I made this project when I was 23. The dials were my way of trying to say how I was feeling. Every day for a couple of years, I secretly put them out on the streets as stickers for passers-by to notice. I never admitted to doing them at the time, as I felt really embarrassed about them, but looking back I can say the work was made out of some sense of desperation. In my own way, I was trying to reach out and had to do it.

Every time I’d put the work on the street, it made me feel a bit better. I wanted ‘the right people’ — people who maybe felt the same — to notice them and ‘get it’, and therefore maybe even ‘get’ me.

Unexpectedly, people began actively responding to the work, amending and adjusting the dials themselves: reversing the message; hope instead of hopelessness; redrawing the needles. Someone even went to the lengths of adding little home made stickers to change the wording.

As it kept happening, I realised that I had created a kind of accidental dialogue. In retrospect, it is completely obvious now, but this conversation or connection was what I was looking for. With each person’s response, I began to see that the work had reached a new form of completion.

This was a turning point for me. By learning through doing and being brave enough to show some feelings, I realised that graphic design, like art, could work as a simple conversation starter, rather than having to have only the answers.


Here are a few examples below:

16 years later, this (image below) is the only remaining original dial left in the city. It can be found opposite a civil service building on the corner of Bishop Street in Sheffield, where it was very deliberately placed.

A limited edition screen printed run of each design in the set available here in the shop.