Jamaican artist, Anthony Smith, launched his design agency Bold Pebble [BP] in August, via Instagram Live.

The soft launch gave Smith the opportunity to connect with supporters, sharing the company’s vision, mission, and updates on recent developments.

“On the contextual level, BP is carrying art to the commercial space as a way of uniting audiences and their service/product providers. This is done in an effort to utilise and highlight the power of art as a companion to design and strategy in branding,” he told Buzz Caribbean.

“The soft launch of the company was successful. My metric for success was the complete involvement of supporters and those who attended, and that’s exactly what I got,” he added.

According to Smith, BP was born out of an urge to “simply help”. It is Smith’s belief that service is the highest calling and as such “my life is devoted to serving and helping humanity live more meaningfully.”

How does he achieve this?

Bold Pebble works to carefully amalgamate design, business, strategy, art and philosophy, Smith says.

“That is done through BP by carefully amalgamating design, business, strategy, art, and philosophy,” he said.

Smith is an artist and creator at heart. He said he does not see venturing into branding as a pivot but rather intends to reintegrate art into his business and merge the two for “bigger impact and business success.”

Smith has been devoted to art since grade 4, but his journey began even before then.

“I remember vividly in grade 1 I did a drawing for my assignment. It depicted a green car in front of a hill. The car was colored smoothly in the lines and likewise the mountain and sky. My teacher suggested that my family should allow me to do it myself because grade 1 students do not draw that well. Instead, my family helped me to make it bad intentionally, then my teacher accepted it,” he shared.

After taking his craft seriously in grade 4, Smith says it stayed with him into high school (Knox College) and through Edna Manley College.

“Through consistently striving to be better and to make an impact, I have won medals in JCDC Visual Arts Competition, and participated globally in art exhibitions for charity,” said Smith.

The artist shares that communication and creative exploration have long been a “concern”, and that he is inspired by “questioning” and “frameworks”.

“I suppose this sums up why design and consequently, branding became second nature for me,” he said.

From here on, Smith will be devoting more time to the reintegration of art into his design practice and philosophy to “make a more substantial impact on my clients’ and partners’ businesses.”