders it online.

If you, or anybody you know, is at bare minimum a mild dork - this is for them. Do please send it on today.

Here is the link:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bergonomix/pure-code-playing-cards?ref=378ghp

NERDS. ASSEMBLE!

Not about the weather. Or Trump. Or even the lack of a nearby Leon.

But about the absolute, maddening amount of time I spent creating my project: Cringémon.

I’m not going to bore you with the process, or give you any lessons learned. I’m just going to present hate-fuelled evidence of the time spent.

I don’t want to exclusively harbour that knowledge anymore, keeping it secret like some sort of time-haemorrhoid.

It’s time to show and tell. And you’re going to sit and listen.

This isn’t a moan. I know there are worse things to be subjected to. Like scabies.

Consider this a bit like IMDb Trivia, but instead of users submitting hidden details, I’m going to scream it into existence.

So sit down. Read. Acknowledge. Then patronisingly comment “well done” like you probably do to your very thick children (the venting has begun - soz.)

What was it? Are you ok?

YES I’M FINE. The project was called Cringémon - a card collection borne out of the simple idea that LinkedIn is not a real place. It’s a world filled with monsters, like Pokémon. So I fused the two concepts and made a trading card series. It’s a fucking good idea. REALLY good. I had to make it.

As you can see from the screenshot above - the project started in 2023 and contains over 3000 files, totalling 52GB of data. That’s roughly the same size as Grand Theft Auto V, The Dark Knight on Blu-ray, or 1/6th of the Epstein files. Topical.

A ball-ache from the beginning

Naming the project alone was enough to have me committed to a mental asylum. Maximum security. Thrown in with the shit-eaters. A one-man performance of Shutter Island taking place entirely inside Adobe Creative Suite (Five stars in The Guardian).

Below is just a snapshot of the swings and roundabouts that happened over several months. I even got legal advice from two different sources because Nintendo™ and LinkedIn™ are both registered trademarks. Parody law is complicated and I acted like a wiener.

The card designs

After many iterations, the cards had 10 changeable elements. Across 53 cards, that’s over 530 pieces I had to develop and refine. Every card also had to feel totally unique and coherent - like a character in a sitcom.

So not only did I create a rod for my own back. The rod was made of mini-rods, each greased with dog turd.

The mini-rods:

1. For every, single, background, I took a photo of a spreadsheet on my computer. Different angles. Different spreadsheets. Then edited each image in Photoshop - applying gradients and playing with contrast, hue and saturation. The backgrounds alone could pass as a wanky art series about “seeing data in a new light”.

2. The names. The funnest part, admittedly, was coming up with Pokémon-style names for corporate tossers. Here’s some that didn’t make the cut:

   Baldikunt, Daytrayp, SlimeySlime, Motivatizard, Fort Leda, Congratula, Horsepwer, Fartsinbed, Sosmug, FamFam, Haggla, Hartatak, Skibro, Hooligan, Spazz, David.

   Fun fact: every card originally had its own licensed font to match the persona. This was entirely scrapped in favour of a single font that offered better coherence. Yayyyy!
   

3. The reference numbers. Five digits. Different on each one. A relative walk in the park.
   

4. For the faces, I didn’t want to misrepresent anybody. Not even with licensed stock photos. So I used AI to generate fake faces. Stock photos would’ve been 10x quicker, since you can browse them. Instead I hit “generate” and prayed whoever spawned looked like ShitzinFrij. So while AI is the devil in art circles (fair), I’d argue: a) rare acceptable use case, and b) it still took FUCKING AGES.
   

5. Question: Have you ever put yourself in 53 fictional people’s shoes and asked, “what would I put as my LinkedIn header image?” I have. That’s how I chose to spend a large portion of my life. (I also licensed and edited the images. All of them).

6. Every job title is different. They had to be. I made that rule. And abided by it. It’s a bit like deciding to sodomise yourself with the TV remote every morning (which to be clear, I DO NOT DO).
   

7. But how many connections does each of these monsters have? It obviously has to feel realistic. FOR ALL 53 OF THEM. Ironically, this project was so time-consuming, my real-life connections probably went down. Friends were lost.
   

8. At least the bio was fun - right? GUESS AGAIN. 53 different spiels, condensed into four lines that packed a punch without feeling repetitive. 53 angles satirising LinkedIn culture when there are really only about three in existence. This is why I expanded the project to include office weirdos.
   

