Behind the scenes at SMILE

Number five: St Chad’s Church, (I think)! The final post...

Fri, 27 Aug 2010 13:27:23 +0100

Number five: St Chad’s Church, (I think)!

The final post of this week features a lovely looking church not far from Snow Hill station that I pass every day on my way home.

I’ve still got a load more to do, but if you have a particularly interesting building in mind please let me know.

Enjoy the bank holiday and see you all next week.

Number four: Birmingham Cathedral. I particularly enjoyed...

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 17:05:53 +0100

Number four: Birmingham Cathedral.

I particularly enjoyed spending about three hours trying to interpret the windows of Birmingham Cathedral. So much detail! But so rewarding once I worked out how to do it!

Number three: Moor Street Station. Those of you who have in the...

Wed, 25 Aug 2010 16:30:00 +0100

Number three: Moor Street Station.

Those of you who have in the past, seen some of my photographic joiners will be aware that I hold a bit of an interest in architecture, and that I quite often use it as the subject of my personal work. However, it wasn’t until I began working on this project that I realised the incredibly intricate detailing that goes into every building. Even the seemingly minimal buildings such as yesterdays Mailbox are so obviously designed to the last detail.

Today’s building, Moor Street Station, I particularly enjoyed interpreting. The colour of the bricks contrasted against the deep blue sky are beautiful, the arch shaped windows are balanced so well with the porthole windows, whilst the fine detailing in the signs and even the supporting pillars allowed me to add so much character.

A few weeks ago I wouldn’t have looked twice at Birmingham’s buildings, now I can’t walk by without taking photos!

Number two: The Mailbox. So here is number two in the series,...

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 16:30:00 +0100

Number two: The Mailbox.

So here is number two in the series, and probably one of the most time consuming to create. The minimal, modern architecture proved to be more difficult to recreate than the more detailed seen in the Council House illustration. But we love a challenge at SMILE.

Well, where to start? It’s been a while! Too long in fact,...

Mon, 23 Aug 2010 16:44:37 +0100

Well, where to start? It’s been a while! Too long in fact, but never fear, we at SMILE are back on the blogging scene with plenty of new ideas, work and just general exciting bits to keep you all entertained for a while.

For the past few weeks I’ve been working on a very satisfying, if incredibly time-consuming illustration project. I’m not quite sure how that happened really as I am by no means good with a pencil, and have previously avoided any illustration work at any cost!

It all began when a brief came in for a Birmingham based client. Nathan and I were working through some ideas when we took a trip out of the studio to have a look at a few locations around the city centre. A hot summers afternoon, some city centre photos and a couple of beers later we returned with our concept for the project - a location inspired set of illustrations focused on some of the beautiful buildings within the city.

Unfortunately, we didn’t win the brief, but I was hooked, so have continued to develop the style with the aim of turning them into prints once I have created enough buildings!

I’ll be blogging a different building every day this week so pop back at the same time tomorrow to see the next one!

New work: Six Summer Saturdays

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 16:58:24 +0100

We’ve launched our latest website this week: Six Summer Saturdays for the Birmingham Hippodrome theatre.

For the first time this Summer, Birmingham Hippodrome will be animating the city by presenting highlights from the best in outdoor theatre.

Whether you’re on a day out with family and friends, enjoying a shopping trip or dining in an outdoor cafe, we’ll be bringing performances directly to you.

The following weeks will welcome raving grannies on souped up shopping trolleys, giant kangaroos bouncing around the city, classic puppetry, contemporary mime, juggling tennis players and international acrobats!

Sarah from the Hippodrome approached us to design and build the website with existing artwork. With only a week to build the website we got straight to work and the Hippodrome are really happy with the results.

View the project…

Our 200th Post: One Year On

Wed, 16 Jun 2010 16:15:00 +0100

SMILE began trading officially on the 1st July 2009. Here we are one year on. What’s happened? What’s going to happen? At the end of this article, we’ll be announcing a big change to this blog too.

