Adrian Howard

@adrianhoward.com

437 Followers 594 Following

Drinks less coffee than people expect. Enjoys helping people solve problems in the messy cross-disciplinary spaces where strategy, research, & delivery overlap. Does coaching with senior practitioners & leaders. adrianhoward.com | quietstars.com/coaching

Screenshot dated Jun 29th reading: "I’m not gonna be disillusioned — coz I don’t have illusions about him to start with :-) He’s a politician not a manager — so it’s a massive step up from Starmer. But I think some folk who are expecting Burnham to be pushing labour towards the left on social issues, tax, benefits, etc. are going to be sadly disappointed"
Blood coming out of Adrian's arm at the blood donors
Photo of The Coup's album "Party Music" on CD — illustrated with a fiery cocktail glass.
A copy of "The Psychology of Software Teams" by Cat Hicks being held up by some old beardy dude.
Photo of the Belly album "Star" on CD — illustrated by the band name in an ornate serif font in white against a psychedelic coloured oval.
Screenshot of Google Docs suggesting I replace "occasional" with "casual".
Photo of a mail robin by some green leaves staring insolently at the camera.
Screenshot of a headline reading "Is Kemi Badenoch getting better at being Conservative leader?"
Screenshot of a tweet by Adrian Howard reading: At points in my career I've hung around creative folk in photography/video/illustration — and watched talented creatives working with great clients and with terrible ones. And man… a whole big chunk of the "AI" art stories give me really strong "terrible client" vibes.
Photo of the Special Interest album "Endure" on CD - the cover is a styled as white paper with torn edges, with the word "ENDURE" all caps in a large vertically stretched block sans serif font covering the bottom 3/4 of the cover.
Photo of a book titled "Human-Computer Interaction" by Jenny Preece, et al.
Photo of a hardback copy of the book "The Psychology Of Everday Things" by Donald A. Norman — a white cover illustrated with an "impossible to use" teapot with the handle and the spout on the same side.
Photo of a seagull staring belligerently at the camera through a second story window.
Photo of the PJ Harvey album "Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea" on CD — illustrated with a photo of the artist crossing a New York city street.
A very small tortoise looks out from a cave made of half a coconut shell across some red and grey gravel.
Painting of a bearded and helmed Viking style character with a red cloak. Text reading… Pick your battles. Pick fewer battles than that. Put some battles back. That's still too many battles.
Photo of tha Blackstreet album "Another Level" on CD sitting on a wooden table.
Screen shot of a tweet from @adrianh in Jan 2017 reading "If legacy code is code without tests… what's a legacy organisation…"
Photo of the NYPC album "NYPC"
Photo of the Adia Victoria album "Silences" on CD sitting on a wooden table.
Still from the Princess Bride showing the Dread Pirate Roberts with the quote from the film "Good Work. Sleep Well. I'll most likely kill you in the morning"
A screenshot of a slack message reading "Hey, adrianh! A lot has happened in Slack this week 🎉 You have 5 more Al search previews. Let's summarise what happened in Slack this week."
Photo of a pebbled beach, with green hills in the distance under a lightly clouded sunny blue sky.
Photo of the Florence + the Machine album "Everybody Scream" on CD — the cover is a photo of Florence Welch reclined languidly while staring at the camera with petticoats astray.
Photo of the December page of the 2025 Brutalist Calendar — illustrated with a black & white photo of the Urban Furniture, Sanctuary of Merciful Love, Italy — a curving half tube open on the side to a paved area, with rounded rectangular windows looking outward.
Two photos — one of Adrian's fat hairy arm getting blood removed from it — the other of a Kit Kat next to a leaflet titled "Important safety information after you have given blood".
Screenshot of an iOS notification reading "Up to $190 off … It's the kind of deal you'll brag about all season"
Photo of the November page of the 2025 Brutalist Calender illustrated with a photo of the Albert Einstein School and Cite du Parc, France — a multi-story angular concrete building with multiple balconies and staircases
Photo of the Brass Against album "Brass Against II" on CD with a Bauhaus style illustrated "BA" in red, orange, green, and yellow.
Photo of a somewhat chubby young white lad in his late teens, a terrible haircut, and sunglasses.
Photo of a CD copy of the White Stripes album "Elephant"
