We could tell you about a day in the life of Tim Gould – the brilliant brain behind Objectables cards.
But it wouldn’t be half as hilarious as the man himself, so we’ll pass the mic. Enjoy!
A SORT OF TRUE BUT ALSO MADE UP DAY IN THE LIFE OF OBJECTABLES
A note from Tim:
Just to be clear, there are about 5 people that work here, as well as my fantastic, amazing wife and business partner Annie, and my amazing co-worker Joy.
They are all brilliant and we couldn’t run this business without them.
What follows are my daft meanderings and I wouldn’t want these wondrous people tainted by my idiocy.
5:15 am
Wake up needing a wee. Don’t want to wake up my wife. Go back to sleep and try not to wee myself. Usually don’t wee myself.
7:15 am
Woken up by alarm. Gently remind the teenagers I live with that they have life commitments. Receive assorted moans and recalcitrance.
7:20 am - 8:00 am
Try to eat breakfast and make lunch, go to loo again, brush teeth. Fail to do at least two of those things. Organise teenagers to leave house at 8:00 AM
8:00 am - WHENEVER am
Fail to leave house due to unorganised teenagers
WHENEVER am - 9:00 am
Ferry teenagers around who really should be on a bloody bus, a bus I have already paid for through an annual pass I hasten to add, but which they cannot be arsed to get on.
9:00 am
Arrive at our shop.
9:01 am
Leave shop to try and do or get the things I failed to do whilst at home.
9:30 am
Go back to shop, sit at desk, think about tidying up desk, make coffee, open Laptop.
9:30 am - 1:00 pm
It all gets a bit hazy here I’m afraid. As well as designing and publishing greeting cards my wife and I run a busy card and gift shop in Folkestone,
Kent. I’m sorry to say my days are not always spent designing cards and making myself laugh. We try to do that as much as possible but a lot of my time is spent helping the business run. Ordering stuff, selling stuff, putting the rubbish out, writing amusing boards for outside the shop. We do get quite a bit of time for designing which these days we do as a team. It is usually based around trade show deadlines or submission deadlines for some of our customers. We will have discussions/arguments about what spaces we need to fill and put forward our cases for which ideas we want to try and work on. These arguesations can go on for weeks, you try something but can’t make it work, then try something else, revive something then press the wrong button on illustrator and suddenly come up with something else. At some point we all agree something works and start working towards creating a range around that idea.
around 1:00 pm
My colleague and I discuss which aspects of last nights dinner or our children’s leftovers we will be eating for lunch.
1:30 pm
I will suddenly remember that whoever is working in the shop needs to eat lunch too so I will go and sit on the till for a bit, half serving customers and half trying to carry on with the work I might have started in the office.
after lunch - 5:00 pm
More of the same. We design in various ways, my wife paints, I use procreate, illustrator and Photoshop and Joy uses collage and photographs. We often whack this all together and see what happens.
There might be some cake or tea involved during the afternoon.
To be honest no day is the same, yesterday I spent an hour writing this, today I spent 4 hours putting together a best sellers pdf for our agents, oh I bought my wife a loaf of bread and my staff a doughnut (to share).
5:30 pm
Shut shop and head home.
5:35 pm
Turn back and pick up the thing I managed to leave with out today.
6:00 pm - 11:00 pm
Get home, attempt to interact with teenagers again. Fail. Make them dinner, receive mild appreciation. Watch good/bad tv. Go to bed. Hooray.
Told ya it would be an entertaining read. A big thank you to the Objectables team for letting us into their wild and wonderful lives! If you fancy grabbing one of their cards while you’re here, click the link below:
