Design Dialogue – Shaw Contract x RUDE®

Incorporating references and landmarks from the local area around Sanquhar, including wind turbines and the horses in the field next door to the factory, the mural also features RUDE’s signature hand drawn fonts spelling out the word SANQUHAR.

When Shaw Contract partnered with the London-based design duo for a poster-design workshop and talk for showroom visitors during Clerkenwell Design Week in 2019, it was the beginning of a colourful relationship!

Rupert and Abu Meats’ inspirational and playful use of lettering, colour and craft inspired us to commission them to create some unique artworks to display in our Shaw Contract bases around the UK, Europe and Middle East/Africa region.

To date the artwork has been on show in Shaw Contract’s Dubai, London, Oosterhout and Paris office/showrooms, and now in Sanquhar. We caught up with Rupert Meats about the creative process behind creating these eye-catching pieces.

Can you tell us a bit about the process of starting this sort of commission?
We try to get to know our client and understand the brand, our main focus is creativity so we try and pull that together from the brand guidelines and material that we have been given by the client. In this case Shaw makes and amazing vast range of flooring, some extremely creative and interesting. We tried to pull elements from what we could see in the brand and then took them into the concepts for the each of the murals for each city.

What were your inspirations in this unique artwork commission for Shaw Contract?
The inspiration comes direct from the floor tiles and in particular the amazing Sanquhar knitting patterns that date back such a long way. It was so great to be able to include this in some of the work, especially the Sanquhar mural. In the other murals we tried to give them almost a patch-work quality so that each one has an essence of floor tiles but is also very definitely connected to their city/town location.

It is evident you love using colour – what influences your colour choices?
We tend to go all out on colour, which sometimes is great, but also can be too much. It’s nice when we can work with brand colours (which are super lovely in Shaw’s case) and then we add in some highlight colours to go with them. We ended up with a super lovely palette to work with.

How did you get started with your business?
Abi and I both went to art school, and when we left Abi had a job in graphic design and I started RUDE straight away. Abi then left her job and we went for it with RUDE and got funding from The Princes Trust.

Who or what has been your greatest creative influence?
We think any great artist or creative out there, if you can make a living from being creative then you have achieved the almost impossible. Great artists like David Hockney who have had such amazing long careers, and who are still working and painting today. It doesn’t get better than that!