This state of affairs informed the way the media worked, and the types of stories that were published. It also highlighted the growing importance of digital media. For citizens, as a way to continue to make their voices heard, and to access information necessary to a civil society intent on being the watchdogs of good governance and constitutional values; and for the media, it drove home how vital digital platforms are, and will be in future, in the preservation of the freedom of the press.

The Secrecy Bill and the battle for media freedom

In 2011, the media came under sustained attack from the government and the court of public opinion. It also contrived to stab itself in the back with a myopic, narcissistic response to infringements on the freedom of the press, both actual and imagined, as well as some unfortunate lapses in editorial rigor. Major pressure was put on media structures because of this combination of negative propaganda and legitimate criticism.The result was a publishing climate in which some news organisations were anecdotally considered to be practicing a form of self-censorship, and where attention was deflected from reporting the news, to campaigning to protect the right to continue doing so.

[These are the introductory paragraphs to a 2800 word essay I wrote for the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung. Read the rest here - it looks forward to 2012's inevitable battles for the preservation of civil liberties, and asks whether we have the conditions for a social media revolution of sorts in South Africa.]

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I think it was Bob Dylan who sang it best. “How many games/ Must a rugby fan watch/ Before you call him a fan.” The answer, my friends, is a little more complicated than the ones you usually find blowing in the southeaster at Newlands. But what’s simple is the truism that all kinds of people in South Africa are touched by rugby, and in my case, in some strange and tangential ways. And the evolution of a fan, and in this case, what converted me into a fan, is a fascinating thing to watch.

It’s become a cliche of sporting passion to say that rugby is like a religion. But as with most cliches, it has a kernel of truth beyond the obvious. Rugby is like a religion, but not because its devotees congregate in large, worshipful groups one day a weekend and spend the time in either abject prayer (Lions fans, for example), ecstatic praise (Bulls fans, unfortunately), or trying to bliksem people who don’t follow the same team as them (you know who you are). No, rugby is most like a religion because the different types of fans are analogous to different sorts of believers.

There are three sorts of fans. The first kind are the devout fundamentalists, attending every match they can, and watching the rest on television. They’re the ones who actually PVR the matches that they physically attend, so that they can watch them again when they get home. They know the holy scripture inside out – in the same way that your more committed Catholic knows all the minor saints, they’ll be able to name every Bok captain from Hubert Castens to Victor Matfield (our last captain at time of writing, thanks to a John Smit injury). And in the spirit of rugby fans everywhere, some of them will be able to tell you what was wrong with every one of those captains, too.

The second type are those who only attend the major, meaningful matches, like a final, or one that’s played at Soccer City for the first time. They’re like those folk who only go to church a few times a year, on Christmas Day perhaps, or for a wedding. They’d consider themselves fans, and they carefully watch their favourite teams’ results, but they wouldn’t go to war for them.

The third kind of fan is one who doesn’t even realise how much of a fan he or she is. They’re part of a society that’s imbued with a certain culture and belief system, and they experience everything that comes from that system – like taking Christian holidays off, for example, or sharing the euphoria of the ’95 World Cup – but they wouldn’t really think of themselves as fans. I used to be the third type of fan, and I’ve now become the second kind. How that happened is kind of weird, and says a lot about the power of rugby to convert.

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After entering the Nielsen bestsellers’ list at No.19, Rugby in Our Blood has made its way up to No.9.
(This list includes all books sold in South Africa: both overseas and local, fiction and non-fiction).

In the non-fiction list (both overseas and local), RiOB is now No.5. Well done to Angus – great book, cleverly edited.

Unbelievably, a Holiday Inn

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The images in the gallery above are captioned, but it’s worth pointing out a couple of things. You need to stay overnight in Maputo, and the Holiday Inn there is right on the beach, and pretty cheap. You WILL encounter a corrupt official you’ll need to bribe. Let your conscience make of that what you will. And you have to carry all your own water, food, and a spade of course.

I travelled with the M&G’s  two talented, smart multimedia interns, Hannah and Aaron, and @amandasevasti (her blog on Mozambique here), and you definitely need a 4×4 to get to Milibangalala. It’s an unusual feeling for a group, being absolutely alone, camping by a beach for 5 days. But it sure gives you time to stare at your potje.

