Creativity, Unique Art and Color: An Inspirational Interview with DENY Designs

It's now time to start preparing for the Surtex show in May. This includes creating lots of new collections, ads, a press release and promo kit, booth design, and submitting art and making appointments with potential clients. All very exciting but lots of work ahead!

To help keep myself inspired, I invited Kimberly Nyhus of DENY Designs whom I met at the Atalanta Gift show this past January to tell us about what she does and how she keeps motivated.

© Arcturus | DENY Designs

The Moon from My Attic: Tell us a little bit about yourself and your company. What do you do? We're a husband and wife team who bring different talents to the table when it comes to DENY Designs. As it's been said, Dustin is the brain and I am the heart. Dustin, with a background in Industrial Design, oversees the entire business from product development and finances to our resellers. I, previously in Event Planning and Television Production, manage PR and Marketing for the company while also ensuring that the vision of the brand is being implemented. Together, it's a perfect pairing.

Based in Denver, Colorado, DENY Designs is a modern, think-outside-the-box home furnishings company. DENY empowers its customers to transform dull, everyday household accessories into fun and original statement pieces by adding a personal image or selecting artwork from the DENY Art Gallery. With each purchase from the Gallery, our team of talented artists earn part of the proceeds, enabling DENY to support art communities all over the world while also spreading the creative love!

© Heather Dutton | DENY Designs

TMFMA: What drives you personally in your job? What inspires you? In this industry, it's critical to stay one step ahead of the trends. Dustin and I are always on the hunt for design inspiration and we find it in almost everything we do. Creativity, home design, unique art and COLOR are what inspire us most.

TMFMA: Tell us a little about your selection process. We are always looking for brilliant art to showcase on denydesigns.com! Each month, DENY receives hundreds of artist submissions. With that many submissions, it's critical that we find the perfect match for our customers. We have several different sets of eyes that view each artist's work. At the end of the day, we're looking for three different things:

1. Is the artist unique in his/her own right? Out of respect for our current artists, we prefer to select new art that is different from our existing art collections. We're looking for something that is truly different from what we already offer our customers.
2. Does the artwork represent the DENY brand? We're a modern site showcasing various types of art but we always want to make sure that it's art that we can stand behind as a company.
3. Will the art translate well to our product line? There are so many artists whose pieces we love, but sometimes they just won't translate well to our product offerings. It's incredibly important that the image quality is top notch.

© Valentina Ramos | DENY Designs

TMFMA: What makes for a great art collection? Great art is in the eye of the beholder. Just like in spouses, there truly is a piece out there for everyone! What we really love to see are fresh ideas that stir something inside of you. Art is a feeling that invokes an excitement…the moment you say to yourself, "I have to have this." That's how you know you've found something great.

TMFMA: What are some of your favorite design trends right now? We're loving the bright and bold colors that are being used in home décor right now. People are taking big risks in their design choices and the payoff is huge. It lends well to a vibrant and inviting space. Also, pattern mixing and matching. In the past, you'd mix a standard solid with a print. Now, you can mix pattern with another pattern and it works brilliantly.

© Belle13 | DENY Designs

TMFMA: What's your largest product category? Our shower curtains have been very well received. We're turning one of the most boring rooms in the house into the life of the party!

TMFMA: What’s on the horizon for your company? 2012 was a year of quality control. We spent the whole year ensuring that our fabrics and product line were up to the highest standards. 2013 will be a year of product development. We intend to launch several new collections so that eventually you'll be able to outfit your entire home with DENY Designs' creations.

And our biggest goal? Creating more awareness of art communities from all over the world and sharing our findings with our customers.

The Retailer's Point of View: An Exclusive Interview with Kimberly Jolly

As mentioned in the Atlanta Gift show article we published a few weeks ago, walking the Mart gives one a greater insight into art, products, and how the product development-wholesale-retail-consumer business operates. We are very excited to introduce the first of a series of new editorials about fabulous retailers and their stories. We hope this will complete the circle and help understand the process from beginning to end.

Tell us a little bit about yourself and your company. What do you do? My name is Kimberly Jolly and I own Fat Quarter Shop, an online fabric store and It's Sew Emma, a quilt pattern company.

Kimberly Jolly

What drives you personally in your job? What inspires you? Writing patterns inspires and drives me in my job. Our pattern company, It's Sew Emma, has been an exciting venture and continues to take us on new adventures. Last year we wrote our first book and are gearing up to continue that journey!