9. Each card is on version 4 at least. The skills and interests were chopped and changed more times than me trying to [insert funny analogy - I’M TOO ANGRY TO THINK OF ONE].
   

10. The Did You Know bits are the punchline on each card - undercutting the ego-fuelled nonsense. They were actually very entertaining to do, it just flowed - ya know? (EXCEPT FOR THE ETERNAL TWEAKING LIKE IT WAS PERFECTION OR DEATH). There is a lesson in there somewhere.

Other stuff that took ages

The tuck box designs THAT WERE NEVER USED:

The Kickstarter Project

Stop reading this right now and look at how much work I put into the Kickstarter project: link here.

I’ll pause whilst you do that…

!!!

Ok now you’ve been patronised, what you won’t have seen were the adverts, pre-launch marketing or multiple versions of the shit-hot video I made in different aspect ratios and durations. I paid a voice-over artist too:

And finally

This post. I also wrote this long and thinly-veiled excuse to show off the level of detail I agonised over. A desperate attempt to get additional recognition. Pathetic. Absolutely pathetic. Lord only knows why I’m still writing this sentence. It really has to end. I’m not sure this venting has helped. Should’ve just gone for a jog or something. Ah well. What’s done is done. Maybe if I just mash the keyboard a bit?

oidjfs0-92r-09u e0 casjo o dwd w;3efd.

Nope. That did nothing.

Soo… subscribe for more?

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I’ve designed my own stag-do t-shirt.

It’s very stupid - like a warped parody of lad culture. You can see it below.

But what about the real lads t-shirts? The ones that you can’t believe anybody would actually wear. The ones you secretly find quite (/very) funny.

Scroll for some of the finest specimens, along with some over-the-top commentary just for a laff. (REMEMBER LAFFS?!)

Warning: Not safe for work…

T-Shirt 1:

One of the oldest gags in history - perfectly conveyed on a beautiful mauve backdrop. Content-wise it’s perfect. From a design perspective however, I have some notes: I’d like to see the green tick in a different shade - it gets slightly lost on the background. The style of the tick could also be hand-drawn to help ground the mum-doing accomplishment in reality - like a real human has ticked it off. I’d also reduce the size of the ‘YOUR MUM’ text so it’s smaller than the title’s.

T-Shirt 2:

After taking our jobs, AI has now entered the sacred world of lads t-shirts. Controversially, it might be an improvement. I like the cartoon font and layout - it scans very well. The drawing is crude but of lovely quality (praise Grok). And how very modern to see the detailing of hairs. Unrealistic female body standards are a huge issue and so broadcasting the empowering message of ‘it’s ok to have hair on your legs’ is doing a surprising amount of cultural labour, even in the context of a clunge being plunged.

T-Shirt 3:

A poor choice of model - too unrealistic. Without even seeing his face - he’s too Shoreditch House for such puerile larks. I’m not sure what they’re going for on the design as ‘once’ isn’t a thing. Perhaps it’s for somebody who only had sex once, and then became a paedophile? A generic superhero lifting up the ‘N’ is visually fun - a wonderful homage to surrealism, but narratively it’s very confusing. Why is it happening? Maybe that’s the intention: it’s nonsense. (THANK YOU)

T-Shirt 4:

Fun colour (rare for lads t-shirts). And actually decent wordplay that’s very satisfying to say out loud - go on, give it a go. Wherever you are. Say it. SAY IT!!! Shame the visual representation of the cat’s bumhole muddies the message. Or is that not its bum? It’s not clear. Removing the ‘x’ would improve things and give the viewer more credit. Let them complete the visual pun themselves for god’s sake. Also: why is the dinosaur chewing a leaf? The Lickalottapuss is known for one thing: licking. Not snacking. Or is it some sort of palate cleanser?

T-Shirt 5:

A very decent prank. Bold. Brash. Embarrassing. A perfect example of less is more. Two downsides: The ‘yes’ should be in speech marks as it’s quoting somebody. Unless that’s part of the prank? The real message then becomes: ‘My willy smells and I have subtly imperfect grammar’. A layered humiliation. Though if he’s dyslexic, this could be considered a hate crime. Also, why is his fiancé a ghost from the 1950s?

