http://www.sightunseen.com Tue, 09 Mar 2010 01:48:41 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 en hourly 1 sightunseen/Qwluhttp://feedburner.google.com http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/sightunseen/Qwlu/~3/0QkNc5eV35E/ http://www.sightunseen.com/confetti-system-decoration-designers/#comments Mon, 08 Mar 2010 19:18:56 +0000 Monica Khemsurov http://www.sightunseen.com/?p=3266 <p style="width:530px;"><a href="http://www.sightunseen.com/confetti-system-decoration-designers/"><img src="http://www.sightunseen.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/CS_portrait5-530x397.jpg" width="530" align="left" style="margin:0 0 10px 0;"/></a><br />Between the two of them, Julie Ho and Nicholas Andersen had designed clothing, jewelry, movie sets, music videos, and Martha Stewart shoots, plus dabbled in painting, drawing, pattern-making, sewing, and crocheting before teaming up creatively in 2008. Ho had even been a studio assistant for Tom Sachs, making foam Hello Kittys with a medical scalpel (and slicing open her hands almost weekly in the process). So it took a particular kind of alchemy for the pair to decide that — out of all their talents and interests — they would devote their days to making paper party decorations, the kind you'd expect to find in a dollar store.</p><p style="width:530px; text-align:right; font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://www.sightunseen.com/confetti-system-decoration-designers/">Read More...</a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/sightunseen/Qwlu/~4/0QkNc5eV35E" height="1" width="1"/> http://www.sightunseen.com/confetti-system-decoration-designers/feed/ 0 http://www.sightunseen.com/confetti-system-decoration-designers/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/sightunseen/Qwlu/~3/gmrpz2kdk24/ http://www.sightunseen.com/fair-folks-a-goat/#comments Fri, 05 Mar 2010 19:35:40 +0000 Jill Singer http://www.sightunseen.com/?p=3202 <p style="width:530px;"><a href="http://www.sightunseen.com/fair-folks-a-goat/"><img src="http://www.sightunseen.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/nora-rabins1-530x384.jpg" width="530" align="left" style="margin:0 0 10px 0;"/></a><br />At Fair Folks &#038; a Goat, a new retail gallery and tea salon hybrid on New York’s Upper East Side, everything inside the gracious late 19th-century studio apartment is for sale. Well, almost everything — a small candy dish that reads “When I count my blessings, I count you twice” was a gift from co-owner Anthony Mazzei’s mother and “it’s a million dollars,” he jokes, while the vintage paperbacks lining a wall of shelves constitute an actual lending library. Here, the props and merch blend into a seamless backdrop for a new kind of social gathering. “We wanted to create a space for young people to have a home away from home, where instead of alcohol and loud music it would be more like a physical incarnation of a magazine, with design, art, fashion, and culture,” says Mazzei.</p><p style="width:530px; text-align:right; font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://www.sightunseen.com/fair-folks-a-goat/">Read More...</a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/sightunseen/Qwlu/~4/gmrpz2kdk24" height="1" width="1"/> http://www.sightunseen.com/fair-folks-a-goat/feed/ 0 http://www.sightunseen.com/fair-folks-a-goat/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/sightunseen/Qwlu/~3/Rreyx6dJGZ8/ http://www.sightunseen.com/rodrigo-almeida-furniture-designer/#comments Wed, 03 Mar 2010 22:02:27 +0000 Monica Khemsurov http://www.sightunseen.com/?p=3157 <p style="width:530px;"><a href="http://www.sightunseen.com/rodrigo-almeida-furniture-designer/"><img src="http://www.sightunseen.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/concretaopener-530x398.jpg" width="530" align="left" style="margin:0 0 10px 0;"/></a><br />To any reader who went to design school and is, years later, still making student loan payments month after month, you might want to close your eyes for this one: Rodrigo Almeida — the 34-year-old Brazilian furniture designer who's pals with the Campana brothers, has been featured in Wallpaper, and has made pieces for top galleries like Contrasts and FAT — didn't go to university, not even as an undergrad. What you're looking at here is raw talent, and a career that began when Almeida simply picked up the Brazilian magazine Arc Design six years ago and thought, "I want to do that."</p><p style="width:530px; text-align:right; font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://www.sightunseen.com/rodrigo-almeida-furniture-designer/">Read More...