Tell us a little about your selection process. While we always tend to purchase fabric collections that appeal to our personal tastes, we also keep an eye out for new trends and listen to what our customers want. This helps us keep our fabric offerings diverse and well-rounded. From batiks to modern to traditional, we have it!

What makes for a great art collection? As a quilter, I look for fabric collections I can really use. That means, beyond having some wonderful focal prints, a collection needs an awesome range of coordinates. When I look at a new collection I can instantly dive in and pinpoint my best focal, binding, sashing and background options.

What are some of your favorite design trends right now? We are always keeping an eye on trends. As of right now, my favorites have to be solids and chevrons. Solids are currently stealing the show in many quilts. We carry a vast range of colors and we love seeing the many different quilts made from solids. Chevrons, too, are everywhere. Chevron prints have popped up in the fabric, home décor and quilting industry. It is hard to over look this bold trend!

What's your largest market category? While we stock a variety of notions, books, sewing and quilting patterns, our largest category is high quality designer fabric for quilting and sewing.

Happy tones

What's on the horizon for your company? Here at Fat Quarter Shop we are developing our Coming Soon page. We are striving to make it easy to browse the collections and have an idea of what may perk the customer's interest. We are also engaging our customers in new ways, like an upcoming free sew-along project that will be hosted on our blog!

Find out more about Fat Quarter Shop and It's Sew Emma here:

www.fatquartershop.com and www.itssewemma.com

chevrons

modern

solids

Atlanta Gift & Home Furnishings Market 2013 - Show Recap and News

I am sitting on the floor at home pawing through a stack of impeccably designed trade magazines, directories and promotional pieces while pondering about all that happened at the fabulous Atlanta Gift and Home Furnishings show this past weekend. It's been a wild but amazing 3-day ride!

Amongst many firm shakes of hands, courteous presentations and vivacious chats, I kept hearing the word "trend." It's becoming trendy to talk about trends.

Courtesy of Design Design Inc. - From Their Catalog: Trends

By whatever mechanisms, trends are present. Artists set trends by capturing images and patterns artistically. Manufacturers do, too, through product choices, materials and quality of execution. Retailers try to capture trends through the products they offer to consumers and how they display and market them. And, finally, it is the consumers cumulative actions that actually set them.

I think it's best to look at this whole notion of trends in a relative way - your way. I try to discern trends for inspiration and for getting a pulse about other views and cultures; I don't necessarily have to follow them. I follow what I like and believe in. For example, there is an outdoor living trend that showed up everywhere at the Atlanta show, even on the huge electronic billboard in the lobby. I love this trend and started embracing it last year in my collections, because the outdoors has always been a big part of my life.

While outdoor living is an example of a trend that is developing more momentum, an example of a trend that is more of a classic style is coastal and seaside. Recently, I met a pelican at a local wharf. He ended up in one of my seaside collections and has now become a half celeb through a JellyBean rug! (By the way, the pelican's name is Gabriel...) Is he part of a trend? I don't think so. But he's a nice dude and it so happens that he does fit into the coastal trend.

Courtesy of Design Design Inc. - From Their Catalog: Handmade

Set or follow trends that are suitable to your creative process, similar to how Design Design Inc. created these cool inspirational boards for their catalogs. We had the great pleasure of meeting their Art Directors and Chief Marketing Officer at the show and had one of the best conversations of the whole weekend. Such nice people and what quality work! They get it. By the way, they also provide a very detailed artist submission guideline. How much better could it get?!

There are many other companies that offer such collaborative offers. So yes, trends are all of us as a whole, our families and pets, friends, sharing circles, close co-workers, and our houses and what's in them. Classic, vintage, retro, modern, transitional or traditional. As I see it, the challenge of a licensing artist and the real value of a show like Atlanta is to help you better see where all those collective interests and ideas are headed, and thus how to adapt and interpret them in your art to improve your manufacturing partner's chances of success.

© Courtesy of Demdaco

All together the world of art, design and products is really one big cohesive whole that is made up of multiple people and views. I think this is the key concept I was reminded of at the Atlanta show. It was fun. It was thrilling. It was friendly and positive. It was so productive for us as it was for the majority of the people we spoke to. It included collaborative insights and a source of unexpected friendships. We'll definitely be going again next year!

Here are some more cool photos we were able to take with the blessing of the exhibiting manufacturers. We didn't have time to see every single showroom or meet each of the exhibitors and artists at the show, but we picked these to talk about because we thought they would be of broad interest to this audience, not because they are the most important or the best of the show.

