The Art & Animation of Daniel Smith

BRAND DESIGN, ILLUSTRATION, & PHOTOGRAPHY

First off, thank you for visiting and for your interest in my art and design work!  I am Daniel Smith, design director and branding consultant with nearly three decades in the industry.

In that time I have had the great fortune to work with amazing clients around the world and have personally designed hundreds, if not thousands of packages and other various materials for products sold in major retailers worldwide.

My specialty is raising the perceived value of a package, product line, or even entire brand through the careful review and reworking of their current customer-facing products and content.  I have both lead teams and tackled rebranding projects solo for internationally known brand names like National Geographic and Silver Brush Limited. 

Please click here to visit my About page for an expanded view of my design history and experience.

BRAND   •   PACKAGE   •   PRODUCT   •   DISPLAY   •   BOOK COVER   •   SOCIAL MEDIA  

Nearly 30 years working in the design industry has allowed me an incredibly wide range of visual design project experience. From designing book covers for the largest audiobook company in the US to managing the social media graphic assets for major motion picture theatrical releases; from working freelance alone in my home office to create the artist brush set package rebranding shown in the before/after image below to building, hiring, and overseeing entire design departments working on brand redesigns for internationally known IPs, my specialty is raising the perceived value of a brand or product line by identifying issues and designing solutions.

Silver Brush Limited Packaging Rebrand Before and After

3D   •   CONCEPT   •   ILLUSTRATION  

Traditional painting with oils and watercolors, developing concept design, or creating fun animated models, these links lead to portfolio galleries.

Last Apple of the Season

PRODUCT   •   NATURE   •   THEATER  

Both a current obsession and an exceptionally handy skillset when working in product branding and design. Either capturing real world items or building them digitally in 3D, the ability to create high-quality visual assets in-house has come in clutch more times than I can say.

Grainger McKoy Fine Jewelry Christmas Promotion

CASE STUDY: BRAND REDESIGN

National Geographic

PACKAGING, BOOKLET, & RETAIL DISPLAY AESTHETIC REDESIGN

FOR MULTIPLE LINES OF STEM SCIENCE TOYS

A complete redesign of every part of a popular STEM science toy line.

This line of National Geographic STEM science learning sets was being held back by the legacy artwork and desperately needed a design overhaul to more appeal to its target demographic. My aim was to focus on increasing the line’s visual excitement and raising the perceived value of the products while redirecting the graphics to more fit in with the traditional Nat Geo brand.
This incredibly successful rebrand helped my client land major contracts and in-store shelf space in international retail stores!
View the entire National Geographic case study >
View more brand design work >

CASE STUDY: BRAND REDESIGN

Silver Brush Limited

PACKAGING REDESIGN

FOR 13 ARTIST BRUSH PRODUCT LINES

An exceptionally fun and challenging project.

Silver Brush wanted a new look for their numerous artist brush sets and needed the new designs to not only fit the varied combinations of their current brush sets, they needed the designs to fit any future mix of their hundreds of brushes as well… while only using five dielines.
While the original project consisted of 36 packages across 13 lines, in the years following we have added new packages, new lines, and new product categories to their catalog. And yes, a catalog as well.
View the entire Silver Brush case study >
View more brand design work >