On Andrew Hardiman:

I am the sole designer for Kuboaa, which means that papers continue to have similar design aesthetic, although varying greatly in inspiration. I established the company about two years after studying a masters in communication and design at the Royal College of Art in London. With a design background, I am sure this has a strong influence on the papers, and the thinking behind the work. Before designing wallpaper, I worked in advertising and on several magazines, as well as working as a freelance designer and illustrator.
For me my diverse background means that I can come to things afresh, and hopefully approach subjects differently. However I think it is important to have an understanding as to the history of wallpaper, and how pattern works.
It is important to always try to go forward with design, but revisiting the past to do this is usually neccessary. Above all I want our papers to been seen as beautiful and intriguing, and most important of all that people enjoy them.

On Inspiration:

The way ideas arise is varied, for example Escalating Man', a pattern involving men traversing on escalators up through a jungle, started life as a work/city theme, that was expanded to a place that maybe people would like to travel up on escalators through. It is a paper designed to work on different levels, depending on your reading, but as a pattern it is almost traditional from afar, being only revealed on closer inspection. However papers like our 'Wistaria' or 'Flowering Bloom' arise from a desire to include floral papers in a collection. Research is then done around these ideas, with a more specific idea of the overall aesthetic achieved, and then drawings are sketched out and considered, before going on to the computer. This all takes about 6 months, so a design goes through a long process before even getting to colouring. A stripe paper may seem simple but maybe 20 stripes are worked up and modified before any decision is made.
When designing I always try to absorb everything that is going on in the media and generally in the world around us, and then use all this information and reproduce it in some way trying to predict how fashions will go whilst keeping my own style. A lot of this is subconscious, as we are constantly affected by what we see, and also as patterns and ideas grow so strands go off from these.