© Courtesy of Demdaco

The Atlanta Gift Show is one of high-quality merchandise. The displays were bright, cheerful and tastefully displayed throughout the market floors. We spotted several that were retro/vintage inspired, with the red and blue popular color combos as a fun alternative to more traditional holiday colors. You can see them in the photos from the Demdaco and Enesco showrooms.

As mentioned above, trends and themes such as gardens, eco-green, indoor-outdoor living were very prominent throughout the show.

© Courtesy of Enesco

There is continued growing interest in this natural, nomadic, primitive, explorative direction as represented through visuals, words, scents, colors and other senses, talked about at the 2012 Surtex show. It's a mix of concepts. The themes are pretty much the same, but reinterpreted by artists in partnership with their manufacturers, retailers and their respective niche of consumers.

Walking through the floors was exhausting but most of the displays were very inviting and always colorful, some peaceful, with classic outdoor elements dressed up with whimsical images, shapes and/or inspirational phrases meant to uplift the spirits. We saw many little birds, owls, cardinals, butterflies, frogs, bugs, florals of all sorts and hues. Mixed media designs with enchanting themes, graphics, geometrics, natural materials, and vintage backgrounds were also abundant. What a mix!

© Courtesy of Demdaco

Two terms seem to be growing in interest: "boho" and "gypsy." We also noticed many industrial elements, like heavy metal objects mixed in with vintage/farm elements and inspirational concepts and words. Word art and fancy calligraphy are still big, either hand painted, hand drawn or typed, with chalk, pen, brush or simply pencil. Jute, burlap, cord, felt, and other craft materials are also coming to the market in a strong way. The home design and home products showrooms were full of them, from lampshades to chairs, accessories and wall art - even Christmas ornaments!

Dimensional art was also popular with colorful cards, gifts and accessories. Many Christmas fantasy themes were presented with sleek polar bears and regal foxes, or the more everyday themes such as farm life with roosters and pigs, or ponds with hoppy frogs and dragonflies; cute raccoons and hedgehogs are joining the already crowded parade in their debut to the consumer world. And of course family dogs and cats are still pretty much everywhere along with horses and deer. If there isn't a trend in there you can relate to, then you should take up knitting! Which, by the way, is also a trend!

© Courtesy of Vietri

As the Atlanta Mart logo says, this show is for international wholesalers. Many of them do not license art. They have in-house design teams or occasionally hire freelancers. Some of them are distributors only so they don't license directly but work with manufacturers and their exclusive artists. Some of them are a company umbrella representing artisans from other countries. People attending the show come from all over the world, including Europe, Asia, and South America, although most are from the U.S. As a result, while you do see a global market it is still mostly domestically-oriented. We got to chat a bit with the National Sales manager for Vietri - their showroom was breathtaking. The collection shown here is by Italian artist Giovanni De Simone but they include over 40 different Italian manufacturers in their product offerings. It was so inspirational to look at!

What else? We met with many manufacturers and introduced The Moon from My Attic to them, although were pleasantly surprised to find out that many were already regular readers. There is an increasing excitement about this collaboration between artists and companies, about what we are doing to help bridge the two ends of the product development process and create more collaborative partnerships. We have discovered that manufacturers are noticing artists through this blog and vice versa. We are happy about this new evolution. In upcoming months we will surprise you with more special referrals, editorials and promotions!

We got to meet some great artists who we'd previously only met via email or Facebook. What a treat! We wished we had more time to see everyone who expressed interest in connecting up at the market; more trade shows are on the horizon, with Surtex 2013 being our next stop. We'll be exhibiting there at Booth 446! So we are sure we'll connect with many of you who also have a booth or just want to walk the show.

Magnet Works Flag - © Alex Colombo

In summary, the whole show was an amusing and very productive one for us, in addition to getting to know the market a bit better and meeting very nice and friendly people. Etiquette is an important part of how to navigate such a show, with respect to many who are working really hard at this business. All people we talked to had a positive and encouraging result from the show. We also had a chance to see some of my art on products, which was really fun. We hope more will come!

As a final note on the Atlanta show, I think it's a fantastic experience for licensing artists for doing market research; it gives you greater insight into art, products and how the product development-wholesale-retail-consumer business operates.

I am sure other show participants can add to my observations so feel free to comment on this article. I invite you to also read other licensing and trade blogs about the show so as to get multiple views. For me, seeing the whole chain of production at work re-enforced my main purpose: partnering to make the world a better place through art!

___________________________________