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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
