The love of photography and the desire through images to excite. This is the philosophy behind WallPepper® by Diego Locatelliwhich deals with the production of wallpapers for interior decoration. Applicable to any environment, it is the quality of the materials that make this product unique. Numerous customers choose to personalise their spaces, be they homes, restaurants or offices. Diego Locatelli tells us WallPepper®.
You started from photography. When and how did you decide to deal with the transformation of images into wallpaper?
WallPepper® was born from my desire to produce large images, and as your question well points out, the winning intuition was to use wallpaper as a 'tool' to produce images without boundaries. Having a great deal of experience in photography, the desire to expand the emotional impact that large images produce has always belonged to me. Until a few years ago, there were only plastic materials borrowed from the world of advertising, but these did not at all correspond to my idea of high-end interior decoration and I wanted to get as far away as possible from the idea of the poster: I needed the right material. After a lot of research and experimentation, I found materials with unique characteristics and developed a production chain that allows me to achieve an absolutely top-notch quality and precision of set-up. Thus was born WallPepper®a product that is completely environmentally friendly, plastic-free, odourless, safe even in hospital and children's environments, soft to the touch like a fabric and which, moreover, allows the image to be taken wherever it is required. New form and new function.
To which environment are they best adapted?
Our wallpaper, due to its material characteristics and thanks to the virtually invisible joints between the sheets, restores a seamless view and allows the designer great freedom of expression. This makes it possible to use our WallPepper® wherever one wishes to intervene; no longer repetitive wallpaper to hide walls, but an exciting tool to interpret even a single wall as a pictorial canvas to be decorated without creative limits. Requests to have WallPepper® come from private individuals, restaurants, hotels, health resorts, showrooms, shops and wherever there is a surface to be covered and enhanced.
We have also developed a series of special systems that allow our WallPeppers® to be installed in practically any environment: Shower Enclosures, External Walls, Floors and to solve the ever-increasing demands for thermal and acoustic containment or high mechanical resistance.
Which subjects do you most like to portray?
Every season, the WallPepper® creative team provides our numerous authors with guidelines for producing contemporary and trendy subjects. We carefully evaluate their proposals and only those that reflect our creative lines will be included in our prestigious 'WallPepper®' catalogue. Among all the works in the printed catalogue or in the "On-Line Collection", the customer can always find the subject that best interprets his personal taste or needs. Personally, the subjects that involve me the most are those that I realise when I am involved in important special projects; in these cases all my critical experience is transformed into creative proposals that manage to give added value to the customer without distorting the original artistic intent.
Who is your audience made up of?
Our product is somewhat transversal, but certainly more akin to the style and philosophy of architects and designers who appreciate with more immediacy not only the technical characteristics of the support, but also the potentially infinite possibility of customising individual elements. This does not detract from the fact that WallPepper® can be purchased by anyone, anywhere in the world, without limits. The WallPepper® world is still relatively new, although the percentages each year show significant growth, we are sure that the growth potential is still to be written.
What are the characteristics of your 'WallPepper'?
Exciting images, customisation, eco-sustainability, ease of application. We are currently the only ones on the market to use completely non-toxic and plastic-free materials. This attention repays us for the efforts and investments made in studying an innovative and up-to-date medium. Everything at WallPepper® is made to measure and exclusively to design. The customer chooses a subject, it is adapted to the surface and only then is it produced. Every graphic is customisable: for example, if the shades are too hot, they can be cooled, as can some
sometimes you can actually delete or add details to the whole. Each result, in this way, is different and unique, absolutely personal; suited not only to the person's taste, but also to the space in which it fits. Without considering, then, that this 'classic' approach, this - if you like - 'three hundred and sixty degrees' service, allows us direct and continuous contact with the customer, to whom we can offer comprehensive advice and assistance.
What do you want to communicate with your images?
Emotions, personality, creative freedom all without constraints of size or format, only by interpreting the available spaces and walls as a huge base on which to pursue or anticipate the stylistic dictate one intends to pursue.
Where does he get his inspiration from?
From the desire to create great images, accessible to all, making us inspired by the world of art and design but also by the everyday world, the needs and demands of the market and above all by the expressive power of great images; often a subject that is neutral at first glance takes on expressive power once it is put on a full wall. Always taking into account know-how, experience and taste, the result of years of experience in the photographic and artistic world.
The next project you are working on?
Among numerous projects, we are realising for a large and important international institution, a total wall covering using our acoustic material, chosen for its real acoustic characteristics and for its ability to give a 2D file a real depth dimension. Thanks to the IMO MED certification obtained by our materials, we are also realising Winter Gardens for a leading international shipping company.
