An interdisciplinary employee benefit trust, the Useful Simple Trust (UST) is a group of companies (Expedition Engineering, Useful Studios, Thomas.Matthews, Useful Projects) that work to improve the built environment, for people and planet.
The four companies that make up the trust trade individually as engineers, architects, sustainability consultants, and graphic designers. Alongside this, they also bid on work as a collective, fostering a collaborative work process that makes use of each company's area of specialisation.
During my time at the trust (2019-2023), I was an employee of Thomas.Matthews (TM), the graphic design studio. Alongside client projects for TM shown elsewhere on this site (such as the RSS and Stratford UDF), I also worked on collaborative projects for the trust, as well as branding for the trust itself. A selection of these works are shown on this page, which I did as part of a team while working at TM.
As part of an effort to clarify its service offerings, we designed a marketing "minisite" for the trust, to share with potential clients and partner organisations. Crucially, the site communicates the ethos of the trust, while giving real-life examples of projects and services offered.
Visit the site here: hello.usefulsimple.co.uk/
Created by a partnership lead by Expedition Engineering, AVA is an adaptable bridge system that reduces the cost and embodied carbon of Network Rail footbridges. An elegant design uses less materials, fits any station, and can be installed much faster than an equivalent footbridge.
Design Declares is a growing group of designers, studios and institutions who came together in 2022 to declare a climate emergency. TM was one of the founding members of this group, contributing time and resources to help the launch. My role within this was to curate communication design resources for the Design Declares Toolkit, and produce promotional materials for the campaign.
A collaborative project with Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios (FCBS), this transportable window display sought to communicate the basic principles of Net Zero Carbon. Hung in the ground floor window of their central London offices, the display used waste acrylic and MDF from their model-making facility, with laser cutting done in-house. After being shown in London, the display has since been shown in multiple cities across the UK.
When Useful Studio (part of the UST) approached this redesign, they wanted their website to reflect the key tenets of their work; utility, efficiency, beauty. With that in mind, we stripped back the design to allow the work to speak for itself. I worked in tandem with the web developer and Useful Studio's director, providing page layouts and styling guidance to ensure the end result communicated the ethos of the practice.
To celebrate the festive season at the end of 2021, TM produced a series of animations for Instagram, as well as a printed card to be sent to clients. Inspired by satirical cartoons, the animations took a tongue-in-cheek approach to the Christmas period. My role within the project was to write and produce illustration concepts, and create the animations.
