Studio Visit: Hudson-Powell

5 Jul 2006 Category: Graphics, Internet, Typography, Worldwide

Shoreditch is the most popular area in East London. On a sunny day, Hoxton Square in front of the White Cube is full of people chatting, sunbathing and having a beer. In the evenings people dress up and gather around the bars on Shoreditch’s Kingsland Road. British writer Chris Morris satirically introduced the daily life of super-trendy people in Shoreditch on Channel 4’s TV series “Nathan Barley“, which is finest British black humor = utterly funny! However, that only shows that there are lots of exciting things happening constantly in this tiny area. When checking out what is going on in Shoreditch the other day, I popped into the studio of the young design unit Hudson-Powell - to say hello.

Written by Chiemi

Luke and Jody - could you first of all introduce yourselves?

We are Hudson-Powell, a design practice in London. We are still quite young, so it’s hard to say that “this is what we do”. Over the last year we have worked on print, identity, animation and interactive projects. Recent clients include the Barbican, Canteen, Pointer Footwear, Carat and BeamsT.

Not too bad for such fresh starters! Is there any particular field you consider as your main discipline, though?

I suppose we both consider type, image and composition as fundamental to our practice, and we try to remain open minded in the way we approach different projects and media in that matter. This is mainly just the way our projects keep expanding creating new interactions between medium, image, narrative and time.

Hudson-Powell is your family name - you are brothers, right? How and why did you decide to work together?

After college we found that our work and skill sets were very similar. We started to really work closely together after I asked Jody to help me co-direct a promo for PJ Harvey. Jody had been at Nokia before and got frustrated with the difficulties involved working within such a massive company. So he saw the benifit’s of working as a smaller unit, and this is basically how it happened. Hudson-Powell gives us space to create work to our best ability. As brothers we’ve known each other for too long to let the petty things drag. (laughing)

Are there any particular roles you both play inside Hudson-Powell? How do you share work?

We don’t have roles as such, and both have different approaches to design. While Jody did his Master of Science in Virtual Environments, I have always been into design and fine art, so therefore projects have the opportunity to move in different directions.

Can you tell us about some of your favourite projects you’ve done?

Working on the Responsive Type project and creating a corporate identity for the London restaurant Canteen have been fun to work on. Both projects try to combine typography and print knowledge with the needs and possibilities of new technology.

Responsive Type is a custom program developed for an exhibition in Sapporo, Japan. We designed a dynamic font model for a display in screen based environments. The premise was to create a new font rendering framework that allows a font to change its form in realtime, in this instance, adjusting the fonts size to create the maximum readability for the amount of text entered into a field. Users could send messages to the gallery either by phone or online direct to the gallery program. Messages are archived online at responsivetype.com.

Canteen’s project came in at a time when we had been doing a lot of motion graphic and interactive projects, so it was good to come back to print based work. Canteen’s philosophy is built around classic British design as well as having visual connotation’s, references a love of function and practicality. The solutions we came up with included sugar paper menus that soak up the mess on tables making it easier for the restaurant staff to clean, and an up-datable online menu system that automatically creates new downloadable PDF files, keeping customers up to date.

By the way, you share the studio with some other people and this Sunbury Workshop where your studio is located seems to host all sorts of different people as well. Can you tell us some interesting stories about some of them?

We share and have shared this studio with some great people. At the moment there are two illustrators, Jethro Haynes and Nicola Pecararro, creative agent Anna Su and Unit 25 print studio, which is handy for screen printing t-shirts and posters. This is just within the 3 units we share. When talking of the whole workshop, there is a wild mix of carpenters, architects, a florist, a mechanic and two other design companies Zak Kyes and BC, MH. There’s always people around, so it’s nice to be here. We even play Basketball together every Wednesday and Friday at a local court.

Do you collaborate with some of them sometimes?

We’ve been working on some project with illustrator Jethro Haynes who shares the studio with us. Working with other people gives us the ability to take on larger projects without growing permanently, we can be bigger than the sum of our parts, and at the same time be working with the best people for any given job. This is what we’ve been doing with Jethro by the way.

You have a bunch of interesting stuff standing around here…I was actually wondering what this is?

Our studio had been asked to customise a shoe for an exhibition in Spain. So we made a great grassy hillside on the shoe with a bag of flocking we found on the shelf. But then we were asked by Pointer Footwear to create a series of 5 different ones. We’re on number 2 now. It’s a strange project but fun… and in case you want to know the concept: the octopus is in love with the lighthouse! Not sure that makes sense at all though….

Do you collaborate with people outside of Sunbury Workshops too?

We collaborated with North design for Carat project. North created the Carat identity a couple of years ago now and are still very involved with the identity and the brand. They approached us for for some asset creation that would support the Carat brand. We created a series of graphic sequences that combined to tell the story of Carat’s motivations. Each of the sequences draws influence from the current identity, the brief being to expand on the current graphic language. From these sequences a collection of hi-resolution stills were rendered, these were then given back to North to be worked into their designs. We created each of the sequences in 3D, this meant that by simply setting up extra cameras in the animation space, we could create a far more varied selection of images.

By the way, I heard the rumour Jody is moving to Tokyo soon? What will happen to Hudson-powell then?

As a small company we work with others remotely. We already work successfully with programmers 2roqs in France on a daily basis, and have clients in China and Japan. So hopefully the transition won’t be all that difficult…

Well - thanks a lot then! It was great to meet you today. Pop into our office when you move to Tokyo, Jody! And please keep sending us the photos of the coming shoes from London, Luke! Thank you so much!

44 Comments

1. Well. What can I say. NOT a big WORD pusher. Excellent job for “Responsive Type”. Joy for the eye.

   Posted by: Liviu Ignat on July 6th, 2006 at 12:35 am

2. Wow. Bonsai on shoes are so cool!

   Posted by: Ben Tong on July 6th, 2006 at 12:29 pm

3. great inspiring works!

   Posted by: 100kr on July 6th, 2006 at 5:11 pm

4. [...] The octopus is supposed to be in love with the lighthouse. [...]

   Posted by: The Worsted Witch » Ocky Loves Lighthousey on July 12th, 2006 at 1:02 am

5. amazing!

   Posted by: paul f on August 22nd, 2006 at 11:21 pm

6. hello luke and jody from the himalayas! lots of love

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7. i really loved your works!

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8. funny! :)

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9. Well. What can I say. NOT a big WORD pusher. Excellent job for “Responsive Type”. Joy for the eye

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