StudioMakgill

Our 3 years 50 projects has been featured in a new book from Victionary.

We are now 4.

We're looking forward to adding a few new projects to this site in the next few weeks. But in the meantime, here's a sneak peak of the type specimen for Central Avenue. Viva four colour!

It's not hard to find examples of well designed objects these days, but really exceptional designs are as rare as rocking horse shit (as they say). Successful design always strikes that perfect balance of the practical resolution of a real problem and beauty. If you tip the scales in either direction the solution will suffer, but if you get it right, then magic happens.

This years winner of the Brit Insurance Design Awards is one of those exceptional pieces of design. The Plumen low-energy lightbulb is a beautifully simple and elegant solution to a very real issue. Conceived and designed by Hugler's Nik Roope and Sam Wilkinson the Plumen makes you realise just how much of the world around us hasn't been designed and how so many of the major manufacturing brands don't have 'good design' as a central part of their philosophy. As my old Creative Director used to say, "Everyone deservers good design". So true.

I'm trying to resist any light based puns here (the BBC managed four in their short report on the lightbulb), but it's fair to say that Plumen is a significant piece of design that's worth celebrating – and it's British. Seeing something of this quality being developed within this sector fills me with inspiration. Brilliant work Nik and Sam.

I am glad to say that the reason why we haven't been updating our site so much recently is because 2011 is proving to be very busy for the studio.

We are currently involved in lots of interesting projects including an identity for London's best cup of coffee, a range of packaging for the country's leading tan artist, an identity for one of the UK's brightest lights in product design and all the promotion for a series of art and science exhibitions – you've got to love a bit of variety.

We will update the site with more work soon…

We've been thinking a lot about coffee recently and now we want to know about what you think. If you are particular about your coffee, please tell us how and where you like to enjoy it?

Email your thoughts here.
The best answer will receive one of our Brasilia Dice 50 posters for free.

Thank you.

View Bench10 in a larger map

For the next ten days, the exhibition that we have conceived and curated with The Lollipop Shoppe for the London Design Festival will be on show on the Shoppe’s own Old Spitalfields Market doorstep. You can read more about it here.

20—30 September
Spitalfields London E1
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Offcut Design
Michael Marriott & Anthony Burrill
Freshwest
Klauser & Carpenter
TAF Architects
Felix de Pass
Cecilie Manz
Raw Edges
JDS Architects
Richard Shed
Decode / VW+BS

Solid Shell by VW+BS. One of the 10 benches

We have recently conceived and co-curated an exhibition for The Lollipop Shoppe that will happen during next month's London Design Week.

Called Bench 10, the exhibition will be held on The Lollipop Shoppe's own Old Spitalfields Market doorstep and will include 10 influential furniture designers from across Europe – each creating a bench for a public installation.

Contemporary public furniture today is largely utilitarian, to be sat on or eaten off. As a functional object offering the benefits of rest and reflection, time-out in a busy world, we felt that the humble bench deserved an updated, innovative design that really celebrated its possibilities.

Raw Edges, Cecile Manz, Decode London, Felix De Pass, JDS Architects, Klauser & Carpenter, Michael Marriott/Anthony Burrill, Richard Shed, TAF Architects, Freshwest and Offcut Design will each design a bench that will be installed for 10 days from the 19th – 29th September 2010.

It's exciting for us to be able to take our design thinking into new areas for a brand. Our work with The Lollipop Shoppe shows what can be done when a company recognises that this is not the time to be stationery or cautious, that this is actually the perfect time to be imaginative and to make your brand stand out.

Good Energy, the UK's only 100% renewable energy supplier, has spent the last six months focusing its substantial mind on better representing the values of the company. StudioMakgill were commissioned to redesign the identity and develop the look and feel for the brand moving forward.

The new energy sector is a competitive market with some real giants in there (with bottomless marketing budgets too). Our job has been to make sure that Good Energy becomes stronger and more iconic as a brand, whilst avoiding the visual cliches that are all too common within this sector.

We are currently developing the core branded material alongside the brand guidelines. We will add this to the portfolio section of the site in due course.

Last week The Lollipop Shoppe opened the doors to its first London store in Old Spitalfields Market.

The interior concept is by leading architects Found Associates. It's great to see our identity being applied so well.

In the last few months since we created the initial identity for The Lollipop Shoppe, we have been working on several new initiatives for the Shoppe. One of these is a limited edition notebook.

Working with Anthony Burrill we have created a 120pg notebook. Designed to be given away with gift vouchers of more than £50, these will also be available for purchase. Pick them up from the Shoppe (Brighton and London) in the coming weeks.

When we designed our new site we discussed whether we should include a blog or not. We were sure that we didn't want to run one that was about sharing work that inspired us – so many people do that better than we would. But we felt that there was room to have a section on our site where we could expand on our projects – a behind the scenes view of our work – work in progress, work in concept and perhaps the odd discussion on themes that relate to what we do.

Well this is it – let's see what happens…