Sas and Yosh the design house was founded in 2014 in the U.K. by two creative like minded artists Sarah Bellisario and Yoshie Allan. With a focus on creating inspiring pattern and design, and beautiful illustration. ‘Sas and Yosh’ limited edition product range includes wallpaper, homewares and art prints. All their products are made using ethical sources, created with passion and designed with a lot of love of vibrant colours and patterns in mind.
We speak to Sarah and Yoshie, the founders of Sas and Yosh about why they started the brand and what makes their wallpapers so special
Tell us a little about yourselves, and what inspired you to create Sas and Yosh?
Yoshie and I were born on different sides of the world in England and Japan. But Yoshie moved to England when she married her British husband and ended up living in the same town as me! Yoshie and I met as we had a mutual friend who thought we would get on well and who introduced us to each other in early 2014. I don’t think she ever would have thought what an amazingly wonderful thing she did in getting us to meet up.
We pretty much fell in love with each others work right away and started hanging out together. Four months later Yoshie suggested we start a business together, and Sas and Yosh was born. The idea was that every illustration and design would be a collaboration. Drawing on both of our strengths and experience, and creating our own unique illustrative look.
We spent the summer designing and creating patterns, researching stockists and choosing products and officially launched in Oct 2014 with our own homewares range of wallpaper, teatowels, mugs, aprons and prints.
Over the last 6 years we have continued to work on new products including notebooks, artprints, textiles and wallstickers. We also create bespoke and commissioned designs for a wide variety of clients making children’s books, murals, web illustration, logos, textile and fashion design, magazine illustration, packaging design and much more.
How would you describe your products, and what makes them different?
All of our products are made with a focus on creating inspiring pattern and design, with beautiful illustration. We also only use environmentally responsible companies and all our products are made in the UK by small family run businesses.
Also as we collaborate on all our patterns and designs the most exciting element of our work is seeing what we do with each others illustrations. Its thrilling to give your work to someone else and to let them create something from it that you would never have thought of. This means that the resulting illustration, pattern and designs we create are a wonderful amalgamation of both our styles of work; using fine line, vibrant colour, pattern and texture. Making them totally unique.
Your wallpapers are gorgeous! Where do you get your design inspiration from?
Thankyou!
Yoshie has an love of European art and Manga. So her style is quite contemporary. She loves using vibrant colours to inject energy and fun into her design work. My (Sarah’s) style has more of a French Chateau feel to it which shows off my passion of working with fine lines and patterns. I also love Oriental art and illustrating using tons of detail.
We also both travelled a lot of the world before we married and had children, so a huge amount of our work is inspired by our journeys around the globe. We are also both Children’s book illustrators so love being insired by this genre of illustration.
What has been the most rewarding feedback you have received from a customer who has purchased one of your products?
We love creating products that make people smile and that are inclusive and diverse in their design subjects.
However our most joyful feedback has come from our hospital mural work as opposed to our products. We have created three hospital murals, the first celebrating babies born in a neonatal unit, the second a huge mural for a large children’s ward to brighten the day of the children who visited, and the last to inform and encourage people to sign up to be organ donors. All three have been incredibly rewarding to create, but the ‘Inspiring Organs’ murals are my particular favourites. Knowing that our mural has encouraged people to become donors and potentially save lives is incredibly humbling and meaningful. Knowing we could have made a genuine difference to peoples lives is the best thing I can imagine being able to do with our artwork.
Of the Sas and Yosh products that we are featuring on myza, which is your particular favourite and why?
I think our ‘Flower Girl’ design is my favourite.
It’s the very fisrt design we ever created together, and even though its our oldest work it still feels really fresh! I suppose its one of our signature designs and is playful and fun.
I also like it because it looks just as fabulous in a hallway, bedroom, bathroom or living room. It’s a cool design that works really well for adults spaces as well as for kids!
Where do you see Sas and Yosh being in the next five years?
We have recently enjoyed working on some fabulous packaging design projects for clients in Japan, so would like to do more of that. We also hope to do more children’s books in the future as well, and would love to work on some animation in the future. But as long as we are working together and getting to be creative everyday as illustrators then that’s pretty much us living the dream already!
Finally, a few pearls of wisdom from you! Run us through your recipe for a great night’s sleep, and some do’s and don’ts that you recommend following, or including in a pre-sleep schedule.
Don’t go to bed too late or you get overtired and then its hard to turn off.
I love to read in bed as it helps to turn my mind off from the day and any unwanted thoughts. But If that doesn’t work then a 10 minute meditation can do wonders to help you relax your mind ready for a good nights sleep! Good mood lighting in a bedroom is a must! Lastly clean sheets and new bedlinen waiting for you after a good soak in the bath is one of my favourite treats, that and having something or someone warm to hug whilst you fall asleep.
