Behind the scenes at SMILE

Birmingham Bonanza.

Mon, 08 Feb 2010 13:57:27 +0000

Today’s object of the week features a poster that I created while I had a little spare time - The BT Tower, Birmingham.

I’ve gone for a bit of a different style to the other posters I created (anglepoise/spitfire), a bit of a monochromatic thang going on!

I wanted to create a poster or a couple in order to focus on Birmingham’s not so media heavy icons. We all know that selfrides/the rotunda are highly praised and are clearly visitor focul points, however, there are some pretty beautiful/amezzin’ buildings around here, including the BT Tower, the Birmingham Mint/St Paul’s Church/St. Martin’s Church. P.s on a completely random note: I simply love Birmingham’s abandoned warehouses - I want to buy one and make it my home!

Let me know what you think to this poster and style (if you like it I’ll do more. If not I won’t!).

The Coffee Table: Printing and Finishes

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 17:02:00 +0000

So you’ve seen the paper, now see the finishers and printers.

But before we go on about that, we can tell you that we’ve got a dead exciting project that revolves around genetics. We’re just trying to expand our knowledge on the subject and learning the essentials so we know what we’re on about. Info-graphics ahoy?

GF Smith sent us some wonderful new colourplan book. Shame it doesn’t show you the weights and embossings though. I’m thinking of using mine as a (very sexy) diary/journal.

We’re looking into another foil block job. It’s getting quite complex so we’re looking at some fantastic resources.

I’ve been learning about the process and some of the more advanced things that one could do by combining techniques. It’s all really interesting. Check out the micro-engraving on the third picture!

One of our good friends sent us a bag of goodies including a beautiful booklet for Jonathan Ive’s honorary doctorate. There’s also a nice piece of promo for Kingsbury Press.

Bonus Thursday joiner, err on Friday! Sorry for the mixup, but...

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 12:42:16 +0000

Bonus Thursday joiner, err on Friday!

Sorry for the mixup, but here is the bonus joiner for this week. Again shot from the very cold and windy grounds of Edinburgh Castle.

First of all, apologies for the technical problem with the post....

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 17:38:00 +0000

First of all, apologies for the technical problem with the post. I had uploaded two images of very different proportions, and Tumblr couldn’t deal with it.

Also, apologies for the lack of Thursday joiner last week, I was missing in action! I took a weekend away to Edinburgh, and what a beautiful place. So I thought I would share a snippet with you. Although I have to admit photographs can’t quite do it justice.

This was taken from the castle grounds, overlooking the city centre. It took quite a bit of post production to get it up to standard because of how hurriedly I took them. By the time I had finished, my hands were so cold I could barely push the shutter release! But it was worth the trip just for that view!

New in the portfolio: Visual Phonics by Hand

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 17:56:14 +0000

It’s been a long time coming, but we’ve completed one of our most exciting projects. We worked with Babs Day on a school website last year. After working with us, she started to talk about this amazing project she had in mind. Shortly after, she asked us to work on the brief.

Now we have completed the project, we’d like to tell you a little bit about it.

Visual Phonics by Hand is a system of handcues for teaching and using phonics with deaf children. Using the two-handed fingerspelling alphabet as a starting point, it capitalises on the ability many young deaf children have. It offers a quick tool to show the phonemes in English speech and spelling. It overlays any published phonics schemes to give greater access for deaf children.

It was developed by Headteacher, Babs Day, who, as a Teacher of the Deaf, created it as a literacy teaching tool for mainstream or special school classrooms. VPbH has good application to Speech and Language therapy situations and home use too.

We loved creating this project. It was a real buzz. Sue got down and dirty with some motion graphics, Matt worked brand-side whilst Nathan coded the website and handled video production. All the other stuff was a team effort aided by coffee!

We also worked very closely with a subtitling whiz. We’ve never seen anyone type so fast! The result was brilliant. We even have the subtitles on the YouTube video! Filming in HD meant that the video is super crisp and we’ve managed to keep the file size down so that any computer can handle it.

Take a look at the website - http://www.visualphonicsbyhand.com

Find out more about the project by clicking here.

Visual Phonics by Hand Demo - created by SMILE Creative...

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 17:34:00 +0000

Visual Phonics by Hand Demo - created by SMILE Creative Consultants

www.visualphonicsbyhand.com

Object of the week on tour: My House.

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 11:44:34 +0000

Cardboard stag head - assembled with my own fair hands.