And finally, the t-shirt I made:

Here she is. My intention was to use a similar design-aesthetic but to undercut expectations with messages of ultra-modern (and totally absurd) masculinity.

Side note: There’s something very entertaining to me about combining classic lad banter with emotional rhetoric. Once on a mate’s stag-do, which was a lot of fun and very ‘traditional’, I had to suggest a dare for one unlucky attendee so I put forward “you have to say something nice about everyone!!!”. It went down like a sack of shit, but I enjoyed it immensely.

I’ll leave the critiquing to you on this one.

Open to more dares too.

Lads lads lads.

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During the development process, I censored hundreds of different animals’ eyes. I became enamoured with how instantly guilty that shape can make animals appear. What did they do?!

So in the name of research - I conducted a visual experiment. How far can the black bar’s power be pushed? What meaning can it give to other types of images?

The Experiment

I took royalty-free images of totally innocent people, and superimposed the black bar.

Below are the results, and my reactions:

Conclusion

Whatever that black bar touches - even if it isn’t human - it projects an air of guilt and suspicion. Myself included:

On January 4th, an elite group of random individuals travelled from all across London to score a goal in every goal on Hackney Marshes.

It was a wonderful coming together of like-minded people. All there for the sake of pointless fun in the community (and lifelong bragging rights).

Each person netted 144 goals over roughly 2 hours, and ate 0.8 Sunday roasts at the pub (that's an average as some people ate at home).

It was not a race. Your time didn’t matter. There were trick shots, long-distance hoofs, shameless tap-ins, and re-creations of some classic goals.

And it's growing in attendance...
- In the first year, 2 people did it (me and my pal Ben).
- Year 2, we had 7 people.
- And in year 3, there were 22 people.

The challenge wasn’t organised to help with fitness, make a statement, or prove anything to anyone. It happened because the idea was so stupid, it absolutely had to be done.

What interested me afterwards wasn’t whether it was fun, but why something so unnecessary felt so compelling.

To answer this phenomenon - below are some scientific explanations from people way smarter than me (but have they scored a goal in every goal on Hackney Marshes?).

The power of ‘challenging yourself’

Researchers studying motivation consistently find that people are more engaged when difficulty is voluntary rather than imposed.

In Flow, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi describes how meaning emerges when people choose constraints that are just hard enough to demand attention, but pointless enough to feel free. eg: running across 70 football pitches.

Ditching productivity

Pointless endeavours offer something increasingly rare in a world full of productivity hacks: a space where optimisation, branding, outcomes and self-improvement are irrelevant.

The sociologist David Graeber argued that as productivity has become a moral standard within society, people instinctively seek out activities that refuse to justify themselves - not to rest, but to escape being measured.

Completing things is disgustingly satisfying

Psychologists call it the “completion bias”. It’s when humans feel a disproportionate urge to finish arbitrary things once they’ve started them, even when the system has no reward - like a puzzle, or re-organising the airing cupboard for the millionth time whilst my girlfriend looks on in mild horror.

It’s not even about the activity

Anthropologists such as Émile Durkheim1 and Victor Turner2 note that many group activities exist not because they are useful, but because they are shared. The office Secret Santa, new year’s day swims, bank robberies. All great with others, boring by yourself.

Meaning isn’t embedded in the action. It’s generated socially afterwards. The ‘pub after’ is not a coincidence. It’s secretly why we’re all there.

It was actually a Buddhist ritual

Zen teachings on anattā (non-self) frame value in doing without striving, comparison or outcome. For a short time, you are not who you usually have to be - just someone doing the same thing as everyone else. In this instance - pelting a football into 144 goals. So yes. It turns out scoring a goal in every goal on Hackney Marshes was a form of Buddhist meditation.3

Namaste 🙏

Twenty years ago, I sold 100 editions of an artwork.

Each one featured a £1 coin laminated onto a plain white A5 card.
I sold them for 71p at an exhibition in Leeds.

It was called The If Pound Project.

Two decades later, I thought it might be worth checking in on them. I reached out to a few of the people who bought one to see if they still had it.

But first, why did I do it?

How the price of art affects its perceived value has always interested me. It’s a dynamic that exists across capitalism, but in the art world it feels particularly exposed. Change the number, and suddenly the meaning shifts.