There are some very simple things that have to happen to create a successful Social Media application that will conquer the world. As a recent employee of Naspers’ 24.com, I watched our company try for years, with varying degrees of success, to replicate the garage startup structure you need to come up with crazy ideas that miraculously work. But the very idea of creating a ‘structure’ mitigates your success – you need outsiders to make crazy things work. And I don’t mean outsiders as in that awful cliche, think outside the box. These people don’t even see a box, and if they did, they’d probably hide in it to avoid the daylight. No, by outsider, I mean someone who isn’t of this world, in many ways. Either social misfits, errant geniuses, or alien cuckoos.

You can read all about social media startup tips on blogs like alistairfairweather.com or mashable.com, but I thought it’d be fun to illustrate my own version with pictures of my recent visit to Twitter’s nest in San Francisco, where founder Biz Stone gave us a fascinating talk on how Twitter got started.

Twitter reception

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Intro: It's all about worship. Yep, that is a divine halo shining behind Mr Smiley.

And my reply:

Dear Sir and/or Madam
Your list of selective quotes from my column does not make it clear how my column might “constitute a violation of the limitation of the right to freedom of expression by advocating hatred based on race and/or gender.”
My initial defence will therefore have to be general.
1. In my obviously satirical column, I specifically indicate that my use of the term “Russians” is to denote a stereotypical type of tourist, and that I do not mean Russians in general.
2. The device of pretending that I want to join the Taliban is obviously an absurdity designed to highlight the exaggerated stereotyping I do in the article, and therefore gets the reader to question the statements I’m making. This device means that the reader is prompted to understand that I am grossly exaggerating for the purpose of satire, and that I am in fact presenting two diametrically opposed personae in the column – the one, the aggrieved tourist, the other, the satirical columnist.
3. I make sure that the reader is left with a closing remark that highlights that this is a satirical column – to whit, the idea that the Taliban will let me tailor-make my prejudices to my own ends.
4. The descriptions of tourists by the side of the pool are empirically derived, and refer to specific people.
5. The column, in its entirety, also makes fun of South African tourists, and indeed of myself. This device allows satire to take criticism of people, events or concepts, and deflect it onto the reader him- or herself. For example: “But bad dress sense and total lack of style is something I can handle. Hey, I live in South Africa, where you can’t even get a good loincloth to fit you, and where men actually have things called party jeans.” This device means that I am, in effect, telling the reader that we all hold prejudices, but we’d better include ourselves in those prejudices. This, I firmly believe, is the way satirists teach people to be more aware of racism, gender bias and prejudice in general.
6. Another example is the following: “I thought it was all a bit of a fuss considering how cheap the admission price was anyhow, even to a South African for whom the word Euro is something you say when you hop into a dinghy.” This sentence, in the context of the column, is again a pointer for the reader. It indicates that I’m aware that as a tourist, I might be naïve about the other peoples that I am encountering.
7. Another example from the column in question, to emphasise that I always include the author (and by extension, the reader) in my satire, which effectively breaks down the idea that this is an easy “us vs. them” scenario: “Since rural women appear to do all the work in South Africa, this kind of prohibition would spell disaster to the male South African way of life, best summed up as “Laziness”.”
8. The column in question is littered with these safeguards against anyone taking my satire as serious criticism. It’s something I take very, very seriously. I would hate South Africans to lose the capacity for making fun of themselves and others, but at the same time I’m very careful to foreground the fact that readers need to learn that what they (and I) are doing has to be conscious, and that we must never believe the stereotypes we’re using for satirical effect have any real existence in the world.
In conclusion, I think the column has to be situated in context. All my columns are satirical, and the News24 reader who reads them regularly knows exactly how to analyse them. Readers are aware that there is no real call to action, that all comments are to be taken as hyperbole for the purpose of exposing stereotypical patterns of thought, and that the central message will always be – prejudice exists, it exists for many reasons, and we need to be vigilant about the way we understand our own prejudices and those of others.
Additionally, these columns do not stand unquestioned. There is a healthy debate about the issues, and therefore always many more sides to the story than the ones I initially publish. For example, this comment, by, I assume, a relative of your complainant:
“What a load of rubbish!
“14/01/2009 13:29
“What a silly and simple article. Clearly you are an idiot. Your stereotype of the Russians is a cliche and even the Russians think its a joke, its just that the joke is about which kinds of fools would think Russian behave like this? Let me take a wild stab in the dark here, your a midddle class Brit, new money and first generation graduate? Grow up pommy and come over to Russia before you join in the stupidity of believing that they are all just pimps and whores. – Richard Lamb”
I would submit that a platform that allows the immediate and robust repudiation of stereotypes is one that works towards alleviating racism and prejudice in our country, rather than the opposite.

