Project
Kader
Art direction
Photography
Product range
2025
The brief
Kader sells limited colour prints by 24 artists from a workshop in Borgerhout, Antwerp, each in an edition of 50 or 100, shipped rolled to most of Europe. In 2024 it started offering frames, and almost nobody bought one: the shop showed every print as a flat file on a grey page, with the frame as a black square beside it. Kader wanted to sell more prints framed, and wanted the photographs to explain why without a paragraph of copy.
The idea
We suggested Kader paint its frames, each in one of the colours of the print it holds, so the frame finishes the picture instead of fencing it in. Then we photographed every print on a wall painted in its strongest contrasting colour, in hard afternoon sun, so a buyer sees the print, the frame and what the pair would do to a room in one look.
Frames in the print’s own colours
Every print is offered in frames painted in two or three of its own colours, mixed by Kader’s framer from the artist’s files. Each is shot on a wall in the colour that pushes it hardest: Noon in red on cobalt, Stairs in yellow on pink.
Leaning, not hanging
A third of Kader’s buyers rent, and many of them can’t drill. So every print is also photographed leaning: on a floor, on a ledge, on a windowsill.
Shipping
Prints still travel rolled in kraft tubes closed with a red band, framed ones flat in a box. Each tube holds a colour card with the frame colours offered for that print, so a buyer can order the frame later.
Details
Frames are solid ash, painted by hand with water-based paint and left with the brush showing. Prints are made on 310 gsm cotton paper, which keeps its texture in raking light.
What changed
The painted frames and the new photographs launched together in October 2025. The walls stay painted in the workshop, so a new edition is shot the week it arrives, and two of Kader’s artists now choose their frame colours while they’re still drawing.
Credits
Okapi: Beatriz Correia (art director), Ana Pires (set and colour), João Antunes (product pages)
Kader: Wout Peeters (founder), Lotte Janssens (framing)
With: photography by Rafael Costa in Antwerp; frames made and painted by Kader in Borgerhout
