STINK STUDIOS

The award-winning global studio discusses advertising’s ‘original sin’, new cloud tools and the future of WebAR

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Founded in 2009 as Stinkdigital, Stink Studios is a brand experience and digital innovation company, working across advertising, content production, web design, creative technology and digital marketing. With offices in London, New York, Los Angeles, Paris, Shanghai, Berlin and Sao Paulo, it’s known for its award-winning work for global brands including Google, Spotify, Twitter, Ray-Ban and Nike.

We spoke to executive technical director Matt Greenhalgh, production director Hannah Lynd and design director Adam Evans-Pringle to learn about the history of Stink Studios, their favourite tools, their latest work and their views on the rapidly evolving world of AR.

What’s the story behind Stink Studios?

HL: Stink Studios was founded 10 years ago to change the way people interact with brands online. We started in digital production, where we were often tasked with taking others’ ideas and trying to make them work in the real world. Although we had some great collaborations, we took too many briefs for digital ideas that were literally not possible to make.

This led us to a belief that guides our work for brands today: digital creativity and execution were never meant to be separated. This is advertising’s original sin. At Stink Studios, we close the gap between an idea and its execution. Our team are craftspeople. That’s why we call ourselves a studio rather than an agency.

What kind of tools and technologies do you tend to work with?

MG: During UX development we use InVision to produce interactive prototypes and then use Maze to quickly test and validate our design decisions with real users. But we still use a range of other tools, from specific open-source software all the way to Google Docs.