</a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/sightunseen/Qwlu/~4/Rreyx6dJGZ8" height="1" width="1"/> http://www.sightunseen.com/rodrigo-almeida-furniture-designer/feed/ 0 http://www.sightunseen.com/rodrigo-almeida-furniture-designer/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/sightunseen/Qwlu/~3/WXHFmu4moJo/ http://www.sightunseen.com/welcome-to-vorland-by-reed-young/#comments Mon, 01 Mar 2010 19:14:28 +0000 Jill Singer http://www.sightunseen.com/?p=3107 <p style="width:530px;"><a href="http://www.sightunseen.com/welcome-to-vorland-by-reed-young/"><img src="http://www.sightunseen.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/reed-young-vorland3-530x353.jpg" width="530" align="left" style="margin:0 0 10px 0;"/></a><br />Reed Young’s photography career has taken him from a sumo wrestler’s home in Tokyo to the sugarcane fields of the Dominican Republic to the halls of Fabrica, the Benetton-owned creative lab for young talent in Treviso, Italy. But he probably wouldn’t have gotten to any of those places if he hadn’t faked his way into art school. At 17 and a middling student at a Minneapolis senior high, Young, now 27, borrowed a photography portfolio from a friend and was accepted into his hometown’s prestigious Perpich Center for Arts Education on its merits. “When I arrived, I think they found it a bit strange that I didn’t know the difference between an aperture and a shutter speed,” he says.</p><p style="width:530px; text-align:right; font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://www.sightunseen.com/welcome-to-vorland-by-reed-young/">Read More...</a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/sightunseen/Qwlu/~4/WXHFmu4moJo" height="1" width="1"/> http://www.sightunseen.com/welcome-to-vorland-by-reed-young/feed/ 0 http://www.sightunseen.com/welcome-to-vorland-by-reed-young/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/sightunseen/Qwlu/~3/BWuSW3GSw-0/ http://www.sightunseen.com/jp-williams/#comments Fri, 26 Feb 2010 16:55:59 +0000 Monica Khemsurov http://www.sightunseen.com/?p=3023 <p style="width:530px;"><a href="http://www.sightunseen.com/jp-williams/"><img src="http://www.sightunseen.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/IMG_2944_final-530x353.jpg" width="530" align="left" style="margin:0 0 10px 0;"/></a><br />Someone like JP Williams has enjoyed plenty of validating moments in his 20-year career as a graphic designer: Getting to study under one of his design heros, Paul Rand, at Yale; winning more than 100 awards for projects like his kraft-paper tea packages for Takashimaya; discovering that his collection of baseball cards from 1909 was worth enough to buy his wife and business partner Allison an engagement ring. All well and good, however none of it really compared, he admits, to the feeling of being validated by Martha Stewart.</p><p style="width:530px; text-align:right; font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://www.sightunseen.com/jp-williams/">Read More...</a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/sightunseen/Qwlu/~4/BWuSW3GSw-0" height="1" width="1"/> http://www.sightunseen.com/jp-williams/feed/ 0 http://www.sightunseen.com/jp-williams/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/sightunseen/Qwlu/~3/x-sCQOTBNbE/ http://www.sightunseen.com/scholten-baijings-product-designers/#comments Wed, 24 Feb 2010 16:58:19 +0000 Jill Singer http://www.sightunseen.com/?p=2352 <p style="width:530px;"><a href="http://www.sightunseen.com/scholten-baijings-product-designers/"><img src="http://www.sightunseen.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/SB_modelsN-530x397.jpg" width="530" align="left" style="margin:0 0 10px 0;"/></a><br />The story of Stefan Scholten and Carole Baijings began, like many Dutch stories do, in a church. In the late ’90s, Baijings was working for an agency whose headquarters were located inside one of the country’s many abandoned houses of worship. Scholten, a graduate of the Design Academy Eindhoven, had a burgeoning design practice nearby. Scholten was asked to design a small bar for the agency’s office, and “the rest is history,” says Baijings.</p><p style="width:530px; text-align:right; font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://www.sightunseen.com/scholten-baijings-product-designers/">Read More...