Our favourite festive design studios of 2016

The out-of-studio experience

Bulletproof get top marks for effort this year – the team handcrafted giant letter shapes out of wire and fairy lights then rode the London Underground cradling their creations all the way to Southbank. They then set up shop on many of the bridges overlooking the Thames, and greeted onlookers with their light-up signs reading “Happy Christmas, peace & love, from all at Bulletproof”. Although strictly not within the confines of the studio, the consultancy brought festive cheer to onlookers – and of course, spread the joy of hand-crafted typography.

The hand-crafted snow globes

The Team turned their hand away from branding and digital and towards product design with their Christmas studio display. 12 members of…uh, The Team’s team were handed an empty glass dome and tasked with creating their own personal festive snow globe from scratch, based on what Christmas meant to them. The result is a cute array of tiny gingerbread houses, hand-written scrolls and presents, which are currently brightening up the studio’s main reception area.

‘SantaMax’

Okay, so strictly speaking, it’s not the studio’s decorations that we’re so enamoured with here. Warwick-based consultancy Astheimer has decorated its office pup with a miniature Santa’s outfit and ingeniously temporarily renamed him from “Max” to “SantaMax”. Inventive. Oh, and there’s a festive foliage wall with ivy and cranberries, etc etc. Anyway, look at the dog.

The trip back to childhood

Leeds-based ad and marketing agency Home Design has gone back to the idyllic and worry-free time of childhood with it’s The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe-inspired studio installation. Turning a meeting room into Narnia, the studio have set up a rustic sign and lamp-post, hand-cut various sized paper snowflakes and even installed some sort of makeshift wardrobe at the room’s entrance. The final touch is a Mr Tumnus face cut-out billboard, allowing anyone to transform themselves into a topless faun instantly – making for some disturbing photo opportunities.

The simple-but-stylish décor

At Christmas, you often see trees laden with garish baubles and multi-coloured lights, and smothered in tinsel. We like London-based Acrylize’s studio decorations for its colour-coordinated bunting, its pared-back tree and its minimal table display. Simply lovely.