Photo of the October page of the 2025 Brutalist Calendar — illustrated with a black and white photo of the Hydrometeorological Service Building Skopje, North Macedonia — an elevated triangular concrete building standing about a dozen meters in the air on stilt-like pylons.
Photo of the beach facing the sea. Some boats and ships are in the middle distance. Two beach huts frame the beach In the foreground.
Photo of Missy Elliot's album "Miss E …so addictive" on CD — illustrated by a monochromatic photo of the artist surrounded by spiked metal balls.
Photo of the September page of the 2025 Brutalist Calendar illustrated with a black & white photograph of "Monument on Freedom Hill" in Slovenia - an 8m tall hollowed-out concrete cube held upright by nine internal tapering columns.
Photo of The Distillers eponymous album on CD — illustrated with a black and white photo of a barking Alsatian with bared teeth.
Photo of the August page of the 2025 Brutalist Calendar — illustrated with a black and white photograph of “Le Lavatrici” in Genoa, Italy — a concrete social housing complex tiered on the Genoan hills.
Photo of the July page of the 2025 Brutalist Calendar illustrated with a black & white photo of Telecommunications Building, Paris, France — a concrete disk raised off the ground on a central pillar with a radio mast rising from its centre. The bottom of the disk is ringed by concrete windows and a balcony.
Photo of a CD copy of Mary J Blige’s album “No More Drama”
Photo of the Cardington Airship hangers — two huge 200m long green hangers in the middle distance, behind some green fields.
Photo of a moth that looks mostly like a brown leaf sitting proudly on a white wall.
A screenshot of an online form with a dropdown for "Country" incorrectly showing the St George's Cross next to "United Kingdom" — rather than the Union Flag.
Photo of the June page of the 2025 Brutalist Calendar showing the Johannes XXIII Church in Cologne, Germany - a concrete structure that looks like it's made of semi-random concrete planes intersecting each other at 90 degrees.
The "Let Them Fight" meme from the 2014 Godzilla.
Photo of the Garbage album “Let All That We Imagine Be The Light” on CD, sitting on a wooden table. The album is illustrated with a blue octopus lit with a pink light from above — with the album title overlayed in large white serif stencil style typeface.
Screenshot of a LinkedIn notification reading "Learn more about OpenAl and discover other Pages you might be interested in following."
Photo of Chaka Khan's album "Hello Happiness" on CD — illustrated with a photo of the artist in a long coat, holding a fan, posed alluringly against some railings.
Photography of the May page of the 2025 Brutalist Calendar, illustrated with a black & white photograph of Seoul Country Club (now Kkummaru), South Korea — a multi story concrete pagoda with parking underneath.
Photo of the April page of the 2025 Brutalist Calendar — illustrated with a photo of the Roskilde Water Tower in Denmark (a concrete cylindrical water tower raised on on seven concrete pillars, in front of a glass fronted building).
Photo of a hedgehog among some grass.
Photo of Big Thief's album "Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You" on CD — illustrated with a pencil sketch of a dinosaur, owl, a bird, and a bear playing a guitar all sitting around a campfire.
Screenshot of a tweet from Leanna Orr (@LeannaO) reading: European's out of offices are like "I will not be working until 18 September. All emails will be automatically deleted." Americans: "I am in the hospital. Email responses may be delayed by up to 30 mins. Sorry for the inconvenience! If urgent, please reach me in the ER at…"
A sketched diagram illustrating a generalist "team of one" progressing to a team of specialists and generalists, which in turn progresses to specialising generalists leading teams of specialists.
"Let Them Fight" meme from the 2014 Godzilla film.
An un-captioned version of the Simpsons "so far" meme
Screenshot of a calender event reading "Will be underperforming because of Daylight Savings change" running all day from Sun, 30 Mar 2025 to Sat, 5 Apr 2025
Screenshot of a massive obtrusive popup reading "Draft emails confidently with Gemini Gemini can help you write your drafts in seconds and quickly refine them."
Photo of a robin sitting on a wooden fence — The robin is facing left with it's red breast clearly visible. Behind the fence are the upper branches of a tree, and in the middle distance the top of a church.
A photo of the Ezra Collective's album "Dance, No One's Watching" on CD — the cover shows a photo of a crowded dancefloor of Black men & women, with the band playing on a slightly raised stage at the back of the room.