If you’ve been reading our blog for a while you’ll know we love a good book. Umbro, Urban Splash, Chelsea College of Arts, the touchy-feely LOVE books have all been great projects to work on, but it’s also nice to keep the personal projects going.

So when a friend was recently going through a bit of a tough time, I decided to write a book for her and her two year-old son. Nothing that’s going to win a Booker prize – or any prize for that matter – just something simple she could read to raise a smile. I knocked the story out over a couple of weeks, set it in Times New Roman or something similar (“good knowledge of typefaces” isn’t something I’ve got on my CV) and was heading off to get it bound at Staples, when I thought I’d run the idea past her Dad, Clive Rand, aka the nicest man in advertising.

Clive was one of the founding members of Leeds-based agency Brahm (he’s the ‘r’) and also a rather useful illustrator. Clive said he’d love to help and so started a series of 29 illustrations for the book.

Now it also happens that her brother, Jon Rand, is a freelance voiceover artist, and it’s fairly common knowledge that all the best children’s books these days come with a CD narrated by a famous voice. Probably Tom Baker. Jon’s got a great voice and in between idents for Channel 4 and Film4, laid the story down onto a CD.

Now all we needed was someone to turn it into a book, which is where the beautiful people at LOVE came good again. We only produced 20 copies in total, so I doubt you’ll find “Little Alex” on the shelves of Waterstones (unless I decide to put one there), but it was still a great project to do. Many thanks to Dave Simpson, Jon Hatton and Matt Beardsell for all the extra hours you put in. And Clive and Jon. You done good.

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