Yours sincerely

Chris Roper

And if you can’t get enough of Russians, here’s the original column: Why I’m joining the Taliban.

My  city used to be like an iceberg – all you could see was a white tip sticking up above the sea, with the dark bulk of the berg hidden underwater. Things have changed a lot. Now, at night, when I walk out of my front door into Adderley St, I’m walking into a real South African city.

Men congregate on corners, or in the now ubiquitous internet cafes that serve as lifelines back home. They share gossip in many languages, about cities I’ve never been to, cities in the DRC, Sudan, Nigeria. There’ve always been a variety of languages here, but when they’re part of your daily fabric you don’t really notice them until you’re forcibly reminded. Returning recently from a trip to the Middle East, I was astounded to suddenly realise how much Arabic is spoken here.

Capetonians of all stamps might be accused of having overly-European sensibilities at times. But the beauty of my city is that while you can get a kick ass Italian salami at Giovanni’s in Green Point, you can also get a gracious salaam a’leikum at the falaffel joint in Longmarket St. There are coffee shops aplenty, and while Cape Town has always had its fair share of coffee shops, places like vida e caffe on Kloof St, and the Woolworths Cafe on Longmarket St, now sell actual coffee. That you can drink without wincing.

When you wander around at night, music spills into the streets – goema, jazz, hiphop, kwaito, , mazy electronica – along with forcibly ejected drunks and the overly enthusiastic. When I was growing up in Cape Town, it had a very different soundtrack. Legendary clubs like Rita’s and The Base hosted a hodgepodge of genres: European influenced bands with bitter, quirky names like the Safari Suits, Housewives Choice, or Kalahari Surfers; singers like Thandi Klaasen; and virtuoso musos like Jimmy Dludlu and John Mair. Cape Town has a musical history that not enough of its denizens know about.

It’s a growing history, of course. There are some great live music venues, like the Mercury Lounge and Zula, where self-conscious bands like Three Bored White Guys, Kobus and Godessa make music that reflects the confusion of anchorless styles that is Cape Town. Although they’re playing, respectively, country and western, Afrikaans rock, and hiphop, it’s all Cape Town

My city sometimes forgets that it’s a port city, and owes its existence to its safe harbour. I’ve tracked the Cape Town’s changes from the sea, bobbing about on boats being seasick, and that’s a perspective you don’t get if you’re always immersed in the city’s motley architectural heart. Over the decades the skyline has erupted in slowmo, and now you can eat dinner in a plush eatery high in the sky, buy yourself an eyrie on top of a converted office building, or stage a boardroom coup looking down at the city’s wheeling seagulls.

People don’t realise how much the city has changed. An old surfer I once worked for used to tell me that, in the 60s, you could ride a wave from Thermopylae, the erroneous name given to the remains of the wreck of the Athens that you can see protruding from the sea at Mouille Point, all the way to where the V&A now squats. The same surfer used to bitterly tell me about the woman counsellor responsible for the building of the promenade along what used to be the gorgeous Sea Point coastline. That story probably says more about nostalgia and misogyny then it does about Cape Town

The Waterfront used to be called the docks, with a small d. That’s changed, for the same reasons that flats in town are now called apartments in the city. Back then, we’d park our Ford Escort  panel vans down at the pier, lie drunkenly in the back and fall asleep watching oil slicks dance turgid fandangos with the southeaster. Now the Waterfront fills with all kinds of people, all the time. Gauche Eurotrash who have travelled thousands of kilometres to Africa to buy products made in Europe, sun-damaged yachtspersons breaking their voyage, and locals who shop for their groceries and never take the time to look out to sea.

I wrote this story on a plane bound for San Francisco. Before I left, several people told me that “San Francisco is just like Cape Town.” None of them were Capetonians. We would never say that. Only Cape Town is like Cape Town. I’ve been to some of the places that people say are “just like Cape Town” – Sydney, Tel Aviv, Beirut. They’re not. I think what people mean is that they wish Cape Town was like those cities. And that’s why it’s never a Capetonian who says that.

