about
Somehow I've managed to get into a situation where I make balls all day. It was a meandering path to get here.
I fell down the hole of "the Internet" after we got our first 56k dialup connection. In no time I was hanging out in AOL chatrooms, making websites using Notepad, FTPing .php files to my angelfire account, overusing the <marquee> tag, and generally just having my mind blown by all this cool stuff you could do.
My “office” (in a cupboard) some time around 2003
Making websites and sharing them with my friends at school is how I initially got started with product design. It was a fun challenge to try and make things that they'd want to use. I was hooked instantly.
I started working on website after website. Trying different things. Flailing around in every direction. Most things didn't work, but occasionally I'd stumble onto something that resonated with people.
One of these little projects turned into something a bit more substantial. DailyBooth. It was a social network designed around webcams (pre-app store!).
With (my co-founder) Ryan’s help millions of people signed up, we raised money from some celebrity investors, we won 2 crunchies, and blazed out in a ball of glory!!!!! (we got acqu-hired and shut down).
It was a wild ride that brought me from a small town on the south coast of the UK to the USA.
To date my only project that has a wikipedia page.
I started experimenting with physical products after that. I really wanted to make something that you could hold in your hand.
After some expensive failed experiments Peel was born. At the time iPhone cases were universally big, bulky, and covered in branding. A peel case is the antithesis of that. They're thin, and branding free. It doesn't even look like you have a case on.
Peel has since morphed into a minimalist lifestyle brand with a range of products. It was acquired in 2021.
I always have a few projects that I'm working on in the background. There's very little strategy or cohesion between them. I've worked on games, apps, websites, physical products. I have trouble focusing on one thing which I've come to view as a bit of a super power.
When COVID hit and funding fell through for stopwatch, I bought myself some leather working tools. I tinkered around for a while making random things, a wallet, a pencil case... then one day decided to try and make a ball.
My first ball in all its glory. I like to keep it around as a reminder of how much progress I've made.
The ball was awful. It was barely a ball at all. It wasn't round and the stitching was bad – but I enjoyed making it. As soon as I was finished I thought "If I made another one it would be better".
I've been in that headspace ever since, and now there's hundreds of balls in my apartment.
A still from a timelapse clip showing some of the balls that have slowly spawned around me.
I started documenting the process of making each ball through short 60 second videos. People seemed to find them interesting! In my first year of uploading videos of my balls to the internet more than 100,000,000 watched them which lead to some collaborations with some of the biggest brands in football (adidas, FIFA, Messi, Apple, MLS).
I never thought that making balls all day would be a viable career path but somehow I'm (currently) getting away with it. I'm now focused on launching my own ball company (12 Pentagons) to make some of my more popular designs available for sale in limited quantities.
So now... I make balls all day. I occasionally make other things too, but 80% of my time is taken up working on new balls and making videos about it. Consider following me on Instagram or YouTube.