Artists love poking at this. The must-reference example is the KLF burning £1m in cash. I wanted a smaller, pettier version of that question.

So I gave buyers a choice:

• Instantly destroy the artwork and unlock a 29p profit

• Or keep it because you liked it, or because I might become famous and it might be worth more

The Destroyers

At the launch event, about eight people destroyed the artwork immediately.

Scissors out. Card cut. Pound released.

I’m not sure if it was defiance, need or just a complete lack of faith in my future. No way was that scrappy bit of card worth hanging onto while I slowly climbed the art ladder.

The Hoarders

The rest took theirs home. They were small, harmless, easy to keep. I emailed a bunch of them this year to ask what happened next.

“I’ve still got it,” came up a lot.

Usually said in an excitable yet defeated tone. Like supporting a permanently disappointing football team. You enjoy being part of it. There’s affection there. But you’re not happy with how it’s going. Wenger out.

The overriding sentiment was that they were impossible to throw away.

They’d survived multiple house moves. Been questioned by new partners. Sat quietly in drawers, folders, and boxes. Never quite valuable enough to celebrate. Never worthless enough to bin.

Some people even sent photos. Not of the artwork proudly placed on a wall, but held. Posed with. Like proof of life. Or proof of loyalty.

What I didn’t expect

What surprised me wasn’t that people kept them.

It was how hard they found it to get rid of them.

They weren’t displayed. They weren’t framed. They weren’t really talked about. But they travelled. Through house moves. Through break-ups. Through new lives and new versions of themselves.

The artwork became a burden in the mildest possible way. A tiny laminated object that refuses to leave.

Next update in 2046.

One of my first forays into alternative live events was back in 2010 with PLEB Talks - a bespoke comedy night which injected comedy into TED-style talks.

Co-created with Ben Target (above), each night had a different theme, like ‘The Meaning of Life’ - and featured some of the stars of the alternative comedy scene such as John Kearns, Sara Pascoe, Simon Munnery, Phil Kay, Nick Sun, Lou Sanders, Amy Hoggart, Adam Larter, Bec Hill, Pat Cahill, Matt Highton and many more.

The events were hosted by Nish Kumar who was obviously incredible and could not have been a better choice. Honestly - so good. Ben Target also injected some chaos into each event as you can see from the beach balls.

From behind the makeshift lectern1, acts offered their own brand of unconventional wisdom. The intention was comedy - not learning.

Audiences were not told the location. Just a secret meeting point. They were then led into the venue which tended to be somewhere strange - like a school assembly hall or a church back room2. It was like a secret society. Something audiences felt part of, all in on the joke of how ridiculous it was.

The recorded version of the format was awarded Ideas Tap funding that allowed us to film more ‘lectures’ in unlikely venues like offices and put them on YouTube. We also had a fancy intro made that perfectly mimicked the TED version, see the video below for all its gloriousness.

A stunning booking

PLEB Talks also hit the festival circuit: Wilderness, Machynlleth and even Glade Festival - a dance festival where we were programmed right after the DJ, something that the festival-goers did not appreciate (weiiiird!). A few minutes in, it was clear the gig had to adapt to the crowd’s level of inebriation so it become more of a Kindergarten activity than a witty subversion of a TED Talk.

I still feel bad for the comedians who attended that round trip. Especially the MC Stuart Laws who got Stone Cold Stunnered by an audience member. Luckily I decided to give a camcorder to Matt Highton to capture the chaos. The jazzed-up edit is below. Enjoy:

Watch out for the moment at 1m58s which feels straight out of Peep Show. The girl’s reaction is so wonderfully British.

Will PLEB Talks Return?

Looking back, I’m so proud of PLEB Talks. It was a really gettable, fun concept - executed with care, that brought people together.

It has been somewhat usurped by Comedians Giving Lectures that aired on Dave a few years after (unaffiliated but I like to think not an intentional copy).

Maybe the lines between stand-up and thought-leader are too blurred now for the concept of PLEB Talks to work. After all, Zelensky used to be a stand-up, Donald Trump also got Stone Cold Stunnered, and I feel like we’re turning to comedians more and more for guidance and cultural commentary - which isn’t a bad thing.

So I’m not sure if it will ever come back. But who knows. Maybe in some form, it already has? (POLITICAL PLOT TWIST!!!)

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