New Beginnings!

Hello, and welcome to our brand new blog!

You may have noticed that we also have a very lovely new website, we can’t gloss over that fact! A big thank you to the amazing team over at SquareGuru for helping us with all the fiddly bits of making a website really work. It’s been almost 10 years since our old website was launched, and it really is a refreshing thing to have a new start!

First things first, introductions.

Kimika

I’m Kimika, and it will usually be me who you communicate with when you’re talking to us! I’ll also be writing most of the English Language parts of these blogs. My role here at YSD London, to put it simply, is ‘Everything But The Design’; this includes administration, project management, logistics, customer service, social media and more. It’s a big hat, but I love wearing it!

Yukari

Now, for ‘The Design’ part of that description- a hello to Yukari, our amazing designer and the individual responsible for every one of the wonderful motifs that are on our website. Yukari’s role, outside of being the big boss, is not just limited to illustration; she also designed all of our products, develops collaboration ranges and also co-ordinates interior concepts for buildings in Japan. Not to mention, she’s an unstoppable force when it comes to screen printing, sewing and hand painting!

…and Teddy!

Of course, we can’t forget our original ‘Everything’; our beautiful little dog, Teddy. Teddy sadly passed away in 2021, but was the inspiration behind many of our designs, and a loving little man that brought us so much joy and happiness. Many of you will know him from his role of ‘CEO’ of YSD London- he was in our studio every day we were, calmly overseeing operations from his ‘office’ (read: bed) and making sure the studio floor was kept clean and free from crumbs. He was also a real stickler for making sure lunch times were obeyed, and that we took all our breaks- especially those that involved snacks or walks in the park!

So now, let’s take a look at what we typically get up to in our studio.

We are a two-person team operating from a little basement studio-shop in Greenwich, London. From this studio we ship the majority of our wallpaper range as well as print and make all of our home accessories and lifestyle goods. We are a family business- a genius mother and a hardworking daughter-  and pride ourselves on the majority of our products being produced and made in Great Britain from family run businesses just like ourselves.

We also travel frequently to Japan, where we work with a variety of lovely collaborators and agencies who sell our wallpaper and homeware. We also manage a small property in Hiroshima, Japan, which we built from the ground up and oversaw all of the decor both inside and outside to reflect our aesthetics as a company. This evolved into a community of like minded individuals living in or visiting Onomichi and the surrounding Setoda region: ALCOVE Onomichi.

Whilst the majority of our days are spent designing, we also love to dedicate days to our more hands on work like screen printing, decorating our ceramics and sewing. As we mentioned, most (if not all) of our home accessories and lifestyle products will have been made or finished by either ourselves or one of our rotating cast of specialists. We work locally with friends in London who have amazing skillsets, and ensure that they are paid fairly so that they can expertly help us to produce lasting products for the home. We pride ourselves on using the most eco-friendly materials and maintaining a high level of quality that you should come to expect from any YSD London product.

Now that that’s out of the way, I can answer the main question- what will we be blogging about?

Well, it would be very easy just to say ‘wallpaper’, wouldn’t it? After all, that’s what we’re known for! But we actually have so many more things that we do, and there’s a character limit over on our Instagram, so this space will be mainly for going a little bit more in depth about goings on in the studio and beyond. To begin with, we’ll be posting some archives of our best posts and expanding out a bit on them, then we’ll gently roll into some of the newer projects we’ve been keeping firmly under wraps for now. And what are they? Well, you’ll have to wait and see!

That’s all for now- if you don’t want to miss a thing, be sure to sign up to our Blog Newsletter below. Whenever we post, you’ll get a copy of it sent straight to your inbox. A perfect way to keep your commutes and lunchtimes interesting!