ABOUT US
Zoë Design is a small group of artists producing murals, wallpapers & decorative finishes for interior designers and homeowners worldwide. As a team we sport degrees from Duke, Harvard and Brooks Institute of Photography. Our combined knowledge and talents have enabled us to create murals and wallpapers for the high end market in 15 states, Tokyo, Jamaica, United Kingdom, France & Sweden. Everything we do is custom created in collaboration with the home owner and designer. We bring many years of technical, art historic, artistic and color knowledge to every project.
Lena and Brooke started Zoë Design in 1984 after university and met Doug soon after. “We were extraordinarily lucky to form a bond that few in business have, knitting our strengths seamlessly, working better together than apart and we laugh a lot while we work.” None of us leave the project when we leave the job site, or studio. We take care of problems that arise and continue to work until everyone is pleased with the result.
Philosophy
The success of our company is based on a 30-year focus on the aesthetics of our clients’ needs and dreams. We use a team approach with designers, homeowners and subcontractors on the job to complete every project in a smooth and timely manner. Our clients work directly with the Zoë Design team to bring their ideas to life. Every project is as individual and important to us as it is to the person who enjoys the result.
WHY GICLÉE Wallpapers
Wallpapers have, historically, been printed in a few colors. Zuber and Dufour took it further by using several hundred wood blocks to print. Now, with Zoë Design’s giclée wallpapers, you can get millions of colors, creating a depth previously unattainable. Zoë’s decorative and figurative wallpapers are archival and adhere to the highest standards of digital reproduction. Our giclée murals look like the original hand painted work of art with every brush stroke and bit of lint (okay, we do remove the lint) at a fraction of the cost. Don’t take my word for it, sign up for our newsletter (at our contact page) and receive a free sample of your choice.
Zoë Design has been creating hand painted murals and interpreting our clients needs since 1984. Our teams education, experience and training places us in the vanguard of the custom digital wallpaper market. The new possibilities of digitally printed murals has revitalized and changed the industry. Many wallpaper manufacturers offer several color ways. Our designs are available in custom color ways. Just send us your color swatch, PMS color or paint color and we will match or compliment it. Any pattern in our collections can be made into any tile design. If you wonder, “can this be done in another way?” The answer is yes. WE MAKE YOUR IDEAS HAPPEN!
A Little History
The $26 billion global wall coverings market has been resuscitated by technologies like digital printing. Large scale narrative images are trending in the wallpaper market because designers can add details, move them around and scale the work and colors to fit the room and decor with a quick turnaround. Giclée printing offers archival, high resolution imagery with a depth of visual color and detail previously only available in glaze, hand painted canvas or watercolor. There are only so many colors you can get into a screen printed wallpaper and digital printing offers millions. All Zoë wallpapers can be printed in grayscale, reversed, rotated, inverted and made the exact dimension specified. These mural wallpapers transport the viewer and because each one is made to order you may be the only person who will have it. We offer designers the opportunity to create something original for their clients, be it a hand painted chinoiserie or a pattern created from feathers, antique botanicals or the artwork of their children. We love the challenge of custom work.
Zoë Design has been creating hand painted murals and interpreting our clients needs since 1984. Our team’s education and training places us in the vanguard of the custom digital wallpaper market. The new possibilities of digitally printed murals has revitalized and changed the industry. Many wallpaper manufacturers offer several color ways. Our designs are available in custom color ways. Just send us your color swatch, PMS color or paint color and we will match or compliment it. Any pattern in our collections can be made into any tile design. If you wonder, “can this be done in another way?” The answer is yes. WE MAKE YOUR IDEAS HAPPEN!
Lena Fransioli
Early childhood had two parts, animals, and art. The former accumulated at home with my kind hearted Mother, the latter was fueled by Sunday mornings at the Fine Arts Museum with my Father, which taught me to see. That all came to a rather abrupt end when I was eleven and sent off to boarding school in England – not at all fun, but hugely influential.
I love exploring, and along my way I was lucky enough to meet my greatest friend and future business partner Brooke, in New York, and then my husband Doug, in Los Angeles. With our variety of strengths in art, we established Zoë Design, and have continued the adventure for thirty years. What we do never stops evolving as we continue to learn.
Our visual world is so totally reliant on how one thing relates to another, and that is what we delight in working with. It is fascinating to shift the pieces, color, composition, medium, etc., to create a successful balance. And the most important thing in the project is our client the source of everything we do.
I never cease to wonder at the things I get to see every day, and my idea of playing hooky is to go on a field trip for a visual refuel. Living abroad, and traveling, has been invaluable, and still is a constant source of inspiration.
~ Lena Fransioli
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Doug Garrabrants
Dad was Air Force and our constant moves gave me a fearless love of travel and nature. When I met Lena and Brooke, we were all “loft dwellers” in downtown Los Angeles, they were artists and I was a product photographer. I needed their artistic eyes for my still lives and they needed my technical abilities on their jobs and my photo skills to document those same projects. Over the past 30 years I have become the how of Zoë Design. My background in photography has helped me turn Lena & Brooke’s hand painted murals into high-res giclée wallpapers. My newest passion is textile design – finding the patterns in life, nature and history and photographically creating depth for walls, ceilings and floors. The New York tastemaker, Miles Redd, asked me to create a Peacock feather wallpaper and it has become one of our best sellers. Give me your challenge.
~ Doug Garrabrants
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Brooke Sheldon
I have always loved color. As a kid, I remember having my bedroom redone in shades of yellow and green with curtains of a daisy print that yelled “Hello!” every time I walked in the room. That’s Texas for you. We love our strong pretty colors.
Then, in my 20’s, I met a new friend. We were the older students in an illustration program at Parsons in NYC. She took me home to her house on the north shore of Boston for a visit and my eyes were opened. There were beautiful antiques from all over the world, lovely paintings and watercolors on the walls, and that patina of sophistication that comes from having lived in other places.
Thus began my true education. I started to become aware of how things look, how they interact, and why some rooms are successful and others are not. This education continued as I traveled to Italy to learn painting in a classical manner. Surrounded by breathtaking architecture and art, I broadened my visual memory.
The friendship that I struck up with my art school friend blossomed into Zoe Design. We continue to work together, along with her photographer husband, to create beautiful surroundings.
~ Brooke Sheldon
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