Second up, an observation that stems from that old Ikea-led cliche of Scandinavian design: functional furniture. I’m amazed at the small touches in design that can be found everywhere you look, with the moderinst minutae coming together in order to make the daily grind a little less painful. Above is a prime example – I love to drink coffee during a flight, but due to clunky aeroplane furniture this is normally mutually exclusive to one of my other in-fight vices, reading my broadsheet newspaper. However, Scandinavian Airlines have built a cup holder onto the front of the pull-down table, so those who just want a drink aren’t punished into having a full table on their lap.

The Scandinavians have a very positive attitude to problem solving – whereas we might see a niggling nuisance, a Scandinavian perceives a possible solution. This outlook leads to a great number of small innovations, and a culture which not only praises and promotes them, but subliminally cultivates them too. In the future, I’m going to attempt to “Go Scandinavian” on problems I encounter, and approach them positively, searching for answers which have hitherto lain unseen.

It got me thinking on the role of laughter in the creative process, and after having a dig around there’s references to it everywhere. Aristotle, one of the greatest minds of all time, was a great proponent of laughter, saying it was the only thing that seperated us from animals. An old Yiddish saying states “what soap is to the body, laughter is to the soul”. There is a field of scientific research devoted to the effect of laughter on the brain. The process of laughing changes the state of your brain, and free it to come up with new ideas. Here at ?What If! we teach clients about our “creative behaviours” to enable them to be more original in their approach to thinking, one of which we call “Playfulness”. Over the years we’ve realised many things, and the concept of Playfulness has always shown us that laughter and happiness releases bounds of creative energy.

OK, so now what? Well, I think it is high time you find a way to make yourself or a colleague laugh after reading this post – share the last joke that made you laugh out loud, retell a time you’ve embarrased yourself, or try using some external tidbits ….

London-based on Tank Form working from (where else) Malborough St are aiming to fill at a few of those holes with their range of classic novels, weighing in at the same size as your average 20 pack, and sure to get some serious disapprovals next time you get the bus. And so long as you’re lusting after the right type of person, Kafka should be just as impressive to them as a packet of Lucky Stripes would have been … A triumph of beautiful design meeting classic content.