Gareth Smith received his Bachelor of Arts in Design at UCLA. In 2000, he co-directed and art directed a hybrid live-action and animated short film, This Guy Is Falling. The film was premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, screened at film festivals worldwide and went on to win numerous awards. His second live-action and animated short film, Doppelgänger, starred Timothy Olyphant and Rebecca Gayheart.

In 2001 Gareth co-founded Shadowplay Studio, a motion graphics and VFX studio in Los Angeles. Shadowplay Studio created video projection animations and effects for Broadway musicals (Wicked, Spamalot) and opera (Moby Dick), video game cinematics for Electronic Arts and title sequences for film and television. While at Shadowplay Studio he co-designed the acclaimed title sequences for Thank You for Smoking, Juno and Up in the Air with wife Jenny Lee. Gareth is also an instructor of a Type in Motion course in the Design Media Arts department at UCLA.

Jenny Lee studied fine art at Boston University and later earned a Masters in Design at the School of Visual Art in New York. In 2003, she collaborated on video projection designs with Shadowplay Studio on the hit Broadway musical, Wicked. In 2005 she worked on her first title sequence when she co-designed the title sequence for Thank You For Smoking with Gareth Smith at Shadowplay Studio. An avid filmmaker, Jenny has filmed videos in South Korea, Tibet and Tanzania.

In 2010 Gareth and Jenny co-founded Smith & Lee Design.