Custom – Smile Plastics

Custom materials.

Holt Renfrew by Jeffrey Hutchinson.

Custom Terrazzo HIPS material.

Custom Terrazzo. Imagery by Kristy Noble.

Ace at Bluebird for Jigsaw.

Christmas Tinsel for Selfridges.

CUSTOM MATERIAL

Custom material development is what we get most excited about at Smile Plastics. It 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:

1. Aesthetics
2. Material source
3. Application
4. Format

Working with our Material Designers, we can help you produce a material to meet your project requirements. We go through a sampling process together, so you can check every element of your design before the final production run.

Feeling inspired? Discover our Custom materials projects in our Lookbook or scroll on for more insight into the different material themes available.

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.

Space 10 x Open Desk. Monochrome Custom materials.

Green colour washed Alba-style material, University of the Arts London.

Material source
Development

We can work with various thermoplastics, papers, organic materials and memorabilia to create encapsulated or fully integrated materials. We’re happy to review any input materials you’d like us to use for a one-off sheet right the way through to a large scale rollout of panels from your waste.

Originating materials we have worked with include CDs, banknotes, wellies, electric cabling, Christmas decorations, toys, papers, plastic straws, wood shavings, coffee grounds, foliage, and marine litter. Note, we can’t work with heavily contaminated waste or metals.

Christmas Tinsel, Selfridges.

‘Electicity - The spark of life’ Wellcome Collection, image by Michael Bowles.

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.