Meyer Miller Smith Brand Identity

MMS

We’ve created a “hands on” brand identity for ourselves, that is versatile and unique, but also modest and genuine.

Over the past few years we had the chance to execute that identity 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.

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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.

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Logo Design

The original logo idea is based on the simplicity of the three names or characters. Three crosses, XXX, the simple signature of an analphabetic craftsman was turned into a placeholder for us to fill with any kind of symbol or story.

The logo can be designed according to its context, becoming 3 speechbubbles for a talk event or 3 snowflakes for a christmas card. This being a creative playground for every occasion.

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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.

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MMS Website

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!

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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.

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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.

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Beer brewing for event

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%)

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Scent design

Our 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.

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