Studio Special

Studio Special is a small award winning studio based in London. Their clients include Peacefrog records, University College of London and Pearson Publishing. Established in 2006 by David Lovelock and Sally Oldfield. They specialise in design for print, identity, branding and designing for the web.

On our first day in London myself, Kat and Grace (visit arranged by Kat) met with David Lovelock of Studio Special. I was amazed at how small the studio was with only 3 desks, however I find it interesting to see how each studio differs and no matter how small or big an agency is it doesn't alter the work that they produce to be good or bad.

David was very welcoming and spoke to us about the ethics that Studio Special have and the industry as a whole. He was also interested into how London differed from Manchester and  how our course at Stockport college was operated. 

I spoke first about my work for the British Dental Museum. David was suprised that I didn't have a mock up book of my spreads as he felt being able to actually touch and feel different products would have been a better way to communicate my idea. Little touches like this would also stand me out from the crowd as it would be obvious that I had gone that bit further with my designs, this is something I am now considering to do as I feel it will benefit my portfolio further. David liked how the type was positioned and felt the typography was clear and well executed in these spreads. David also thought other spreads with interesting layouts would benefit my work and maybe photographing other dental tools and even a dentist chair could be quite interesting. As an agency David and Sally do quite a lot of work for UCL (University College London) producing booklets and prospectuses, David showed us some of these designs to show contrast towards the work we had produced.

Their work for UCL:

When talking about mine and Grace's Bacardi work David suggested shortening the stories to just cheeky one liners so that an audience would get our idea much quicker. We spoke about where we would position our advertisements and David suggested maybe producing beer mats or even stickers to place in pubs and clubs would be an original interesting idea, this is something me and Grace had not even considered so it was very helpful to get an outsiders opinion on this. It was felt that maybe playing with chat up lines, as this is what is mostly associated with flirting would be something worth exploring. However, myself and Grace has already tried this and felt it didn't have the same appeal or effect as our stories did.

After talking through roughly 2/3 projects each ( as we were in a large group we were aware that we did not want to take up all of David's valuable time) David showed us some work that Studio Special had produced. Much of their work is informed by subjects they are personally interested in and this was clear as David showed us designs for print including books and publications they had worked on for UCL.

I enjoyed meeting with David he was honest, opinionated and friendly and his feedback was very much appreciated.

You can visit Studio Special here