I don’t, honestly, know what makes a Capetonian. Perhaps the distinguishing characteristic is that you’re too lazy to have an identity crisis. The very name is an identity crisis. A city called town? That’s like having a rotweiller called Fifi – it’s just confusing, especially for the rotweiller. But the city doesn’t worry about that, and Capetonians tend not to worry about anything at all, or at least not for too long.

My city is not my city. As a port city, it belongs to whoever passes through, and claims of originary preference have no place here. When I have breakfast at Lazari’s in the Gardens, home to the best Eggs Benedict in the Cape, I look out at a building that houses a purveyor of ridiculously marked up Indonesian furniture to the stylistically challenged. When I looked at that building a few years ago, it was an advertising agency, selling myths to consumers. Before that, as I walked past on my way back from school at Cape Town High, it was a synagogue.

That building is like Cape Town. The city gets used in many different ways, by many different people, but it retains its essentially fractured character, and that’s what makes a great city. A great city is always continually creating its identity, and is always at war with those who want to fix its character, both morally and in stone.

(First published in Visi magazine.)

Making my way along the N2 from Cape Town to Mossel Bay, I couldn’t help reflecting on the connections between the Early Humans archaeological site I was about to visit and the Smart car I was driving. Sure, drawing a line between humans eking out survival 164,000 years ago on the East Coast of what would become known as Africa, and a technological marvel like the Smart micro hybrid, is perhaps a little tenuous. But if you think about it, there are significant parallels.
The most important one, perhaps, is that our efforts to build more environmentally-friendly cars is linked to our fears about climate change and global warming, and one of the areas benefitting from the studies of Early Humans is our understanding of climate change.
There’s more to it than that, though. There’s just something indescribably human about trying to better our environment, and about trying to create both useful technology and beautiful things. It’s something that the paleoanthropologists at the prosaically named Cave 13b at Pinnacle Point highlight, when they give me a guided tour.
Before that tour, I explore Mossel Bay itself. I’ve always loved the Bay of Mussels, a town that’s both industrial and touristy, and simultaneously gritty and pretty in a way that befits a harbour. Where your more hasty Garden Route travellers swing left onto the loop around Mossel Bay, in their desire to get onto the coastal bit of the N2, I almost always veer to the right. There no better transitional place between the urban tension you’re leaving behind, and the peaceful beaches and forests that lie ahead.
For some reason, I can never resist a visit to the Diaz Museum Complex, handily situated next to the Protea Hotel Mossel Bay.  The complex marks the spot where Bartolomeu Dias landed in 1488, and the main attraction is a replica caravel, the type of ship he used on his arduous voyage.
The caravel was given to South Africa by the Portuguese government, and it was sailed over from Lisbon in 1987 to commemorate the 500 year anniversary of the original landing. It’s an inspiring sight, this small ship with its rudimentary living quarters. I can imagine it dwarfed by the high seas, in much the same way that my Smart car makes the other vehicles around it seem unnaturally huge.
On previous visits, I’ve marvelled at the age of the Post Office Tree, a milkwood tree that’s allegedly 500 years old. It was used as a post office by Pedro de Ataide in 1500, who left what’s described as an “important letter” in a shoe under the tree, to be picked up by later visitors. There’s now a wonderfully tacky shoe-shaped postbox there, where you can post letters. I can’t help feeling that an email terminal would be a little more useful, but perhaps we haven’t reached that point yet.
But on this visit, the age of this tree, and indeed the heft of history that it represents, pales in comparison with the millennial playground where paleoanthropologists romp free. And the whale bones that are on display around the tree, which before I found fascinating, now seem almost crude when I think of the minute evidence traces that are the stuff of Early Human digs.
I arrange to meet Professor Curtis Marean of Arizona State University’s Institute of Human Origins, and his research assistant Kyle Brown, in the parking lot of the Pinnacle Point golf course. After making my way down through the smartly corporate surrounds of the clubhouse, it takes me a moment to realise that the two casually, almost scruffily, attired guys eating sandwiches out of the boot of a twenty-year-old Mercedes are the men I’m supposed to be meeting. I’d forgotten that academics and scientists are a breed apart, people who can go from addressing a Nobel conference to painstakingly grubbing around in a cave on the South African coastline.
As we walk down the long path to the dig, Curtis reminds me of why I’m here, and why the caves below Pinnacle Point are so important. It’s now generally agreed that the genetic and fossil evidence indicates that modern human species originated in Africa between 100,000 and 200,000 years ago.
The evidence of early humans living in these caves, using tools, and harvesting food from the sea, is dated as 164,000 years ago, much, much earlier than anything previously found.
These discoveries not only indicate that humans evolved much earlier than previously believed, but they also show that lifestyles focused on coastal habitats and resources may have been crucial to the survival of these early humans.
The excavation itself is remarkably unprepossessing at first glance. A small cave, almost a swathe cut into the side of the cliff, it’s covered by a green tarpaulin. It’s a strangely lonely spot, given that there’s a massive luxury golf resort sprawled across the cliffs just above.
But as Curtis and Kyle spin their story of relentlessly slow and minutely focussed excavation, and the concomitant massive leaps in our understanding of our origins, the wet, cold site takes on a romance that belies its prosaic appearance.
These men are adventurers, albeit slow-moving ones. Kyle tells me that it takes a person two seasons to excavate a small cube of earth, and to gently coax the artefacts from where they’ve lain for thousands and thousand of years. Well, 164,000 years, to be as exact as we can be. And for an archaeologist, an artefact is anything that was brought onto the site by people, from carnal remains to tools, to the highly significant ochre. As Kyle says, “Excavation is dedication.”
To give you an idea of the time involved, Curtis Marean initially reconnoitred the site in 1999. His seminal paper on the dig was only published in the Nature journal in 2007.
I ask Curtis why the discovery of ochre is so important. “Finding evidence of the use of pigments like red ochre, in ways that we believe were symbolic, is evidence of cognitive reason. Symbolism is one of the clues that modern language may have been present, and was important to their social relations. It is possible that this population could be the progenitor population for all modern humans.”
Using colour for symbolism is a huge intellectual leap, according to scientists, and being able to let symbols stand in for a reality is part of the process that leads humans to develop language.

