Smith & Diction

I've always been so jealous of design studios that had super cool reels with all their insane work flashing by to get you hyped up. Now, 10 years in, we finally have our own studio reel. Hopefully it gets you amped to make stuff! Thanks to Jordan Scott (j-scott.com) for his amazing animation work on this and also to Upright T-Rex Music for their funky music, which I absolutely love. And thanks to Simon Walker for this S&D wordmark that I'll cherish until the end of time.

Earlier this year we got a call from the folks at Contra asking if we'd help out with their visual identity. We were like, "Your brand is pretty dope as is. I don't think you need us." But once we talked to Ben Huffman & Erin Horner about their vision I was sold. This platform has the ability to help so many designers. We needed to be a part of this. So we got to work. They loved their current symbol+wordmark combo but we said, can you let us update it justtttt a little bit?? We just wanted to update it so it could be a little more screen friendly. We put a lot of love into the curve of that lowercase "a". We also introduced GT Standard (Grilli Type) as an inter replacement. We just loved that the lowercase a's matched the wordmark. And it was an incredibly diverse family with some insanely condensed versions baked into it which are great for social. Funny story, the main thing we were actually hired to do was strategy. We chipped away at all kinds of different approaches. Tried every way in. It eventually all came down to ONE line... Get more creative. It felt absolutely perfect for what they were building. Supporting the creative community AND helping teams grow their creative depts. All through getting more creative. We presented just the one line (with a little bit of jazz hands) and crossed our fingers. They absolutely understood the vision and have been building with it at their core for the past year. Butttttttt not every project goes the way you plan. When we were working with them we took a MAJOR swing on round one and missed! We listened and bounced back with the brand you see today. Want to see what starting over looks like? Here's the whole Figma file for you to peruse. Make sure you spend some time in the strategy page as well. It's so rare that we get to share our strategy docs and Chara Smith truly crushed it on this one. https://lnkd.in/eGvxAVuk Strategy: Chara Smith Art direction: Mike Smith + Chara Smith Lead design: Summer McClure Wordmark: Summer McClure + Dayan D'Aniello Design support: Alex Rinker Icons: Tully Ryan

Whoa baby! This came out so good!!! Thanks for the TikTok treatment Edward Sun.

As a small biz finding a good accountant is ROUGH. You know it & I know it. Town is looking to change that & make doing your taxes a lot less stressful. Fully custom wordmark developed by Dayan D'Aniello & Alex Anderson. With a four letter wordmark we knew we needed to make it sing. Dayan belabored every single curve of this thing to make sure it could be blown up on a billboard and also scaled down to be a footnote and still have a presence. When building out the brand elements we wanted to nod towards the visual language of tax forms. Little notches, tabs, checker patterns, monospaced type, rules, X's, boxes, etc. So we build out a little library of bits and bobs that can show up all throughout the brand. Also, Alex killed it on these really fun posters.

This Friday (Sept 5th) I'm joining some of my favorite designers to talk about what everyone fears the most...your favorite logo dying. A tragedy to say the least. I'm sharing a little behind-the-scenes look at our killed work for The George. It's a free event, all you have to do is RSVP here: https://lnkd.in/eHJseS8i Huge thanks to Rahmi Halaby (Linden Ave. Studio) for putting this together and working his butt off to make it free for everyone to have access to some of the most amazing designers from COLLINS, Order, CENTER, PamPam City, Self Aware, Truth & Consequences, J2, Emily Cohen, Nik Greenblatt, Forge Design and more going to be a perfect day.

Smith & Diction is 10 years old!!!!!! When I sat down at my desk in our one bedroom apartment a decade ago, I had no idea how far this dream could go. I’m in awe of the people I get to work with and the companies I get to work for every single day. It’s not lost on me that I’m living in college Mike’s dream world. I put together this post of 10 things that have happened in the past 10 years that altered our studio’s trajectory in some way or another (in no particular order): 🔵 Making the Perplexity brand truly and undoubtedly changed my entire life. It has opened up boundless doors for us and I’m forever in Phi Hoang & Henry Modisett's debt for giving us a shot. Major props to Summer McClure & Justin Lawes for creating the symbol that does it all. ✏️ Making our process public got us invited to speak on one of the biggest stages I think I’ll ever step foot on at config. It also helped a lot of people too! 🫀Human Ventures was our first client ever. Everything I know about venture capital I know from them. Thanks to Heather Hartnett for making so many intros to so many people building incredible things. 📒 The BOK wayfinding project was a beast but I got to design a literal landmark in South Philly. AND how many people get to say they branded the building they work in?? I love being associated with one of the most vibrant and exciting places in Philly. 🏃♂️ Minted New York was the most perfect sprint job we ever worked on. To this day I still talk about how smooth and fun that project was. Marcus truly understood the assignment and took what we made to the next level all on his own. 🌐 Exposure - this logo is when people started to take us seriously as a studio. It went up on Brand New and got no bad comments (now there are a few because everyone needs to be contrarian) It’s also our most ripped off logo by far. cc: Luke Beard thanks for filing all the trademarks dude. 🌸 The George project was the first one where we fully opened up our working Figma files to the public and now I’m addicted. The whole team really hit an amazing groove on this one. 🎨 Paradigm Gallery + Studio was one of those full circle moments where we got to brand my friends gallery that I used to show crappy posters in when I was in college. Shout out to Dayan D'Aniello for the incredible work on this. 🍷 Living Roots Wine & Co. was my full heart on my sleeve. It’s everything I ever dreamed of creating when I was just learning what design was all about. It filled my design heart all the way up. 🌳 The Rail Park project is really where I got my footing as a studio. This is where we set the tone for who we are and what kind of work we wanted to be known for. If we could make people love a 1/4 mile park and a dream just through design, then we could do anything. Chara Smith the studio is nothing without you. Dayan D'Aniello, Summer McClure, Tully Ryan, Caleb Sun I'm in awe you all everyday. I love doing this so much & I don’t want to do anything else. This is it.

Screw it, here's all of the google fonts that are actually good categorized by "vibe". Enjoy. https://lnkd.in/epRtAXhJ