A Fresh Start

After months of planning and anticipation, Supereight Studio has rebranded their renowned online store as Super Threads. The team behind this transformation is dedicated to providing an elevated shopping experience for designers seeking unique and high-quality products. With a revamped website and an expanded range of offerings, Super Threads aims to inspire creativity and cater to the diverse needs of designers across various disciplines.

A Curated Selection

One of the most exciting aspects of Super Threads is its meticulously curated collection of designer essentials. From fashion-forward fabrics and textiles to cutting-edge design tools, Super Threads offers a carefully handpicked selection that meets the discerning tastes of designers. The platform collaborates with established brands, emerging designers, and independent artisans to ensure a diverse and inspiring range of products.

Top-Quality Materials

At Super Threads, quality is paramount. Every product available on the platform is sourced from reputable manufacturers and suppliers who prioritize craftsmanship and sustainability. Designers can shop with confidence, knowing that the materials they purchase meet the highest standards and are ethically produced. Super Threads values the importance of eco-friendly practices and encourages designers to consider the environmental impact of their creations.

User-Friendly Interface

Navigating the Super Threads website is a breeze. The new interface is sleek, intuitive, and designed with the user in mind. The streamlined shopping experience allows designers to easily browse through categories, filter search results, and explore product details. Additionally, the platform offers a secure and efficient service.

Go check it out at:
https://shop.supereightstudio.com

We’ve joined forces with Cotton Bureau to bring you some nice supereight Merch. You can now buy a Supereight Studio T-shirt in the heather white tri-blend (my personal favourite), white 100% cotton or natural 100% cotton. Also, if you are feeling a bit chilly you can opt for the white Poly-cotton pullover hoodie. All available right now at: https://cottonbureau.com/products/supereight-studio

In the show we discuss brand and identity design, Matt’s processes, responsive logos, brand guidelines, creating identities that stand the test of time and how much we love Jon Hicks.

Listen to the interview here: https://theelasticbrand.com/episode/s2-ep-1-matt-hamm/

This article was published in issue 297 of Net Magazine on September 2017

Nobody can ever forget the first time that they watched Star Wars. Aged only 6 years old, I clearly remember going to the cinema with my older cousin Mike to watch The Empire Strikes Back. It blew my mind. I was hooked. Luckily, Mike already had a few Star Wars toys, so we could immediately re-enact those epic battle scenes.

Now I wanted my own collection of Star Wars toys. I used to regularly go to my local toy shop, Dentons in Witney, Oxfordshire and pour over the wall of Star Wars Figures on display. As you can imagine, now top of my Christmas wish list was the iconic Millennium Falcon ship.

After The Return Of The Jedi was released in 1983 and my cousin, who was quite a few years older than me, started to grow out of playing with toys, I gladly inherited all of his Star Wars figures and ships.

At my parent’s house, there must be an army of, yellowing, figures buried under the patio in the former sandpit/Sarlacc Pit where we used to play for hours and hours.

As a designer, Star Wars has always been a major influence on my aesthetic taste. The design of Star Wars seems like an infinitely deep rabbit hole of superbly designed characters, clothes, creatures, planets, buildings and ships, which never seem to date.

Some years later I also grew out of playing with toys, after discovering skateboarding, cycling and girls. I passed on some of my figures to my younger brother Nathan. But, the memory of selling my beloved Millennium Falcon for £5 at the local Car Boot sale, will forever haunt me.

A couple of years ago, my wife, Helen came home with a bag full of old toy soldiers that somebody had given her. She asked me to have a quick look through it before she’d throw them away or give to the Charity shop. I opened the bag and staring right back at me buried amongst the green plastic army figures was Yak Face. A well known rarer Vintage Star Wars figure. What a find! This little old piece of vintage plastic was worth about £150.

We could have just sold it. But no, instead it kick-started the inner-child within me and I decided to embark on a mission to buy every single vintage Star Wars figure that was released between 1977-1988. My adult brain reasoned that each purchase was a good investment as prices were on the rise due to the recent popularity of the new Star Wars films and the upcoming 40th Anniversary of the franchise.

I stumbled upon a very addictive Facebook group called Echo Base UK, with a great community spirit, which enables collectors to trade vintage star wars toys, avoiding eBay fees and scams. Since then I have managed to collect the full complete set of 96 loose vintage figures, a couple of ships and two MOCs (Mint On Card) figures.

I’m now starting to collect all the major variants, which have minor detail differences and can be harder to find and I have also developed a small R2D2 focus. I can’t tell you how much happiness collecting these vintage figures has brought me. I now eagerly await the postman/postwomen with my next delivery of plastic crack.

pressreader.com/australia/net-magazine/20170810/281556585910881

Cotton Bureau’s Freshly Laundered designer interview series is back with Edition no. 38: British designer and illustrator Matt Hamm. Matt tells us about the founding of his studio Supereight, the virtues of working for yourself, and the connection between design and cycling (there isn’t one).

http://cottonbureau.tumblr.com/post/144482251203/freshly-laundered-038-matt-hamm

Matt’s Star Wars shirt design has made the cut on cottonbureau.com. Wear this subtle interior iconic backdrop light pattern to the Death Star where Darth Vader defeats Obi-wan Kenobi.

I suggest you go grab one before they are gone!

