Custom Material Development
Custom material development mixes together our in-house expertise and your vision to create a material that is uniquely distinct. Its direction can focus on one or several themes. Scroll on for more insight into the different material themes available.
Custom Material Direction
Our Custom materials have been explored by some of the world’s best luxury design houses and retail brands. As a result, we’ve gathered a huge amount of experience in these very precise and demanding sectors, and our amassed knowledge will help guide you. Our Material Specialists' passion for design is limitless, as is their knowledge of what is achievable with our processes. So, whether it’s the very early stages of a project, a waste stream you'd like to explore, or you'd simply like to understand whether a Custom material is right for your project, an informal chat with one of our Specialists is the perfect place to start.
Working with our Material Designers, we can help you produce a material to meet your project requirements. We take your concepts and mood boards and bring them to life through a sampling process, so you can check every element of your design before the final production run. You will discover what is possible and the limitless opportunities for creativity.
Our minimums start at twenty 3000mm x 1200mm panels in any thickness.
Aesthetics Material Development
Whilst there are some constraints in the visual language and patterns that we can produce with our raw materials and unique processes, there is real freedom to play with colours, patterns and styles based on your mood board.
You may be after some tweaks to a current or previous edition of a Smile Plastics material, or want to develop more complex patterns that evolve across multiple sheets for a larger-scale installation.
Material Source Development
We can work with various thermoplastics, papers, organic materials, and memorabilia to create encapsulated or fully integrated materials. Our Material Specialists are happy to review any input materials you’d like us to use.
Originating materials we have worked with include CDs, banknotes, wellies, electric cabling, Christmas decorations, toys, paper, plastic straws, wood shavings, coffee grounds, foliage, and marine litter. Please note, we can’t work with heavily contaminated waste or metals.
Application Material Development
We can look at developing materials that have mechanical or technical performance requirements better suited to your project than our Classics materials.
This could include material flexibility, UV, weather or fire performance criteria.
Format Development
Our standard thickness formats are 5, 12, and 20mm but we are able to supply other thicknesses on request. Get in touch to discuss your project.
