Suna does SiD
Suna does SiD
30.06.17
It’s a hard life. Once a year Helen and I make a tile pilgrimage to Italy, undertake a whistle stop tour around some of the most innovative tiling manufacturers in the Modena area and eat copious amounts of beautiful Modenese food. And possibly drink a tiny little bit of wine...
This, our second year of collaborating with the tiling distributor Diesse, is a culmination of an idea that germinated over a period of months in 2015. Meetings to discuss our specification projects generally ended in conversations about how we, as interior designers, and Diesse, as suppliers with a seemingly endless array of contacts who could supply an actually endless array of tiling product, would be the perfect partners to come up with a select range of tiling for developers, architects and designers, curating a collection that encompassed innovation, value for money and practicality. And then calling them good old fashioned British Christian names....and so Frank, Derek, Arthur, Rodney et al were born.
Our first trip was an in-depth discovery of Italian tiling, visiting a plethora of tiling manufacturers across the region and coming away with our first collection, launching SiD (SUNA iNSiEME DiESSE) with an array of tiles that showed diversity in pattern, shape and texture. We developed the brand, styled the imagery, designed the magazine and sent our first issue out into the world. Like a firstborn going to school. He did really well, pretty much straight A’s across the board.
So, this year we are following up with our second issue, and the challenge is to make sure he is as good looking and as much of a high achiever as our first. A lot of the parameters are already in place; branding, magazine format and favourite manufacturers. Our trip to Modena this year had a slightly different approach, slightly less chaotic, slightly more organised in that we knew what we were looking for and knew where to find it. And with quite a bit more wine. There was an air of decisiveness. Helen and I have always worked in astonishing harmony through our 17 year careers together, and this was no different. A small nuance in a tile, of colour, pattern or texture, made the difference between a resounding ‘hell, yeah’ or an absolute ‘never, not in a million years’, and in 99.9% of the selections Helen and I are riding exactly the same wavelength. Which makes things very, very simple and enjoyable. Like entering a comfort zone that we both adore as it reaffirms all the reasons that we run a business together in the first place. We need trips like this, we don’t get to spend nearly enough time drinking wine, waxing lyrical about design and coming up with ideas to take back to the team to develop further together. Ok, we actually do it quite a lot, but it’s a part of the job that we love and that is the whole point of running your own business, isn’t it?!
This year, with the benefit of SiD Issue 1 in our back pockets we were able to show the manufacturers our vision, rather than trying to translate what we had in our minds eye into Italian. We are talking to people who really want to be involved, be included and be brought into our special tile family. We were wined and dined in true Italian fashion, impressive and massive six course meals in an attempt to ensure we stayed put and didn’t go on to a competitor, ‘ah, cancel the next visit, you don’t need them!’ I think the philosophy was to make us never want to or be physically able to move from our seats again...until the next meal.
And now our second born’s birthday is in sight, we are currently gestating Issue 2, planning an Autumn trip to Italy (well, why not?) with our photographer to get the images that are so vital to the end result, and maybe, just maybe, partake in a little more of that Italian hospitality. And the hardest part, we need to think up names for all the new ranges... Bertrand, Joaquim, Tristan, your time in the spotlight may just be coming!
Some of the pics snapped in Modena… so many beautiful tiles!
Watch this space, we’ll keep you updated!
Rebecca
Ps. Next week we’ll be showing you all of the fantastic photography taken at the Dollar Bay Penthouse Apartment in Canary Wharf. We’re delighted with the photos and hope you will be too!
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