A warm welcome for Smile Materials
- Written by: Laura Connelly
We’d like to open up this post by saying a huge thank you to everyone who’s embraced our brand evolution.
The expansion of our product offering was based on your feedback – something we truly value – and so to see it all come to fruition and witness your initial reactions has been genuinely heart-warming. Thank you.
No more so has this been evident than during the events that have taken place this autumn; from London Design Festival and Design London Shoreditch to World Design Congress and Grand Designs, it’s been quite the season.
With so much activity having happened, we wanted to give you a run-down of where you might have spotted Smile Materials recently, with a nod to what you can see next.
Nook X Smile Plastics sensory pods in Charcoal, Quarry and Marlais. Photography by Design Council
World Design Congress, Barbican, London
The Congress returned to London in September after 50 years, hosting around 1,200 in-person delegates with 1,700 online registrations.
Our collaboration with Nook featured five sensory pods, showcasing Smile Plastics’ Earth materials and designed to encourage pause, connection, and reflection.
Nook’s modular pods are widely used across workplace environments, offering inclusive spaces for focus and wellbeing. At the Congress they allowed delegates quiet space to catch up on emails or make a phone call while remaining in the heart of the action.
Interested in specifying a Nook pod in your next workspace project? Contact our team to discuss.
Make Relief X Smile Plastics wayfinding arrows at Design London Shoreditch. Photos by Will Atkins
Design London Shoreditch
This year marked the debut of Design London Shoreditch as a major new showcase for LDF, within the Shoreditch Design Triangle.
Over 26k visitors attended the three-day event, featuring 100+ brands across multiple curated exhibitions in Shoreditch’s House of ICON, Protein Studios, and Kachette arches.
Our reimagined Clerkenwell Design Week wayfinding arrows in bold Smile Plastics’ materials from the Dapples and Earth collections, offered high visibility in a festival-style setting.
The arrows, designed and fabricated by Will Atkins of Make Relief, having now had useful lives at Clerkenwell Design Week and London Design Festival, will live on further. Stay tuned for the next leg of their journey.
Explore Smile Plastics’ collections.
“This Bench Has Legs” with Camden State School
In a recent collaboration, we partnered with artist-designer Attua Aparicio and STORE Projects to support “This Bench Has Legs”, a social enterprise initiative empowering Camden State School students to co-design and build a public bench from local waste materials, including Smile Plastics’ Ocean off-cuts. The finished bench, unveiled at Coal Drops Yard for London Design Festival, became a visible showcase of circular design in action.
Beyond the striking aesthetic, the project directly engaged 1,000+ students, providing hands-on experience in sustainable making and material reuse. For us, this collaboration perfectly reflected shared values of designing with purpose, supporting future creators, and demonstrating how discarded materials can take on a second life in the public realm.
Check out Smile Plastics’ Ocean material.
Morrama x “From the Ground Up”
Our surfaces were central features of Morrama’s From the Ground Up exhibition. Heron in Chestnut and Core material Totems from Smile Plastics were installed at the event, which presented a powerful showcase of regenerative industrial design including workshops, panel talks, and practical explorations of material innovation. Receiving 1,000 attendees per day, it was fantastically well received. Thanks to all those that visited.
Explore how Smile Materials brings events and exhibitions to life.
Sustainable Products Showcase with VitrA
For VitrA’s Sustainable Products Showcase during London Design Festival, Smile Materials was chosen to be featured alongside three other forward-thinking brands; Little Greene, Mater, and Pit-to-Table, in a curated exhibition of planet-conscious innovation.
Hosted at VitrA’s London Design and Specification Hub, the engaging event included a “Meet the Maker” session with our very own Aurelie and Rosie. It was great to see so many of you there.
Find out more about our manufacturing process.
UAL Arts Shop at London Design Festival. Photography by UAL
UAL Arts Shop at East Bank, Stratford
At this pop-up creative hub for students and the public, our striking Orca surface material from Smile Plastics adorned the till and counter.
Launched during London Design Festival, the installation received thousands of visitors, showcasing beautifully how our materials combine durability, aesthetic impact, and sustainability in a high-traffic, educational environment. What a wonderful collaboration.
Meet our Orca material.
Kevin’s Green Heroes: Grand Designs Live
We’re big fans of Grand Designs, and so were honoured to be selected for Kevin’s Green Heroes at Grand Designs Live, where Kevin McCloud showcases his selection of the most innovative, eco-friendly design solutions.
One of the show’s key highlights, this recognition is more than prestige for us – it positions us at the heart of the conversation on sustainable, circular design, exactly where it matters.
As we’ve always said, wide-scale circular economy requires collaboration. And for that exact reason, all of the above activity means so much to us. It signifies the coming together of likeminded people and brands to push further towards the positive change we so desperately need.
Let’s keep the conversation going.
If you’re interested in finding out more about our upcoming addition to Smile Materials – Smile Minerals – sign up to our mailing list to be first in the know.