July
We had a great start, we got moved in with our essentials and landed a Jewellery Exhibition catalogue which was heaps of fun to do. Towards the end of the month we were asked to create a brand, and distribution method for a new educational tool.

August
The hot weather disappeared and had our first taste of go-karting because we were pretty dead during this time. In September we had our first magazine appearance in Design Week. This was a huge leap forward in marketing for SMILE.

October
Personally, October was the most memorable month for me. I went to Berlin to meet Erik Spiekermann. The whole trip was amazing. On a different note, this is when Sue made the fatal move of purchasing a Blackberry - and yes, she regrets it.

We also got a mention on Form Fifty Five which took our website down because of all the visitors - we had to upgrade.

November
Typographic Horizons took place in November, where I exhibited some work and made some great friends. This was followed by a spell of trips to London.

December
December was a good one. Tight deadlines made ever tighter by Christmas.

January
We sat down and had a big chat. We refer to this a lot now. Why? Well, put simply, we wanted to up our game. We started making changes to the way the studio ran and our individual workflows.

February
February is most famous for my birthday (clearly) followed closely by the rewards that were coming from our January chat. We saw real profitability in the studio and knew that we were onto something.

March
The birth of the Created in Birmingham shop fell in March - this one surprised us - it was like an unexpected bonus at the end of the month! We also got featured on minimalsites.com which is still giving us referring hits today.

April
We were struggling to keep up with demand at the CiB shop. We bought hundreds of frames and had to use all 3 cars to get them to the studio.

May
I exhibited some experimental typography at Not my Type in the heart of Birmingham. The exhibition was noted on the Creative review blog.

June
We’ve been busy finding new work, and completing briefs for some great clients.

All of this and I haven’t really talked about the work!

We’ve done so much it’s hard to know where to start, so I’m not going to. I can’t sum up SMILE in one blog post but this is just the start for us. We’re looking to work with new clients that identify with our principles and ideas on design.

Where are we now?
Our latest venture is design for mobile platforms, especially Apple iOS. We have a pool table that is a favourite lunchtime pursuit. The studio is full of collected design goodies, we have more filing systems than we ever imagined and we’ve learnt a heck of a lot about business.

More than anything else, the whole operation feels more slick. The systems that we deployed as graduating students have allowed us to upscale at a pace that suits us and easily too. We’ve also invested heavily in new online tools to make the business side of life easier too. 12 months ago we didn’t have the foggiest about CRM - now we have custom workflow rules set up to make selling hassle free.

We’re looking forward to year two, we hope you are too. We have big plans for ‘10/’11 so if you have a design problem and want to work with us to solve it - contact us!

The SMILE blog is changing
We love our blog - and we hope you do too. When we set up a year ago, we made a promise to post three times a week with consistent themes and by each member of the team. 12 months on, we are no longer able to keep that promise. The truth is that we’re too busy to fulfil that promise.

As a result we’ll be changing the way that we blog. We will make no promises that we will blog regularly or on a consistent theme. It’s important that we keep it fun to do, as well as relevant. We’ll try and put something online at least once a week and keep it around studio life or new work.

Anglepoise of Lamps

Mon, 14 Jun 2010 14:58:17 +0100

Ahhhhh, my Anglepoise Lamp obsession is returning!! I think it’s probably about time I started my search for another one. I’m not so keen on getting brand new ones (although I do have one) I like the charm of the old ones, and I especially want a wall mounted one! Anyone out there have one?! Please.

Typoboxes

Fri, 28 May 2010 12:43:55 +0100

Check out the fruit of my labour yesterday! I spent a fairly busy day sorting out a typographic filing system. Sad I know!! But it also (in my opinion) looks very cool.

I searched for my favourite typeface beginning with each letter of the alphabet. A was Avenir, B baskerville, and quite obviously, H was Helvetica!

I then printed each letter and began the painstaking task of tracing each letter onto a box. So we now have thirteen letter combo boxes, numbered boxes 1-9 and a personal box each.

All that’s left to do now is to begin filing away all of the paper work we’ve been collecting for the past twelve months! Oh joy!!

