Thanks to Digital Printing, Yellow Goat Design Provides More Value to Clients

IF YOU’VE EVER been in a conversation with designers or creatives, then you know just how inspiring it is exchanging dialogue. I recently had the pleasure of virtually interviewing Cat Gilbert, marketing director, and Nicola Casela, VP, at Yellow Goat Design for an in-depth look at their sophisticated works of art. Stunning, hi-res interiors featuring their decorative products stopped me mid-scroll while researching post-pandemic design, which, of course, easily swayed me to browse their website and IG page.

What’s most intriguing? By the photos, you can probably tell. It’s how they uniquely combine art, hand crafted fabrication, and digital printing techniques into designs that add value for their clients for commercial and residential spaces. IMHO, I’ve never seen digital print look so good!

In my interview, we discuss their unique value proposition, how they collaborate, and when and how digital print technology comes into play. Casale says, “Digital printing is such an exciting technology and allows our in-house team to print a myriad of colorways, patterns, textures, gradients, and opacities. Prior, we were limited to pre-set acrylic sheet colors; now, our design team and clients can select any Pantone color palette to incorporate into the final design. We can match branding colors, emulate textures, such as a patina, and even create digital watercolor art!”

PHOTO GALLERY (4 IMAGES)

You can read or watch the full interview below. In our exchange, you’ll get an indepth look at the lens of a designer and how YGD uniquely collaborates with their clients, designs large impactful pieces and delivers a value proposition to the design market by incorporating digital printing — also adding to a more circular economy.

Thanks so much for your time and joining us today. To begin, can you tell us about YGD and how you serve the interior design industry?

Nicola Casela: Thanks for having us, Rachel! Yellow Goat Design is an award-winning design and fabrication studio that specializes in custom lighting, architectural screens, and suspended sculpture for commercial interiors worldwide including hospitality, workplace, multi-residential, and retail sectors to name a few.

What are your roles within the company? How do you work together on projects?

N: I am the vice president here at YGD and oversee design development, marketing and business development. Cat and I liaise on identifying and participating in opportunities to promote our unique portfolio to the industry.

Cat Gilbert: My name is Cat Gilbert and I am the marketing director at Yellow Goat Design. My main focus is showcasing this incredible work to the world and making sure our voice is heard and elevated in the design industry. We have such a strong team and product that we love to see as the centerpiece of an incredible design project. I work with Nicola not only to reach clients for their project needs but to celebrate the completion of those projects.

You have an impressive client list, large projects under your belt and many prestigious awards, aside from creating stunning designs, what makes YGD so unique? What is the core value proposition for your clients?

N: Thank you! What makes Yellow Goat unique is that we are a team of designers who are passionate about creating forward-thinking lighting, screen, and sculptural installations that inspire the users of a space, spark conversation, and communicate a client’s brand. As collaborators and storytellers, we work directly with our clients to design pieces that are unique, hand-crafted and provide them their Instagram-worthy moment.

How do you acquire inspiration to create such impactful pieces? Can you describe your approach?

N: When it comes to project specific pieces, it is so important to listen to the client’s intent, research the space and understand how our piece will provide the wow-worthy moment in an interior. We start with the brand, the FF&E selections, and schematic presentation and begin sketching from there. After we put some ideas to paper, we share a first pass with the client for feedback and it evolves from there through collaborative discussion, sampling, and digital visuals. When we are designing one of our bi-yearly collections, we pull together a narrative centered on a specific subject matter and let the design process unfold through travel, sketching, design charrettes, market research, and material study on the fabrication floor. From there, we choose the strongest candidates to feature in our collection and on our website. The best ones win!

We’re also here today to discuss customization and manufacturing technologies that expand creative opportunities such as digital print. Can you share when you first learned about digital print and how you implement it today?

N: Digital printing is such an exciting technology and allows our in-house team to print a myriad of colorways, patterns, textures, gradients, and opacities. Prior, we were limited to pre-set acrylic sheet colors; now, our design team and clients can select any Pantone color palette to incorporate into the final design. We can match branding colors, emulate textures, such as a patina, and even create digital watercolor art! We offer flatbed inkjet UV printing capable of producing large-format imagery on various rigid and flexible material (under 2 inches) on acrylic, polycarb, metal, glass, MDF, plywood, etc.! Our current printer is the Fujifilm Acuity Advance Select HS. We use Caldera RIP software and Adobe Suite in conjunction with the printer to print the final product. The speed of digital printing is also very impressive. Depending on the artwork, we can print a full 48 x 96-inch image in about 10 to 25 minutes after the digital setup and surface preparation of the substrate is complete. The UV inks are vibrant, highly durable, and weather-resistant to ensure they are applicable for our large-scale commercial work.

Recently your new Connect Collection has garnered attention, including an Interior Design Best of Year Award for your Bubble Screen, how do you foresee design changing post-pandemic? How is YGD responding?

C: The Connect collection was such a special endeavor. I think when we all embarked on it we were very much connected with the anxiety and concern about change in the world. We were all feeling that. But we were also feeling that if we maintained a sense of beauty and craftsmanship (even when we were creating in essence something to protect us from disaster) that this in the long run was the most important thing and something people genuinely needed. From that our designers created protective barriers in acrylics for offices, school spaces, and public hospitality spaces that spoke to this need for beauty in function. Our Interior Design Best of Year award winning Bubble screen is a modula, detachable screen that has clamps so it can be moved from desk to desk or table to table. It’s got a curved enclosure and is digitally printed with one of the YGD patterns we provided or can be custom printed with a pattern of your choice. It provides not only social safety but a sense of intimacy and enclosure that is extremely important for anyone struggling with anxiety. In terms of changes in design, I foresee the focus on sustainability and building for a circular economy being very important. I think the idea of beauty and designs that communicate and connect with a person emotionally are huge as well. We are realizing more than ever that we are all a part of something bigger and if we can create designs that reflect this and at the same delight and intrigue guests, employees, or students, we are doing our job extremely well.

Can you tell us what we can expect to see from YGD this year?

C: First and foremost, we are so excited to see the world coming out of hibernation and starting to become more “normal” again. There are still big changes happening in the design world and we are certainly focusing some of our attention on meeting these challenges. In the next year, we are really concentrating on reconnecting with people in person at events like HD Expo in August where we are collaborating with BHDM in NY to create the “DesignWell” Pavillion. DesignWell is a new endeavor by Hospitality Design that brings together “Design, Wellness, and Technology” and we are so excited to be a part of this amazing juxtaposition that is really a forward thinking look at design. We also have a new collection releasing this July which is focused on the designs that are pulled from our archives and given a new fresh design look. It will be a reoccurring collection that will be called “The Drawing Board,” and will focus on designs that were created for projects and may have “never made it off the drawing board” or never been spec’d for the project for various reasons. They are still incredible pieces and deserve their moment in the limelight to potentially find a home in another Design location.

Thanks again for your time and sharing with us today. Where can we learn more about Yellow Goat and if someone would like to connect about products or services?

C: You can always contact us at [email protected] or at our main office: 610.431.2512 Our website is your absolute best resource to check out all our products. We try to avoid printing to many catalogs for sustainability reasons but all of our products and projects can be found online at www.yellowgoatdesign.com.

In addition you can sign up for our newsletter on our website at the newsletter link or check out our Instagram, Pinterest or many other social networks. We share tons of great content and links to all our newest work.

Finally if you want to check out some live action of our products, projects and team be sure to check out our Vimeo Channel for things like our Project Spotlights focused on showcasing our products in the final spaces looking divine, our Design Stories which include interviews with our clients and a deep dive into the behind the scenes of the project and much more.