</a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/sightunseen/Qwlu/~4/x-sCQOTBNbE" height="1" width="1"/> http://www.sightunseen.com/scholten-baijings-product-designers/feed/ 0 http://www.sightunseen.com/scholten-baijings-product-designers/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/sightunseen/Qwlu/~3/vBw4zqCWVJs/ http://www.sightunseen.com/justine-reyes-photographer/#comments Tue, 23 Feb 2010 20:12:41 +0000 Monica Khemsurov http://www.sightunseen.com/?p=2960 <p style="width:530px;"><a href="http://www.sightunseen.com/justine-reyes-photographer/"><img src="http://www.sightunseen.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/09-530x422.jpg" width="530" align="left" style="margin:0 0 10px 0;"/></a><br />Sighted today on <em>The Morning News</em>: Taking inspiration from Dutch vanitas paintings, photographer Justine Reyes’s latest series “Vanitas” creates still lifes from contemporary objects, getting the composition, textures, and colors so precisely “right,” it’s a wonder we’re not seeing some 17th-century Flemish take on contemporary life.</p><p style="width:530px; text-align:right; font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://www.sightunseen.com/justine-reyes-photographer/">Read More...</a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/sightunseen/Qwlu/~4/vBw4zqCWVJs" height="1" width="1"/> http://www.sightunseen.com/justine-reyes-photographer/feed/ 0 http://www.sightunseen.com/justine-reyes-photographer/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/sightunseen/Qwlu/~3/E5lXLGWamq0/ http://www.sightunseen.com/the-book-club-by-shai-akram-and-andrew-haythornthwaite/#comments Mon, 22 Feb 2010 14:30:19 +0000 Tim Parsons http://www.sightunseen.com/?p=2911 <p style="width:530px;"><a href="http://www.sightunseen.com/the-book-club-by-shai-akram-and-andrew-haythornthwaite/"><img src="http://www.sightunseen.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/7-Ping-Pong-530x353.jpg" width="530" align="left" style="margin:0 0 10px 0;"/></a><br />As if they didn’t have enough to cry about, London’s young bankers lost a favorite watering hole this year — the seminal Shoreditch nightclub Home, which had lost most of its hipster cachet since it opened in 1997. When local designers Andrew Haythornthwaite and Shai Akram were invited to help transform the space into The Book Club — where the activities include not just eating, drinking, and dancing but also more cerebral pursuits like poetry, storytelling, and workshops — it was a delicate transition. “We didn’t want it to feel like a brand-new bar,” says Haythornthwaite. “We wanted it to be one of those places that seems like it's always been there but you just haven't noticed it.”</p><p style="width:530px; text-align:right; font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://www.sightunseen.com/the-book-club-by-shai-akram-and-andrew-haythornthwaite/">Read More...</a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/sightunseen/Qwlu/~4/E5lXLGWamq0" height="1" width="1"/> http://www.sightunseen.com/the-book-club-by-shai-akram-and-andrew-haythornthwaite/feed/ 0 http://www.sightunseen.com/the-book-club-by-shai-akram-and-andrew-haythornthwaite/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/sightunseen/Qwlu/~3/s5aXWVJDpS0/ http://www.sightunseen.com/kimm-whiskie-photographer/#comments Fri, 19 Feb 2010 11:47:53 +0000 Jill Singer http://www.sightunseen.com/?p=2859 <p style="width:530px;"><a href="http://www.sightunseen.com/kimm-whiskie-photographer/"><img src="http://www.sightunseen.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/1-530x384.jpg" width="530" align="left" style="margin:0 0 10px 0;"/></a><br />There’s something charmingly mysterious about the 24-year-old Lithuanian photographer Kimm Whiskie. The name alone sounds like an alias (turns out the second half actually is — Whiskie did time in a rock-and-roll band) and its gender is ambiguous (an embarrassed email straightens this out). A request for an interview is politely downgraded to a Skype chat; when a portrait arrives, it’s a grainy Lomo shot of the photographer lying face down on the pavement.</p><p style="width:530px; text-align:right; font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://www.sightunseen.com/kimm-whiskie-photographer/">Read More...</a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/sightunseen/Qwlu/~4/s5aXWVJDpS0" height="1" width="1"/> http://www.sightunseen.com/kimm-whiskie-photographer/feed/ 0 http://www.sightunseen.com/kimm-whiskie-photographer/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/sightunseen/Qwlu/~3/YMEEiHTEOOA/ http://www.sightunseen.com/urban-daily-life-by-reineke-otten/#comments Wed, 17 Feb 2010 00:35:12 +0000 Monica Khemsurov http://www.sightunseen.com/?p=2771 <p style="width:530px;"><a href="http://www.sightunseen.com/urban-daily-life-by-reineke-otten/"><img src="http://www.sightunseen.