Kyle tells me that scientists come from all over the world to study the methods used to excavate at Pinnacle Point, and it’s pointed out to me that the terms used to describe an archaeological site aren’t even appropriate any more, like “dig”.
Curtis and his team have evolved new ways of collecting data, one of which is the use of laser technology to replace the decidedly old tech of tape measures.
“We measure finds with a laser, a surveying instrument that can measure with millimetre accuracy. It’s military technology that is directly hooked up to computers, and can immediately move the information onto a laptop. You can then see the data in 3D.”
It’s a long trajectory from the simple tools and brutal lifestyle revealed by Cave 13b, to the sophisticated world that is human existence today. It’s only in a place like the Pinnacle Point Cave dig, situated a few hundred metres from a golf resort parking lot,  that you can truly marvel at how far humanity has evolved, from stone tools to engineering wonders like a Smart car, a caravel, or even a golf ball.
It’s a trite thought, but an inescapable one. And a glimpse of what the world used to be like focuses your mind marvellously for the enjoyments of the present. So when I find myself walking around the streets of Mossel Bay that night, I can’t resist a little archaeological adventuring of my own.
The first place I pop into for a drink is the Iron Horse bar on the Main road. Bikers might not be Early Humans, but nobody would deny that they’re a species apart. The Iron Horse at first strikes me as a little grubby, until the barman points out that the black marks on the floor aren’t actually dirt, but donuts left there by enthusiastic bikers burning rubber on their bikes. This is even more impressive when you realise that the bar is not on a ground floor, but up a set of stairs.
One thing about Mossel Bay – the locals are enormously friendly. After they’ve bought me a few drinks, and made some leathery biker jokes when they discover I’m in town testing a Smart car, they send me on my merry way to dinner.
And this is another, oddly secret, attraction of Mossel Bay – the seafood. Why pay the inflated prices of the Garden Route tourist meccas like Knysna and Plettenberg Bay, when you can get a fantastic choice of fish at local prices in Mossel Bay? I dine at the Cape Gannet restaurant, which serves an array of really good, really simple seafood dishes.
Even here I’m reminded of the inevitable march of time. As part of the immaculate, yet friendly service, your bill arrives with complimentary reading glasses for the older customer, so you don’t have to struggle to read in the flattering light! The lesson, I guess, is that time has a habit of eventually affecting us all, whether we’re Early Human or late diner.

(First published in Mercedes magazine, 2009)

For designers and artists, recognition used to arrive on the back of a show in a gallery, and a concomitant critical piece in a newspaper. Nowadays, it’s as likely to arrive as a blurb and link on Martha Stewart.com, or an SA Blog of the Year award.

