That Was The Week That Was — 3rd May 2026

Monday morning saw us head to the airport bound for Düsseldorf for the Beyond Tellerrand conference where I had created all the graphic design for the event which was celebrating its fifteenth anniversary.

The feeling of this conference is like nothing else — which has everything to do with how much Marc Theile cares about the event — and it's always a place to catch up with friends we haven's seen for a while. The posters — created using a system I had made in Touch Designer — looked good and people seemed to like them, evidenced by the scramble to grab them when the event finished on the Tuesday evening.

On the Tuesday morning we were woken from a our sleep by a fire alarm just before six, so we and everyone else found ourselves standing over the road opposite the hotel, me, stood in my Budd pyjamas and Bowhill and Elliot slippers, noticing the odd person who couldn't be bothered leaving the hotel having a sneaky peek through the windows. Apparently it was later commented on that "I couldn't have looked more British" which made me smile.

A toaster was the cause of the evacuation, which meant no breakfast service for that day, so myself and Lisa jumped on the Metro to head to Bazzar Caffe which we'd been to on our last visit to the city. Great coffee and an even greater display of vintage coffee machines all in a beautiful art nouveau setting.

One of the highlight's was dinner with a our friends James White — who was speaking at the conference — and his wife Naomi Atkinson both of whom we've known for many years. I managed to find a Korean place called Kochi via the Open Table app and after walking through a seemingly sketchy area accompanied by comments such as "where the hell are you taking us Bren?", we found this beautiful place where we had a wonderful time placing the skewers on the rotisserie situated in the middle of the table, watching them rotate as we timed each type of meat with the different timers.

At the end of the meal we were each given some delicious Korean lolly ices together with a coin to try our luck on the grab style vending machines in the foyer. Lisa very nearly grabbed a packet of Ramon but at the last minute it just fell away, like it was probably designed to.