#25 Innovation in Action, InDesign and learning

Weeknotes — Monday 5 January – Sunday 11 January 2026

Back into the year with a boom: client workshops, diving into learning InDesign for a client project. Mix it up this month with illustrations and workshops and some reading.

Dot and Dash

This week I supported Kristina with her Innovation in Action workshop — a brilliant session with local manufacturers building their own marketing strategies. We debriefed immediately after, which is always my preferred approach. Everything is still live in your mind, the feedback lands differently, and you leave with something concrete to take into the next session.

Following on, I had client meetings with Natural England for the conference event and updates on the posters I am developing for them.

Client illustration work this week too. Keeping the illustration practice running alongside facilitation is something I'm really enjoying, and new opportunities are landing, which is great. It's taken 6 years to build up my practice in the background, and it feels great to be earning from it.

Learning

With the client work coming in I had to refresh my design work with it. It's been years since I used InDesign. It's something I need for developing all the posters for Natural England. Much of the interface is like other Adobe products, but I haven't got the suite anymore; things have changed and upgraded. I did look at affinity, and canva was not going to be suitable. I forgot just how expensive the Adobe CC was, luckily you can just pay for what you need.

As a refresher and a different lens, I did an online Domestika graphic design course. Learning alongside doing!

App Development

It's been hard to keep the app work going this month with juggling client consultancy work. Thankfully, most of this is backend technical work. I have been going through the research insights again to ensure we are still covering the basic features.

I wonder... how many people approach a new project by learning everything they need to while doing the project.. I know that is what software engineers naturally do, but who else does this?

If this resonated, pass it on to someone who might enjoy it. Subscribing is free and you can hop in and out whenever suits you.

To join our community and stay updated on app development, click this link.