The plaudits for designer and illustrator Heather Moore are from all those sources, which is exemplary of what it means to be a 21st century designer working from an outpost of the empire. And by empire, I mean both digital and design. And by outpost, I mean Cape Town, which for some people is about as far as you can get from the centre of design without actually going to the ludicrous Fourways Design Quarter in Johannesburg. (Described on their website as “tres chic”, which I assume is French for “something you put on your lap to eat fried chicken”).

So Moore’s iconic teapots and jugs tea towel is one of the featured 2009 Christmas Gift Idea on Stewart’s “Martha’s Circle” blogging community, and if you want a full view of the range of Moore’s products, visit her award-winning blog SkinnyLaminx.com.

But ecommerce affirmation and online accolades aren’t enough to differentiate the good from the great, and craft from art. The so-called real world still counts, and Moore’s work is also included in FENOMEN IKEA, running until February at the Museum fur Kunst und Gewerbe in Hamburg.

Moore’s “I Wish We Had Ikea” tea towels and cushions, a witty comment on the economies of design and how they relate to the margins inhabited by Moore and other designers from the developing world, are in the NON IKEA section.

Some will argue – and I’m aware that this is a fundamentally boring question, but bear with me -  that Moore’s designs shouldn’t be termed art. This would certainly be Moore’s standpoint.

“I’d hate to be called an artist. I’m an illustrator, not an artist. My stuff is attractive, it’s decoration. There might be an idea or two behind it, just an expression of pattern and rhythm. But it’s produced quickly.”

Modest words, albeit an implied criticism of Andy Warhol and his ilk. But while the crude binate of art and craft is one that’s been done to death, it does provide a useful vocabulary for looking at the impetus behind some of Moore’s early work.

Exemplary of this is her Sevilla Rock fabric collection, wonderfully simple iterations of self-conscious red elands, frisky blue ponies, and greenly-poised duikers. Looking at them reproduced as cushions, tea towels or aprons, one gets a sense of how beauty always has to inhabit a faultline between utility and ideology.

“Each of the five designs is based on ancient paintings from the cave walls at Sevilla in the Cederberg mountains, as recorded by rock art enthusiast [and cartographer extraordinare] Peter Slingsby.”

“The whole idea was to remove cave paintings from their value as artefact or tourist attraction, and look at them as beautiful drawings. It’s about the artists, not the history. And it’s also a rescue job – I hated the cliched Bushman stuff.”

Moore’s style has been termed Modern Revival, which she describes as “A kind of retreat from the design excesses of the 80s and 90s, going back to when things were made properly.”

“The 50s were such an amazing time for production methods, a time of simplicity, of cutting the crap. Some of my work draws very directly on artists of the 50s. For example, I’ve directly drawn teapots and jugs sourced at Milnerton Market, and made fabric from that. The Eeps [little birds that feature on many Moore designs] are a more general nod to the 50s.”

This would still be a fairly straightforward story of recognition and success, were it not for the way it happened. Rather than the more usual process of hanks to the power of the internet, Moore provides her distinctive products to stores all over the world, including the iconic Heath Ceramics in Los Angeles and Sausalito.

According to Moore, “Online’s been the enabler for everything. I’m not very good in self-promotion or marketing at all. Everyone I’ve ever stocked in the world, the initiative has come from them.”

The other pleasing aspect to Moore’s design ethic is that her merchandise is truly local. “I do every aspect of my production in Cape Town. The cotton is milled in Cape Town, and everything is printed and manufactured here.”

But it’s also local in the sense of being distinctively South African without relying on crudely kitsch juxtapositions (three flying ducks on a wildly overpriced t-shirt, for example), or impossibly romantic references to the prelapsarian bush (anything involving lions, and possibly giraffes).

Moore’s silently waiting birds, her poised animals and vital teapots, are at once reminiscent and something you’ve never seen before. Also – and Moore would probably say, more importantly – the craft and rigour that’s gone into the production process is a thing of beauty in itself. It’s also not incidental that her work is affordable. There’s no reason beauty should price itself out of the market once it becomes desirable, in the same way that there’s no convincing reason why good design shouldn’t be a prerequisite, instead of an optional extra.

(Disclosure: Heather Moore has illustrated the cover for Chris’ book, out June 2010. Visit her blog Skinny Laminx.