Search

A Day in the Life of ROLLOUT

This month’s Designer Dailies features Anita Modha and Jonathan Nodrick of ROLLOUT, the hip custom wallpaper company from Canada. Together, this dynamic duo works with tons of designers from all over the world to create one-of-a-kind patterns to adorn your sad, stark walls. They recently moved into a new studio, so I asked them to share a day in their life making really awesome wallpaper.

Waking up with the sun to the glorious sounds of construction on the condo towers that are being built outside of our window. This was our first summer in Toronto and we were fully embracing the heat.

A photo that hangs on our bathroom wall. It was taken during a recent trip to NYC. Anita had tripped and fallen into the tub in our hotel bathroom, and had subsequently taken the entire shower curtain down with her. I couldn’t pass up the chance to memorialize this comedy of errors prior to helping her out.

Arriving to work at 9 AM to our studio that is housed in a piece of Toronto history. This building used to be a giant carpet factory, and is currently populated with creative businesses of all kinds. It is an inspiring and positive ecosystem that often resembles a beehive due to the numerous hard-working occupants buzzing about.

Hoodies rest on coat hangers made by our friend, ByAMT. Sadly, these hooks will soon be filled with parkas and scarves as the weather is slowly starting to get colder.

Morning wake-up = daily coffee from the nice people next door.

Ellen, our studio admin, working on the right side of the brain/studio with Anita. A flurry of emails and phone calls were pouring into our new space. It has only been a couple months since we moved in and we were still deciding which wallpaper to install, but we were feeling good that most of the boxes were unpacked at this point.

This is the left side of the brain/studio. Our intern Emily was in working and at the mercy of Jonathan’s music selections. She had recently painted the wall behind her with metallic primer to serve as a chalkboard. It will eventually act as an inspiration wall, but we planned to develop that system after the rest of the boxes were unpacked (they appeared to be multiplying).

Our library of design books. Besides Jonathan’s vinyl record collection, shipping these from Vancouver to Toronto was probably the most expensive part of our move. However, we just couldn’t bring ourselves to part with any of them.

Visuals for our new website that Jonathan is working on with our Vancouver-based programmer.

1 PM and it’s time to eat! You can always tell when the lunch hour closing in as Jonathan verbalizes his cries of hunger more frequently. This is a view of Anita and Ellen’s walk down the hall to one of the local lunch spots.

TGIF! Fridays mean wings and beer. Anita talks about a list of things for Ellen to take care of while we’re in San Francisco the following week (and also about how much she loves wings).

An afternoon Skype meeting with Erica. She runs our printer and holds down the fort in the Vancouver studio.

Images of recent print jobs that Erica passed on to ensure that everything is good to go from our end.

Investigative work by Emily who has come back from visiting a local screen printer with images and a full report on her experience. Looks like we’ll be getting on our new pillows soon!

On our way home around 6 PM, we make a quick pit-stop to photograph a mural that Jonathan has spotted at the other end of a parking lot.

A culinary delight that Anita has whipped up for dinner. It’s only the second time that she’s cooked a whole fish, and it’s amazing. Cooking plays a huge role in what we do outside of work. We think of it as a creative outlet where we can try our hands at new cuisines like French, Italian, and Indian. We love gathering tips and tricks from loads of cooking shows (a house favourite).

Another day comes to a close with thoughts of sleep and what the next day will bring. Goodnight.

The last image was taken by our good friend, Marcos Armstrong. All of the other photos that are featured were taken by Jonathan with his trusty iPhone.

Thanks Jonathan and Anita!

Jaime Derringer, Founder + Executive Editor of Design Milk, is a Jersey girl living in SoCal. She dreams about funky, artistic jewelry + having enough free time to enjoy some of her favorite things—running, reading, making music, and drawing.