A christmas present - a vintage Hovis Tin - available from www.pedlars.co.uk

One of my fave objects at the mo: DIYnosaur. A make your own triceratops lamp - this took me about 1hr 30 mins to assemble despite the advised “allow 20 minutes to assemble”. Worth every minute though!

I love wandering round flea fairs - the three counties showground in Malvern hold a pretty good one each month. I picked up this old singer Sewing Machine oil can for a couple of quid. Great Success!!

Finally, I’ve selected a 1946 Autocar poster advertising Austin Cars. I love these posters, I have another in my wish list - conveniently my birthday is coming up in a couple of months!

The Coffee Table: Fedrigoni

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 15:17:19 +0000

2010 is the year of focus for us at SMILE. We’re ready to take on more work and we’re excited about some of the opportunities that we have in front of us.

We’ve been talking with Mel from Fedrigoni about their papers. Unlike other paper suppliers, Fedrigoni are a paper mill - so they make and sell their paper.

Their catalogues are incredibly comprehensive and are really useful. They’re fast becoming our go-to resource for paper info.

We saw the Fedrigoni calendar on their website a few months back and fell in love. Now we have a few at the studio, we are all very happy!

I know what you’re all thinking, when do SMILE actually do...

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 17:14:39 +0000

I know what you’re all thinking, when do SMILE actually do any work?!

Well I can assure you that we do (you can see Sue in the background working away), but we are also firm believers that a happy work place is a productive one. So, today we collected our very own snooker table. We weren’t looking to buy one, but we were received an offer that we just simply couldn’t turn down. And we promise to only use it at lunch time and after work!!

Any one for a snooker tournament at some point?? Let us know if you are and we’ll look at arranging something. But before we do, I have to warn you that Sue is rather good, and has already been practising!

Object of the week. Of the Year 2009.

Mon, 18 Jan 2010 17:30:45 +0000

Probably a little late considering we are nearly waving goodbye to January, but what the heck.. I like unconventional-ness.

So, if you’ve been following our blog, you’ll probably have noticed a few object of the week posts - we’ve compiled some of our favourite objects from the year of 2009, Some because we simply love that ‘thing’, some because it reminds us of a day trip etc etc - you get the point!

Let us know what YOUR favourite object of 2009 is… I want to see some really random objects!!

The Coffee Table: Our first 6 months

Fri, 15 Jan 2010 15:34:00 +0000

Welcome to 2010. We’ve been reminiscing on our first 6 months and we’re proud of how much we’ve achieved. So in a rather fitting manner, we’re announcing our first wall calendar - available for purchase soon.

Designed without the need for letters, this calendar uses only numbers and rectangles to visualise the year of 2010.

We will be selling these on the SMILE Shop so please keep a close eye on our twitter and blog.

So what have we done in our first 6 months? We’ve flown to Berlin to meet Erik Spiekermann, met the fantastic guys at Airside, got our work into some amazing publications, worked with some great clients, exhibited at major events, been featured all over the web, signed the lease to our studio and most importantly, managed to make our idea into a reality.

If you have in any way helped us along the way; thank you!

Designing an iPhone app icon: Last.fm

Wed, 13 Jan 2010 11:31:20 +0000

Before you start reading, we did not design the current Last.fm iPhone app icon. This article is about what we would do to make it better (see above).

I’m something of an iPhone app connoisseur and I’m nearly as picky about them as I am about my food. If an app hasn’t got a half-decent icon, I won’t buy it. I shelled out a fair amount of my hard earned money for a beautifully designed UI; I don’t want some 3rd party app to screw that up.

There are some great services available on the iPhone - the sort that you have to tell your friends about. Sometimes the UI or the icon just doesn’t seem to live up to the function. Last.fm is one of those apps. I love the service, and I love the way that the app works; but the icon could be so much better.

We didn’t have to do too much to it, but what we have done makes a huge difference. Here’s what the old one looked like (left) in a side-by-side comparison to our proposal (right).

There’s so much we could say about it, but we’ll keep it short. First of all we ditched the standard glass effect. We went for the matt button approach with the logo punched out of it which stops it from looking so flat. We paid particular attention to lighting and how to make it sit correctly next to other apps. It had to stand out enough to be different, but not appear out of place. We did make some changes to the overall colouring of the icon - the original looks washed out and is a pretty yucky red. We’ve changed that to a nice deep red with a very subtle gradient. We also gave their logo a bit of love and gave it a bit more breathing space either side - those few pixels make a difference!