SMILE prints now available at Ethos, Brindley Place

Wed, 26 May 2010 11:19:52 +0100

Sadly, the CiB shop is now closed. We had a great time selling our stuff in there and we’ll miss all the friendly staff faces.

On a more upbeat note, our prints are still available at a different outlet! Ethos is a flower and gift shop in Brindley Place and they now stock SMILE prints!

The Coffee Table: Nathans New Work Area

Fri, 21 May 2010 17:37:57 +0100

This weeks coffee table is adorned with spare nuts and bolts, instructions and a lovely little promo piece that we’ve been given.

This week we decided that it’s time we up our organisational game.

So we combined an archive system with a new desk which has given my work area a new lease of life. I have a more private section behind the archive now which will be great for getting away from the computer.

The archive is a collection of alphabetically organised boxes in which there are smaller boxes for our clients. It’s a central storage location for collected inspiration and printed samples for our clients - super useful stuff for our growing list.

We had a few of these Bass Festival embossed booklets which are well put together. I’m really looking forward to The Mostly Jazz Festival, so this was a nice teaser to receive.

The Balls of Summer '10

Mon, 17 May 2010 15:16:22 +0100

What with the weather being above 10 degrees celcius, I’ve been feeling quite summery! Being an excitable child at heart, I immediately start thinking about all the cool games the summer brings with it. I thought I’d make a quirky sky blue poster displaying ‘the balls of summer’ to reflect the lovely british summer-ness! Enjoy whilst imagining a cocktail in your hand, the scent of sun cream and the sound of flip flops flippety floppeting!

The Coffee Table: Nathans Deconstructed N

Fri, 14 May 2010 14:08:12 +0100

Last week on The Coffee Table I wrote about “Not My Type”, which has since been featured on Creative Review. This week I want to show you a little bit about my process.

I was originally dead set on doing a 3-dimesional N with intense drop shadows or cutouts in the floor. A little something like this…

But really, this wasn’t that thoughtful. I liked the cleanliness and colour and I’d spent a lot of time on the 3D element to it, so decided to keep that. I wanted to experiment with the realms of readability. I wondered how far I could push the boundaries without losing the ability for it to be understood. I kept pushing and pushing - some of which were just utterly ridiculous - but decided on an exploded view.

I liked the results but knew it needed more. I decided to use an isometric grid system to keep the 3D feel, but put in tricks that meant that the image couldn’t possibly be set in 3 dimensions. I wanted the audience to question the realms in which it was set.

Each point leads to another along the grid system. No single point is left out. I enjoyed the challenge of this game I had put myself into and it wasn’t easy either but the result was a nicely balanced composition that holds true to its questioning nature.

To draw or Not to draw...

Mon, 10 May 2010 16:47:25 +0100

Seems like forever since I’ve posted a blog, what with all the lovely bank holidays recently! Slightly different post today - a sneak peak from my Moleskine Notebook.

When a new project comes in I head to my sketchbook to jot down ideas and preliminary sketches. Some prefer to do everything on the computer, but sometimes I just feel a bit more natural with a pencil.

Here are some preliminary sketches and details from the series of birmingham based posters - as seen in the Created in Birmingham Shop - that I created. They aren’t anything special but I think they house a certain sense of charm!

Enjoy.

The Coffee Table: Not My Type

Fri, 07 May 2010 17:43:35 +0100

I went to the launch of ‘Not My Type’ last night, which is a typographic exhibition in the heart of Birmingham that I am exhibiting in.

I picked up one of these neon green posters as a memento.

I’m planning a post on my entry to the exhibition showcasing my thoughts behind the visuals, but you’l have to wait until next week for the reveal. For those of you that can’t make it, here is my entry for the letter N…

If you follow our Twitter, then you’ll know that we won quite a big pitch lately - you just won’t know what it is. We’re sworn to secrecy for the moment, but we’re allowed to say more next week. I’m going to give you some more teasers though.

Matt and I had to take a visit to Aston Villa Football Club (Matt is a Villa fan and was turbo-excited) to get some imagery for the project.

Nathan will be exhibiting alongside the likes of Jon Burgerman,...

