SPOTLIGHTWhat’s on your
desktop today?
It’s an aquarium of screenshots and
GIPHY downloads. I couldn’t actually
tell you what my wallpaper is. My
physical desktop is mostly covered in
(toy) wrestlers and hot sauce.What do you have on
the walls?
Rothko and Rembrandt prints are in
between UX flow diagrams and
Gantt charts.What will you do for lunch?
Our studio is near an incredible food
market, so mostly that. Unless it’s
raining, then a sorry bowl of muesli.What hours do you work?
As many as I need to. Generally 9:30am- 6:30pm but if we’re pitching then it’s
anyone’s guess. We finish at 3pm on
Fridays and we encourage everyone to
take advantage of that as much
as possible.
What else do you do in
the office?
I enjoy playing around with the scanner;
I’m a big fan of process and ways of
achieving a hand-crafted feel within
digital design.How often do you all
hang out?
My wife would say too much.Describe your office culture in
three words
Fresh and fizzy (we get through A LOT
of Perrier)ADAM EVANS-PRINGLE
Design directorSurĽoh
Stink Studios recently launched an AR experience at Selfridges in partnership with high-end footwear brand
Auxiliary; it pushed the boundaries of Spark AR, creating something people hadn’t seen before
How important do you think AR will be to
the web over the next decade?
MG: There’s so much potential here.
WebAR is a strong player in this space but
has yet to establish a clear role relative to
other technology stacks. The open
development environment and familiar
WebGL integration are attractive but the
hardware integration standards have
been slow to develop. Companies like 8th
Wall have seen the opportunity here and
developed its own suite of WebAR tools
but they come at a price. A challenge for
web-based technology is that social
media posts that promote campaigns
using WebAR usually end up being viewed
via in-app browsers. These often prevent
access to the device camera, which is
obviously a key requirement for an AR
experience. This encourages us to
consider proprietary alternatives like
Spark AR that are designed for social
campaign integration.
Spark AR and Snapchat have led a
resurgence in popularity of AR through
face filters thanks in large part to their
universal availability. Anyone with
Snapchat, Instagram or Facebook
installed on their phone can experience
AR without the need for a bespoke app
download. The effects we see being
created are undeniably light-touch
though and probably reflect a trend that
will wane in time.
Of more interest are the capabilities
that can enhance retail experiences and
the various versions of shared cloud-
based AR solutions. We’ve already
pushed Spark AR into new retail
territories with our AR installation at
Selfridges. But at the moment it’s hard
to create AR experiences that interact
meaningfully with their surroundings.
With the kinds of advances in
environmental mesh generation that we
see from companies like 6D.AI, all sorts
of amazing possibilities open up. You
can already try dropping a virtual sofa
into your living room but with this kind
of technology you’ll be able to bring a
copy of your living room with you and
try it out around a real sofa. I think the
idea of having virtual copies of ourselves
and our property that we can inject into
virtual and augmented contexts will
only continue to grow.You’ve recently been appointed
strategic and creative agency for the
Tate. What is that going to involve in
terms of digital and online?
HL: Yes, we’re really proud to be
working with such an iconic brand.
Ultimately our goal is to get people