THE CREATION OF A CUSTOM WALLCOVERING
When New York-based Janson Goldstein needed a custom wallcovering for their boutique client The Westside this summer, they knew who to ask as we worked together last year on floor and wallcoverings for Canadian luxury retailer Holt Renfrew.
The Westside store with its custom Creative Matters wallcovering. Photo: Mikiko Kikuyama
Located in Greenvale, NY, The Westside is an upscale independent store offering men's and women's apparel and accessories. For the wallcovering, our direction was a design that had both a California beach vibe and a modern finish to reflect the luxury goods on offer.
The Creative Matters wallcovering helps to create a vibe that is both California beach and modern. Photo: Mikiko Kikuyama
Our project lead was Vice President Ana Cunningham. She assigned the task of developing a unique wallcovering to Senior Designer Sandra Ciganic-McKinney. Sandra thought back to an Art Day workshop where the whole Creative Matters team had taken a day away from their computers to practice the traditional art of shibori. Shibori is a Japanese manual resist dyeing technique, which produces patterns on fabric. There are many ways to bind, twist, fold, stitch and compress cloth for shibori and each results in different patterns. In this video from the Art Day, we demonstrate arashi shibori where the cloth is wrapped around a pole.
Enrolling the talents of Art Director Leah Phillips, Sandra organized a similar session to create designs for the wallcovering. The two designers first assembled the materials required for shibori using folded paper with indigo ink. Rubber bands, string and clips create areas on the paper that resist the dye.
Materials laid out for a Creative Matters shibori session.
After several hours of folding, dipping and manually applying colour, the designers had about 20 different designs to take to the next stage.
The Creative Matters designers produced a variety of designs on paper from their shibori workshop.
Sandra selected her favourites, scanned them into the computer and manipulated them in Photoshop. The result was three effortless-yet-chic patterns to present to the client.
The three designs Creative Matters presented to their client.
The design that features a leaf-like motif was chosen because it worked nicely with the aesthetic of the store, and provided a vibrant backdrop to the shelving displays.
The Creative Matters design selected by Janson Goldstein and The Westside for their wallcovering.
Actual production of the wallcovering moved very fast thanks to our U.S. supplier. Samples were provided in a week and once we had approved them, it only took two weeks to deliver the PVC-free vinyl, eco-friendly digitally printed rolls of custom wallcovering to The Westside.
The final result - a custom Creative Matters roll of wallcovering.
"This was a very fun and satisfying project to work on - both our team and Janson Goldstein's worked seamlessly when it came to understanding the client's expectations," said Ana.