Back in the early 1980s, Dieter Rams was becoming increasingly concerned by the state of the world around him – “an impenetrable confusion of forms, colors and noises.” Aware that he was a significant contributor to that world, he asked himself an important question: is my design good design?

As good design cannot be measured in a finite way he set about expressing the ten most important principles for what he considered was good design.

Here they are.

1. Good design is innovative

The possibilities for innovation are not, by any means, exhausted. Technological development is always offering new opportunities for innovative design. But innovative design always develops in tandem with innovative technology, and can never be an end in itself.

2. Good design makes a product useful

A product is bought to be used. It has to satisfy certain criteria, not only functional, but also psychological and aesthetic. Good design emphasizes the usefulness of a product whilst disregarding anything that could possibly detract from it.

3. Good design is aesthetic

The aesthetic quality of a product is integral to its usefulness because products we use every day affect our person and our well-being. But only well-executed objects can be beautiful.

4. Good design makes a product understandable

It clarifies the product’s structure. Better still, it can make the product talk. At best, it is self-explanatory.

5. Good design is unobtrusive

Products fulfilling a purpose are like tools. They are neither decorative objects nor works of art. Their design should therefore be both neutral and restrained, to leave room for the user’s self-expression.

6. Good design is honest

It does not make a product more innovative, powerful or valuable than it really is. It does not attempt to manipulate the consumer with promises that cannot be kept.

7. Good design is long-lasting

It avoids being fashionable and therefore never appears antiquated. Unlike fashionable design, it lasts many years – even in today’s throwaway society.

8. Good design is thorough down to the last detail

Nothing must be arbitrary or left to chance. Care and accuracy in the design process show respect towards the user.

9. Good design is environmentally-friendly

Design makes an important contribution to the preservation of the environment. It conserves resources and minimizes physical and visual pollution throughout the lifecycle of the product.

10. Good design is as little design as possible

Less, but better – because it concentrates on the essential aspects, and the products are not burdened with non-essentials.

Back to purity, back to simplicity.

These Ten Commandments of good design are kindly made available to share on: vitsoe.com

Any designer will tell you that it’s always a pleasure to see your design work on the Apple App store. Especially if it’s featured on the homepage. Download the Parkopedia App from the App store now or check out the Parkopedia project.

We’ll say a little more when we add the project to our portfolio but for now we’re delighted to simply share the new site with you.

The new homepage looks a little something like this:

We’re really happy with how we’ve moved it forward from their old homepage and the rest of the old site in general:

Check out the full site for more design goodness and please let us know if you encounter any problems!

www.bowelcancerresearch.org

Trust your gut. Trust your instinct. You are the design professional. Because more often than not your gut will be right.

Make mistakes

When I first started out as a designer I made plenty of mistakes and it isn’t until you’ve made those mistakes that you’ll become more intuitive. Intuition is based on our ability to recognise patterns and interpret cues.

More experience counts

The more experience you have as a designer, the better these design decisions will be. Gut Instincts are learned, and these instincts are learned by paying attention to the details in the world around us.

Subconscious Mind

According to a study by the University of Alberta, when we make decisions our subconscious mind is much more mind blowing than you think. A lot of creative decisions that we make as design professionals are based on things that we are not really aware of. The subconscious mind is very powerful indeed.

Design intuition

Have you have been given a design brief and quickly knocked out a design not really fully thinking through your design decisions? Then once you’ve had time to mull over the complexity of the problem and attempted to make more logical design decisions based on data it becomes harder to accomplish and invariably not quite as good as the first shot. Have you ever made lots more design iterations or concepts considering more in-depth problems and just gone back to the first one that you made?

Hillman Curtis

I once had the privilege to chat with the late Hillman Curtis. He said that when he designed the Yahoo! homepage, which was one of the most visited webpages of all time, they provided him with reams of user statistics on which shade of blue was best to use for links.

This was design by data which typically makes things look and feel bad. It’s design by mass committee. It never works.

Hillman’s reasoning for using the particular shade of blue that he used for links was just because HE liked it and it felt right.

That’s design based on instinct, it works. We need to trust the designers instinct. Trust your instinct.

Data vs Design instinct

These days analytics measures the effectiveness of every single design decision that we make.

In future perhaps the designers role will no longer be required. As engineering and design merge more on the web we need make decisions with a good balance of data and instinct.

It’s essential to do user research and see the world through the users eyes. Yet user research is really just another stream of data. Yes. Let’s Use A/B testing, it’s useful, but only for making small and tactical improvements, rather than a basis for all design decisions.

Don’t send a design you are not happy with

If you’ve got a design concept to show to the client or your boss for approval and something doesn’t feel quite right, then it’s probably wrong. Trust your own instinct and spend more time making sure the design feels right before you seek feedback. Only when you are 100% satisfied with your work should you send it out for review by anybody else. How are you going to win those design reasoning battles if not?

New Clients

At Supereight we increasingly make important decisions about taking on new clients based entirely on a gut feeling.

If the first email contact or Skype conversation rings any alarm bells or makes us feel like that client *could* be nightmare to work with, we turn it down, regardless of how much money they have or how cool the project seems.

Don’t ignore your gut feelings

Most of the time we may use a more traditional informed by data decision-making process, but we shouldn’t ignore our own instinctual gut feelings as part of that process.

Let’s always design with data in mind, but NEVER let it rule what we do or how we do it.