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/RO_fur-530x352.jpg" width="530" align="left" style="margin:0 0 10px 0;"/></a><br />When Reineke Otten visits a new city, it feels a bit like looking at Richard Scarry’s children’s books, their pages crammed with the minutiae of daily life. As a “streetologist,” her job is to scrutinize the often mundane details of places like Paris or Dubai, photographing dozens of window shades, doorbells, and flea market stalls until she’s put together a revealing portrait of the local culture. Though most of Otten’s clients pay her for her sleuthing skills, her new website Urban Daily Life offers the rest of us a glimpse into what it's like to see the world through a magnifying glass.</p><p style="width:530px; text-align:right; font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://www.sightunseen.com/urban-daily-life-by-reineke-otten/">Read More...</a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/sightunseen/Qwlu/~4/YMEEiHTEOOA" height="1" width="1"/> http://www.sightunseen.com/urban-daily-life-by-reineke-otten/feed/ 0 http://www.sightunseen.com/urban-daily-life-by-reineke-otten/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/sightunseen/Qwlu/~3/arYnfj-BPC0/ http://www.sightunseen.com/less-and-more-the-design-ethos-of-dieter-rams/#comments Fri, 12 Feb 2010 15:17:25 +0000 Jill Singer http://www.sightunseen.com/?p=2726 <p style="width:530px;"><a href="http://www.sightunseen.com/less-and-more-the-design-ethos-of-dieter-rams/"><img src="http://www.sightunseen.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/product-brochure1-530x371.jpg" width="530" align="left" style="margin:0 0 10px 0;"/></a><br />The products featured in <em>Less and More: The Design Ethos of Dieter Rams</em> will be familiar to any Rams disciple, but what struck us most about the book was a section devoted to Braun’s beautifully understated communication design and to that department’s fearless leader, Wolfgang Schmittel. He ran a tight ship — an in-house manual went out to each member of the design team with instructions on how to appropriately and inappropriately market the Braun product line — but as a result, the Braun image “differed greatly from the existing design forms of other manufacturers at the time, due to its clarity."</p><p style="width:530px; text-align:right; font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://www.sightunseen.com/less-and-more-the-design-ethos-of-dieter-rams/">Read More...</a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/sightunseen/Qwlu/~4/arYnfj-BPC0" height="1" width="1"/> http://www.sightunseen.com/less-and-more-the-design-ethos-of-dieter-rams/feed/ 0 http://www.sightunseen.com/less-and-more-the-design-ethos-of-dieter-rams/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/sightunseen/Qwlu/~3/m7fou6z8cAI/ http://www.sightunseen.com/esther-stocker-artist/#comments Tue, 09 Feb 2010 19:41:24 +0000 Monica Khemsurov http://www.sightunseen.com/?p=2676 <p style="width:530px;"><a href="http://www.sightunseen.com/esther-stocker-artist/"><img src="http://www.sightunseen.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/4.Installation-CCNOA.2008-530x397.jpg" width="530" align="left" style="margin:0 0 10px 0;"/></a><br />It's funny to hear Esther Stocker talk about reading between the lines. The Vienna-based painter is known for manipulating spatial geometry using the framework of the grid — both on canvas and in her trippy 3-D installations — until the mind starts making linear connections that aren't really there, trying to find order in the optically illusive chaos. But that's not what Stocker's referring to. She's talking about Charles Schultz's <I>Peanuts</I>.</p><p style="width:530px; text-align:right; font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://www.sightunseen.com/esther-stocker-artist/">Read More...</a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/sightunseen/Qwlu/~4/m7fou6z8cAI" height="1" width="1"/> http://www.sightunseen.com/esther-stocker-artist/feed/ 0 http://www.sightunseen.com/esther-stocker-artist/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/sightunseen/Qwlu/~3/aitZ99vPgDs/ http://www.sightunseen.com/raw-color/#comments Mon, 08 Feb 2010 18:26:55 +0000 Jill Singer http://www.sightunseen.com/?p=2380 <p style="width:530px;"><a href="http://www.sightunseen.com/raw-color/"><img src="http://www.sightunseen.