For digital design house Meyer, Miller, Smith who is hands on, hard at work building websites and applications, we’ve created an equally “hands on” brand identity, versatile and unique, but also modest and genuine.
Starting with brand values and tonality, we’ve developed a name and an identity, and over the past few years we had the chance to execute that across a wide variety of touch-points, ranging from digital products to print design, beer brewing, scents and events.
It has become our showcase, our playground and our workshop, a space were we can be creative without too many corporate limitations.
Naming
Based on our hands-on approach to digital design and production, we were looking for a name that would be humble and traditional, but equally allow fun and playful interpretations.
Poking fun at established law firms and big agencies, named after their founders – Ogilvy & Mather, Bartle Bogle Hegarty or William G. Tragos, Claude Bonnange, Uli Wiesendanger, and Paolo Ajroldi better known as TBWA – we came up with our own founder fathers and name-givers:
Meyer, Miller, and Smith.
Meyer, Miller and Smith are of course the three most common english surnames. Together, they gave us not only the very traditional sounding agency name we were after – the combination proved also to be surprisingly unique, and thus was perfect to reach a high Google Search ranking.
From there, three fictional characters were created, each one with a bogus biography around one of our key focus areas: story telling, design and technology.
Meyer,
Miller,
Smith.
Meyer
After studying the German bards as a student, Michael Meyer became known for combining his love of traditional itinerant storytelling with his evangelising of the benefits of modernity.
He traveled town to town between community halls in southern Germany in a 1967 Mercedes 280SE recounting the folklore of the Brothers Grimm and explaining Braun appliance brochures to enthralled audiences.
Miller
Matthew Miller is best known for proving that the dichotomy between art and technology, debated by the Deutscher Werkbund in the early twentieth-century, could be resolved by the visionary embrace of both, as revealed to him in a dream that he was a gothic stonemason.
Leaving home at the age of 7 to travel the world, he came home 20 years later, completely broke, but trained in the use of the IBM System/360 computer, which he argued would finally heal the schism of art and technology that had torn apart industrial society.
He died in 1998 as a celebrated wood-turner, most famous for the oak electronic mouse that replaced Doug Engelbart’s 1963 prototype.
Smith
Simon Smith was best known for speaking only two dozen sentences between 1984 and 1998, believing that he communicated best through his hands and the materials with which they came into contact.
Best known as a locksmith and panel beater, he also taught workshop courses in early 15th-century decorative arts and was the first craftsman to use Perspex and fluorescent lights to replace war-damaged medieval stained glass.
Perhaps less known is that his collection of rare handsaws and torque wrenches included some 750 examples.
Logo Design
The original logo idea is based on the simplicity of the three names or characters. Three crosses, XXX, the simple signature of a craftsman, was turned into a placeholder for us to fill with any kind of symbol or story.
Corporate Style
As a backdrop for our three fictional craftsmen we chose 400 year old renaissance etchings, a stark contrast to the often arbitrary visual language of digital agencies.
Most etchings where chosen from French artist Jacques Callot. The landscapes where sampled from Swiss artist Matthäus Merian.
Website Design
The website for Meyer, Miller, Smith uses three accent colours – copper, silver and gold – for each one of our founder fathers, highlighting again their artisan history, as well as our three key areas of story telling, design and technology.
The portfolio is programmed as an endless scroll with intelligent lazy-loading, meaning you can scroll through the entire content without a single click. It might take an hour to do so, but at least you can be sure to haven’t missed out on anything in the end!
Stationary Design
For stationary we chose a warm but bold neon orange, creating a fresh and contemporary look despite the age of the drawings.
A fictional Berlin of the past creates the basic setting, everything else is printed in “on demand”, using InDesign and Word templates. It makes for a very flexible design, where contact details can be changed without having to re-print any of the stationary.
What’s more, illustrations can be added to the landscapes on the fly, such as new buildings, inhabitants, or animals. Invoices might feature giant mosquitos for example, whereas the payment reminder is inhabited by creatures from hell.
Event Concept and Design
Over the years, Meyer, Miller, Smith have been taking part in numerous events, opening their offices for example for the annual “Design Nightshift”. Shown here is our “Open Hut” night, celebrating the launch of our ski customisation tool for Atomic.
Three custom pairs of skis were produced, three custom craft beers brewed, three custom scents were created, making for a multi-disciplinary branding of the evening.
Beer brewing
Creating three awesome beers for 3 amazing characters!
MEYER: From Japan with love: Meyer’s take on the Belgian witbier style. Shiso infused Wheat Ale with a lemony twist. (4.2%)
MILLER: Pure Miller distilled into a powerful IPA. Dry-hopped bitterness hiding behind a sensual explosion of mango, peach and passionfruit. (7.5%)
SMITH: Smith’s very own Imperial Stout boasts a lustrous aroma of spicy mocha and velvety dark chocolate. Please enjoy responsibly. (12.5%)
Scent design
Less Rain’s branding caters for all senses. It doesn’t end with visual touch points, we even brand air.
For the “Open Hut” event we developed our three characters further with three different scents, diffused in three different rooms, creating an olfactory scent trail towards a ski hut.
Our scent concepts were created together with our Japanese/Austrian friends from studio AOIRO in Berlin, specialising in natural olfactory design.
Interior Design
The offices of Meyer, Miller, Smith. Three rooms with three different atmospheres reflecting each of our founder fathers taste and style.
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