Award-winning, fabric and wallpaper design company, Afficionados of the Nod, has launched Neo Geo, its new range of designs at designEX 2007, at Melbourne Exhibition and Convention Centre, Southbank.

designEX is the leading national forum and premier event in Australia for interior architecture and design.

The patterns

The new range, Neo Geo, has its inspiration in the Australian landscape and history of Australia’s colonisation and the cross-cultural exchange between the traditional owners and the European colonists.

Two designs make up the range: Old Country- is made up of Australian place names with an Aboriginal heritage, in an elaborate, old-fashioned calligraphic script, while inspiration for -Scribbly Saga- is in the organic lines and shapes created by the interaction of unique Australian moths and the Scribbly gum trees.

With the current fervour for decoration both in the home and in commercial environments, there is an appreciation for the texture of patterns and embellishment that fabrics offer. The Neo Geo range can be used as a texturing effect via wallpaper, upholstery, curtains and soft furnishings.

The Colours

Neo Geo range is offered in an updated earthy, nature based palette – all the standard colours are metallic.

The Neo Geo colour palette is taken from the earthy, yet sumptuous colours found in the Australian landscape. This palette has been chosen for Autumn-Winter 2007, natural tones made modern through metallic finish. The colours are Banksia - a warm metallic orange, Jacaranda - a metallic purple/brown, Blue Mallee - a dark metallic blue/grey and Spinifex - a metallic mid-green with yellow tones.

Custom colours for the patterns are available to order to all architects, interior designers and specifiers, to virtually any opaque or metallic pattern colour, with a 10 metre fabric or 3 roll wallpaper minimum.

The Neo Geo range is available as wallpaper in four different base colours (Metallic Pewter, Catalan Red, Pure White and Beige) and 4 standard pattern colours, and fabric in different weights and base colours in 4 standard pattern colours, printed to order.

Neo Geo is environmental sensitive and sustainable and Australian

All Afficionados of the Nod designs are printed in Australia on mostly Australian fabrics. The wallpaper is grown in sustainable forests in Finland, imported to Australia, and printed to order in Australia.

According to Neo Geo, its focus has always been to keep its product home grown wherever possible. Neo Geo only use natural fabrics, its cotton bases are grown in Australia and Neo Geo uses imported hemp and hemp-silk base fabric as none is grown locally.

All of Neo Geo’s printing is done in Australia, using low toxicity inks with low VOCs (volatile organic compounds). It makes for good looking, low toxic and environmentally sustainable fabrics and wallpapers.

The Neo Geo patterns are hand printed to order in Australia, on Australian cotton, with Australian water based inks, for environmental consideration. The other fabric bases available are hemp, hemp-cotton and hemp-silk, sourced from China. The fabric miles that the hemp travels to Australia (generating greenhouse emissions via its transport) is offset by the ecological growing of the product - hemp requires minimal care and water and little processing.

The cotton used as the primary base fabric for the Neo Geo range is grown in Australia, and environmentally sensitive, as minimal fabric miles (and hence greenhouse emissions) are generated by transport, manufacture and delivery.

The water based inks are heat sealed into the fabric, rather than chemically sealed. Neo Geo base fabrics are all natural with no synthetic additives, which mean they are fully biodegradable.

As the fabrics are printed to order, there is additional environmental sustainability consideration as there is no need to stockpile and print fabric for the sake of it and use resources (fabric/ink/labour) unnecessarily. A low minimum order of 10 metres of customer requested combinations; or 1 metre of standard colours, means that customers do not need to order more fabric than they reasonably need for an average domestic upholstery job.

No additional processes are applied once the fabric is printed, making it a minimally processed product. All of the Neo Geo base fabrics are machine washable, and line dryable, which adds to the environmental sensitivity/sustainability, as dry cleaning is not automatically required.

Order and buy online

The Afficionados web site has a fully interactive pattern sampler and trade customers are welcome to register, enabling them to generate orders and sample requests online, with payment going through a secure server. Order lead times vary.

All on-line customers will see the retail price in Australian dollars including GST. Retailers and trade customers are welcome to register, and once registered and approved, will be able to view trade or wholesale pricing.

26-Apr-2007

source : www.infolink.com.au

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