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/RC_greens.jpg" width="530" align="left" style="margin:0 0 10px 0;"/></a><br />It’s not unusual for a designer to become synonymous with a single project. Think of Konstantin Grcic’s galactic-looking Chair_One, or Stefan Sagmeister’s AIGA poster carved into his flesh with an X-Acto knife. For Christoph Brach and Daniera ter Haar, it’s more like eponymous: A project called Raw Color gave their studio its name (though it's since become known as 100% SAP so as to avoid confusion) and it has consumed them by varying degrees since they graduated from the Design Academy Eindhoven in 2007.</p><p style="width:530px; text-align:right; font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://www.sightunseen.com/raw-color/">Read More...</a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/sightunseen/Qwlu/~4/aitZ99vPgDs" height="1" width="1"/> http://www.sightunseen.com/raw-color/feed/ 0 http://www.sightunseen.com/raw-color/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/sightunseen/Qwlu/~3/H6x7GeCrbVA/ http://www.sightunseen.com/39-22-s-wallpaper-designers/#comments Fri, 05 Feb 2010 18:35:56 +0000 Shonquis Moreno http://www.sightunseen.com/?p=2597 <p style="width:530px;"><a href="http://www.sightunseen.com/39-22-s-wallpaper-designers/"><img src="http://www.sightunseen.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/P_circlesPLACEHOLDER-530x342.jpg" width="530" align="left" style="margin:0 0 10px 0;"/></a><br />Long ago, wallpaper was reserved for royalty — a handcrafted thing made with high artistry and hung with equally high aspirations. But since then, with a few very recent notable exceptions, it's become the ambitionless cop-out of modern-day interior design, a failure blamed on wimpy printing techniques but which probably has to do more with a lack of imagination. Among those getting it right is the Athens-based design collective 39.22., which draws both its name and its stable of talent from its own geographical coordinates.</p><p style="width:530px; text-align:right; font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://www.sightunseen.com/39-22-s-wallpaper-designers/">Read More...</a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/sightunseen/Qwlu/~4/H6x7GeCrbVA" height="1" width="1"/> http://www.sightunseen.com/39-22-s-wallpaper-designers/feed/ 0 http://www.sightunseen.com/39-22-s-wallpaper-designers/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/sightunseen/Qwlu/~3/0zr8Sv3lqB8/ http://www.sightunseen.com/alexandra-verschueren-fashion-designer/#comments Wed, 03 Feb 2010 16:09:51 +0000 Jill Singer http://www.sightunseen.com/?p=2518 <p style="width:530px;"><a href="http://www.sightunseen.com/alexandra-verschueren-fashion-designer/"><img src="http://www.sightunseen.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/AV_lookbooklead-530x437.jpg" width="530" align="left" style="margin:0 0 10px 0;"/></a><br />At 22, Alexandra Verschueren has interned for Preen, Proenza Schouler, and Derek Lam. She’s been honored by a jury that included former Rochas creative director Olivier Theyskens and the International Herald Tribune’s fashion critic Suzy Menkes. And in the last six months, her graduate collection Medium has been fêted by Wallpaper magazine and the Mode Museum in her hometown of Antwerp. So why, when she applied to that city’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts straight out of high school, did no one expect she’d get in?</p><p style="width:530px; text-align:right; font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://www.sightunseen.com/alexandra-verschueren-fashion-designer/">Read More...</a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/sightunseen/Qwlu/~4/0zr8Sv3lqB8" height="1" width="1"/> http://www.sightunseen.com/alexandra-verschueren-fashion-designer/feed/ 0 http://www.sightunseen.com/alexandra-verschueren-fashion-designer/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/sightunseen/Qwlu/~3/oBbh4OsKwGQ/ http://www.sightunseen.com/lineaus-athletic-company/#comments Mon, 01 Feb 2010 13:09:04 +0000 Monica Khemsurov http://www.sightunseen.com/?p=2420 <p style="width:530px;"><a href="http://www.sightunseen.com/lineaus-athletic-company/"><img src="http://www.sightunseen.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/LA_PORTRAIT1-530x404.jpg" width="530" align="left" style="margin:0 0 10px 0;"/></a><br />Lineaus Hooper Lorette makes $650 leather medicine balls in a workshop just outside the desert art mecca of Marfa, Texas. He sells the balls to college athletic departments and "very rich men," many of whom admire them for their old-school charm. (Mick Jagger once bought four.) But Lorette isn't a hipster, nor is he an artist.