The original looks like an image with a glass effect on, whereas our proposal integrates with the last.fm brand much tighter. Do you remember any glass looking graphics on last.fm?

As experts in branding we know that this stuff matters - and it can dramatically affect interpretation and perception. If you are looking to get your app into iTunes, show your work some respect and spend some quality time with your app’s icon. If you’re worried you’re not a graphics buff, give us a call - we won’t bite!

Oh and did I mention that we’re really competitively priced for this sort of work?

Worried about your entire brand? Definitely drop us a line, we can get you fixed up with an elegant identity solution that will communicate your values effectively.

So what do you think?

New Year Nice-ness

Mon, 11 Jan 2010 17:48:06 +0000

Oooooooh. We are in the midst of creating yet another little treat!

A few screenshots are enough to tease temptation without completely unveiling what it is (although you can probably guess!)

The plan is to send out a handful of these A1 papier pleasures by the end of this week, so if you received a SMILE xmas tree one may be heading your way (if you didn’t receive a tree, feel free to put a request in!)

Apologies to those who requested a tree prior to christmas day, we have a few left so if you still want one please remind us! Wishy washy brains!

Photos taken using a Blackberry. Enough said.

Welcome to my first entry in 2010! I hope you all had a great...

Thu, 07 Jan 2010 16:25:18 +0000

Welcome to my first entry in 2010! I hope you all had a great Christmas and enjoyed new year.

My last entry in 2009 featured a snowy scene at St Paul’s Square in the jewellery quater. And the first joiner for 2010 also features a snowy scene, this time at SMILE’s home in The Bond.

We returned to work on Monday this week after a very relaxing break of almost two weeks. And within an hour of arriving at work on Tuesday this was the scene. We can be very excitable here at SMILE, so the worst snow in years was met with delight. However this soon changed once we realised we would have to drive home!

Despite the not-so-friendly driving conditions we still love the snow, just for how crisp and clean it makes everywhere look.

Festivity activity.

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 15:18:23 +0000

Well, well ,well! We are back from our festive break… 10lbs heavier! This weeks’ feature contains all of the SMILE gang’s presents. As you can see, there is quite a selection and I’m not 100% sure if we deserve them, but Santa came and delivered.

Can you work out which presents were for which SMILE member?? This could be quite interesting!! Leave your comments below so we can have a laugh!

From all of us here at SMILE, we wish you a very Merry...

Wed, 23 Dec 2009 16:06:26 +0000

From all of us here at SMILE, we wish you a very Merry Christmas.

Smile were out and about posting our Christmas cards (see...

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 16:30:00 +0000

Smile were out and about posting our Christmas cards (see Nath’s post from the other day) this afternoon when all of a sudden the blue sky disappeared and snow began falling. We have been winding down towards Christmas for a few days now, and it seemed rather fitting that it should snow while delivering our cards.

So I grabbed my camera and took this week’s joiner of a snowy St Paul’s Square. It didn’t snow for long, but there was enough to create a beautiful Christmas scene, especially with the church. Oh, speaking of the church, we popped in there to warm up, and Nath liked it so much that he started planning his and Nat’s special day! I hear wedding bells!

There wasn’t quite enough snow to build a snowman, but admittedly, there were a couple of snowballs being thrown!

Hope you all have a good Christmas and New year, and I’ll be back in January.

Yes, we have been out in the snow…

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 15:21:00 +0000

Yes, we have been out in the snow…

A Christmas Coffee Table

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 13:41:00 +0000

Ho ho ho, it’s very nearly Christmas, so we’ve started to mail out our Christmas cards. They’re very special - we made them out of frosted acrylic and laser etched a design and festive message into the ‘card’.

We had so many of the little frosted trees that the coffee table began to look like a small forest!

We’ve posted most of them out now (if you get one let us know what you think) but we have a small amount of remaining trees. If you’d like one just leave a message in the comments to be entered into our ‘lucky dip’! So, who wants one?

Crikey, what a chopper.

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 17:49:43 +0000

Woweee. Object of the week features my new helicopter! Handmade from Coca-Cola cans, it is truly amezzin’.

I really wanted to produce another design classics poster, but I’ve been so busy I haven’t gotten round to it - a new years’ task I think.

I’m so excited for christmas!!