It’s not really a week, it’s three days. But it is in the lovely Clerkenwell neighbourhood of London.

Things we checked out today:

• Thinking Ergonomix is an Australian design company with a showroom on Clerkenwell Road. Nice furniture, and they were giving away free stools (pictured) which are apparently retail at £200. Oh, but you had to answer a series of difficult questions about their furniture. But you could ask.
• Toilet maker Toto make incredible toilets, showers and other washroom paraphernalia. Very high tech stuff from Japan that we were quite excited over. Think the fancy toilet from that episode of The Simpsons with the water jets and heating. Downstairs is an exhibition on sustainable design, where you can pay a pound to a water charity to use one of their toilets. Describing the fun of the experience would probably get too creepy to put into writing.
• A lecturer, current postgrad and former student from the National School of Furniture in High Wycombe gave a talk about the journey from education to work, which resonates well with someone just finishing Foundation. The things I took away: be naggy when approaching design companies. To paraphrase the former student, you’ll “start off making tea”, and end up “presenting designs to a board”.
• The House of Detention is a super-eery former dungeon venue and hosted some impressive work from a range of disciplines, but mostly furniture. I was strangely fixated on the airplane and train seating that was on show.
• Finally, I ran off on my own to IDEO which is a design consultancy (think people who are paid to come up with great ideas and put them into practise). Really great for them to open up their offices and let you have a look around and talk to people. Had a chat with two folks who work there. I asked them questions about what they do and you can really see the bleeding of passion. Was great to share my zombie film story and other stuff from Foundation with them and talk about my excitement for the degree course. Main thing to take away: people research doesn’t need a huge sample. Five-odd people tends to cover all bases.

Really fun, and a really nice day too. Haven’t checked out the programme for tomorrow.