Nothing says 'I love you' like a big lenticular sticker that says 'I love you'....We caught up with Mark and Chris of StudioThomson to talk about a heartwarming new project which aims to spread the love.
It's not often that a project comes along whose sole remit is "to make as many people smile as possible," but that's exactly the brief that StudioThomson received recently from one of its clients.
Inspired by Johnny Barnes – an eccentric eighty-something Bermudian who has spent the past twenty years standing on a traffic island every day between 3.45 am to 10 am, saying "I love you, God loves you..." to the morning commuters of Hamilton – I Love You is a global street art project which anyone can participate in.
The project has simple yet very admirable ambitions - it's about making people feel good. To facilitate this, StudioThomson created a three-layer lenticular piece, which displays the message 'I ❤︎ U' as it's tilted backward and forward. Six different colourways (taken from existing street art found around the Old Street area) were created with the help of Hive Associates, and each 80mm x 80mm piece comes with a peel-off self adhesive backing for easy attachment to your chosen lamp post or street corner. StudioThomson's graphic approach was inspired by classic transport communication signage, in particular the arrival and departure boards found at airports.
Hundreds of the stickers have already been sent out, with people spreading the love by taking photographs of them in various situations all over the globe. Participants are invited to share the results via Instagram using the hashtag #iloveyouiloveyou and send their images to the I Love You website.
To publicise the project (and spread the love even further), Studio Thomson transferred the design to a series of animated billboards, donated by Ocean Outdoors. This involved digitally capturing the lenticular animation to work simply and quickly in order to get the message across in a very short time-frame. The studio worked with Thomas Selway to animate the billboards with a flowing, almost lo-fi animation which manages to remain true to the original design.
As the I Love You website insists, "There are no rules to spreading the love. People who discover the stickers on the street or social channels, and are inspired to find out more, can simply request a pack of stickers that we ship to them for free. It’s up to you where to post them. And if having one on your bedroom wall makes you happy, then that’s OK too. We even like it when they get peeled off and stolen because it means we must be doing something right."