Wed, 05 May 2010 17:34:27 +0100

Nathan will be exhibiting alongside the likes of Jon Burgerman, I Love Dust and Fluid at the typographic exhbition “Not My Type”.

It takes opens on May 6th 2010 (tomorrow) at the Created in Birmingham store. It kicks off at 6pm so pop down and say hello.

The exhibition will be there until June 1st.

Not My Type Exhibition: Participants list

A - Jonny Costello
B - Mark Murphy
C - Charlotte
D - Darren John
E - Karl Toomey
F - John Bennett
G - Stef Grindley
H - Claire Hartley
I - Ben Javens
J - Jon Burgerman
K - Lewes Herriot
L - Daisy Whitehouse
M - Jim O Raw
N - Nathan Monk
O - Lee Basford
P - Sam Pierpoint
Q - Ryan Kileen
R - Log Roper
S - Super cool
T - Christopher Slevin
U - I Love Dust
V - Steve Payne
W - Murray Somerville
X - Mark Harris
Y - Jonathan Cherry
Z - Jamie Hearn

Extended Letterforms

? - Matt Tilley
& - Supercool
$ - Dan Westwood
$ - I Love Dust
£ - Al Kennington
! - Luke Hinsull
% - Lauren Kavanagh
¥ - James Griffin
€ - Martian Wilke

The Coffee Table: Paradigma 2

Fri, 30 Apr 2010 13:34:55 +0100

We’ve just delivered the second Paradigma to The Birmingham Jewellery School to a very pleased Jack Cunningham. This time the exhibition takes place in Beijing and we had to translate all of the English text into Traditional Chinese. We learnt a lot about type and faces for non-latin languages during this project and we’re really proud of the final outcome.

Today, I treated myself to a new iphone app! So I thought...

Thu, 22 Apr 2010 14:46:25 +0100

Today, I treated myself to a new iphone app! So I thought I’d use it for this week’s ‘photo Thursday’ post! So here is a tour of random SMILE studio items!

For a while now I’ve been on the lookout for an aperture plugin to create tilt shift effects. We’ve seen some pretty cool tilt shift work recently and I really fancied having a go. I did find a good plugin, but it was only a demo version, and I couldn’t justify the €25 asking price for the full version.

I then stumbled upon the tilt shift generator app, and at only 59p I snapped it up. It allows you to control blur in the same way as the aperture plugin, and you have some basic colour controls as well as a nifty vignet tool. All of this for 59p!!

If you’ve got an iphone, give it a go and show us your results. I’d love to see some more cool iphone tilt shift snaps.

Jif on acid.

Mon, 19 Apr 2010 14:19:43 +0100

As you are probably aware, I have a certain soft spot for most things retro/vintage/shabby chic… whatever you want to call it. In particular, old packaging labels.

So… I’ve had a bit of a play around and ‘spruced down’ a jif logo that I created a while back. I really quite like the whole acid effect, and besides, it’s a fun little lunch time activity!

Let me know what you think..

The Coffee Table: I'm back

Fri, 16 Apr 2010 15:24:00 +0100

We’re back on the blogging form with a vengeance! So what’s been going on behind the scenes at SMILE?

Lots.

Seriously, lots.

Just when we feel like we’ve found our stride, we get a curveball. We’ve been getting more projects than ever lately and they’re really cool too.

We’ve just wrapped up a fun project for Mama Mio Skincare. One of the founding partners was off to Paris to give a presentation but she wanted something unique - so she came to SMILE. We took her information (I had to brush up on my fashion) and made it into something totally cinematic. We’re told it went down a storm!

Matt and Sue have just come back from a meeting in Brindley Place which is this months curveball. More next week.

Quite a bit of digital stuff at the moment too. My notebook is a mess of numbers at the moment. I feel like I have finally conquered my theory on grids for screen this week. It all slotted into place and now we are deploying a new system onto all of the new websites we are doing.

We haven’t got official numbers, but apparently we account for over a quarter of the Created in Birmingham shops takings. Our prints have been doing better than we could have imagined.