Aidan Walker

Introduction

Welcome to a multiplicity of stories, ideas, images, musings, observations and sideways glances at life, drawn from a long and mis-spent history of engagement in – professionally – craft, design, writing, editing and publishing: and – personally – music, motorcycling, meditation, the marshes and beaches of the north Norfolk coast, sex, drugs and rock’n’roll, history, love, loss and learning. It goes alongside BadYogi.net, which is built along the same ‘multiplicity’ lines, but which deals with stories and experiences of a lifetime’s study and practice of yoga and meditation (strapline: ‘How to be a Good Bad Person and still love yourself’), and also draws from my other shamefully neglected sites, TheEcologyoftheSoul.com (companion to my book of the same name) and MindfulDesign.org, an exploration of the relationship between mindfulness and the practice of design.

Originally AidanWalker.co.uk was intended to support and promote my work in design, which has moved from publishing – I have edited or editorially directed most of the UK’s professional design magazines – to creating, curating and presenting some of the world’s most influential seminar and conference programmes in that area, featuring some of the world’s most distinguished thinkers and practitioners (yes, sounds arrogant but it happens to be true.)’

‘After years as a distinguished editor in chief of design magazines,’ says or said the blurb on the ‘old’ AidanWalker.co.uk, ‘I happily inhabit the unfamiliar territory between design and content. Words are my business. And I speak the language of design.’ Snappy, eh? But it doesn’t go anywhere near covering the multiplicity (that word again) of insights that I like to think are useful, relevant, amusing, provocative, or just plain annoying about almost anything that attracts my attention. It is my hope that a few minutes nosing round here will be well rewarded and will make you want to come back. Again – and again. Let’s see if it works.