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April 08, 2009

Entrepreneur of the Day: Rick Jesse of Wall Glamour

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If you follow me on Twitter you know I love my UK creatives. There are throngs of endlessly brilliant Brits online, some of whom have become quite good friends. One of my favorites is Rick of Wall Glamour, Interior Wall Art.

Like Blik and a variety of other companies, Wall Glamour creates unique, adhesive designs for the wall. But what I love about Rick's company is that they stay away from traditional or overdone designs. No matter how hard you look, you won't find a chandelier decal in their catalogue - but you will find light bulbs. A tongue-in-cheek twist on the trend. Ahhh, those crazy Brits!

Without further adieu, here's the interview...

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I've seen a lot of wall decals, but yours just seem different. More playful. What inspires your designs?
Well Franki I’m not sure to be honest...I often look at others work and think “maybe there is a hole here for this product”. Or if there is something really popular I try think around it and come up with my take on it, like my light blubs were in response to everyone asking if we did the chandelier stickers. I don’t want to copy what others do as I feel like I’m cheating : )

Following you on Twitter, I've seen you cover an entire car with adhesives. Was this for you? For a client? Can we expect to see car kits online? And more importantly, can we put some pix up for people to see?
I’m a graphic designer by trade and just happened to get into stickers and vinyl as a sideline which just grew from a cheap eBay purchase a number of years ago. Our main business is called DogTooth which is a design agency and we do a lot of large scale branding like in shops, restaurants and we also produce vehicle graphics & wraps. The little Peugeot was a non commercial project though, they guy just came in and said “do you do wraps, I want blue camo please”...so we did it...and he loves it. As far as car graphics go all our Wall Glamour products are actually usable on cars as they are vehicle grade vinyl, Car Glamour doesn’t sound quite as good though.

Naturally, now I need to ask: what's the most outrageous use of decals you've encountered? Anyone who knows me well would say “don’t stand around too long or Rick will cover you in vinyl” and it’s kind of true. I’ve wrapped mobile phones, laptops, books, tables, desks, snowboards, doors, walls, bikes, cars, camper vans and even lorries in the stuff...my next mission is to convince my wife to let me test ceiling graphics in our home.

On to more serious things... you also create corporate decals. This seems perfect for today's culture of start-ups and small businesses. Is the world our oyster? How customized can we request those decals?

Yeah we are slightly different than some of our fellow wall sticker companies as we create every order with our own hands, these are not mass produced which gives us the flexibility to do bespoke graphics. We’ve done plenty corporate logos, key statements and quotes, we’ve even done bespoke artwork for some company HQ’s and Universities. We also had a nice job recently for a TV company which was to create some little sandcastle flags (made out of stickers) for a couple of T4’s Miami based programmes.

There's a huge typography movement in interior design. Both residential and commercial. What trends are you experiencing with creative applications?

We’ve noticed this recently and have a number of offerings coming up to try make it a bit easier to purchase type from our website, but up to now most people have been going bespoke. We recently created a huge 8 metre long window graphic saying Shhhhh!!!

How does a finished design come about? I'd love to know more about the design process.

In the beginning I did a lot of the work myself, I’d scan my scribbles or I would photograph bits in my garden or home then Photoshop it. However I ended up doing other work so I enlisted the help of a few other freelance illustrators. This now has me briefing them on what I think people are looking for (I have RSS feeds for a stack of interior design blogs) or sometimes I ask the designers for ideas. Then I await the first drafts, I will often leave the designs to the illustrator, but occasionally I’ll jump in if there are technical implications. As 90% of our customers are women, it makes sense for me to consider this and ask my wife and female friends what they like out there at moment.

And finally, what's next for Wall Glamour?
In the short term we have a load of new products ready, medium term we have more designs and a revised website and we’re introducing some new products like full colour/photographic wall stickers. The big new thing will be the introduction of our new products like wall paper, canvas prints, printed window blinds & even bedding. We can pretty much print on anything now. Wall Glamour has been brilliant in opening my eyes to online retailing and search engine stuff and I’m hooked so who knows what else will come out of this experience.

Be sure to visit WallGlamour.co.uk for more of great designs (I personally love the clear circles). Rick is just a super guy and will go out of his way to help you in any way he can. And the quality of the product is unmatched.

What the beautiful people are saying...

I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my

first comment. I don't know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I

will keep visiting this blog very often.

Joannah

http://myscones.com

Thanks so much for coming by - and thank you so much for commenting :)

The big new thing will be the introduction of our new products like http://www.wholesaleeshop.com.au/MP5/ wall paper, canvas prints, printed window blinds & even bedding.

Something to say, gorgeous?

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