</p><p style="width:530px; text-align:right; font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://www.sightunseen.com/lineaus-athletic-company/">Read More...</a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/sightunseen/Qwlu/~4/oBbh4OsKwGQ" height="1" width="1"/> http://www.sightunseen.com/lineaus-athletic-company/feed/ 0 http://www.sightunseen.com/lineaus-athletic-company/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/sightunseen/Qwlu/~3/-H8Uvho_-nE/ http://www.sightunseen.com/sarah-illenberger-stylist-and-3-d-illustrator/#comments Fri, 29 Jan 2010 11:20:10 +0000 Monica Khemsurov http://www.sightunseen.com/?p=2329 <p style="width:530px;"><a href="http://www.sightunseen.com/sarah-illenberger-stylist-and-3-d-illustrator/"><img src="http://www.sightunseen.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/SI_wood-530x422.jpg" width="530" align="left" style="margin:0 0 10px 0;"/></a><br />When Sarah Illenberger picks up the phone, the first thing she does is apologize: There's a loud, repetitive popping noise going off in the background of her Berlin studio, which turns out to be the firing of a staple gun. She doesn't say what her assistants are constructing with the staples, but it's clear they'll be built up by the thousands onto a substrate until their glinting mass reveals some kind of representational image — a skyscraper, maybe, or a ball of tinfoil. Almost all of Illenberger's work involves using handicraft to manipulate one thing into looking like something else entirely.</p><p style="width:530px; text-align:right; font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://www.sightunseen.com/sarah-illenberger-stylist-and-3-d-illustrator/">Read More...</a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/sightunseen/Qwlu/~4/-H8Uvho_-nE" height="1" width="1"/> http://www.sightunseen.com/sarah-illenberger-stylist-and-3-d-illustrator/feed/ 0 http://www.sightunseen.com/sarah-illenberger-stylist-and-3-d-illustrator/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/sightunseen/Qwlu/~3/sQBFLdh3eJY/ http://www.sightunseen.com/ji-lee-creative-director-at-googles-creative-lab/#comments Wed, 27 Jan 2010 12:46:33 +0000 Johanna Lenander http://www.sightunseen.com/?p=2286 <p style="width:530px;"><a href="http://www.sightunseen.com/ji-lee-creative-director-at-googles-creative-lab/"><img src="http://www.sightunseen.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/toys-and-monkey-530x353.jpg" width="530" align="left" style="margin:0 0 10px 0;"/></a><br />Ji Lee is an artist, a graphic designer, an illustrator, a teacher, and a full-time creative director at Google’s advertising unit The Creative Lab, but he’s probably best known as “the guy with the bubbles.” In 2002, bored by an ad gig, the Korean-born, São Paulo–bred designer launched a public art intervention on the city of New York, slapping blank cartoon speech bubbles next to the actors and models in ads and movie posters around town and waiting for passersby to fill them in.</p><p style="width:530px; text-align:right; font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://www.sightunseen.com/ji-lee-creative-director-at-googles-creative-lab/">Read More...</a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/sightunseen/Qwlu/~4/sQBFLdh3eJY" height="1" width="1"/> http://www.sightunseen.com/ji-lee-creative-director-at-googles-creative-lab/feed/ 0 http://www.sightunseen.com/ji-lee-creative-director-at-googles-creative-lab/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/sightunseen/Qwlu/~3/FISkIUgegAw/ http://www.sightunseen.com/alejandro-chavetta-art-director-and-collage-artist/#comments Mon, 25 Jan 2010 15:58:20 +0000 Jill Singer http://www.sightunseen.com/?p=2227 <p style="width:530px;"><a href="http://www.sightunseen.com/alejandro-chavetta-art-director-and-collage-artist/"><img src="http://www.sightunseen.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/new-530x529.jpg" width="530" align="left" style="margin:0 0 10px 0;"/></a><br />For San Francisco graphic designer Alejandro Chavetta, life has in many ways been a series of revisions. Fifteen years ago, he traded his native Argentinean wine country for the hills of San Francisco, and in college, after a false start in journalism, he quickly switched to graphic design. Three years ago he took a post as art director of <I>San Francisco</I> magazine, but he spends his down time obsessively adding to a sprawling, moody archive of Moholy-Nagy–like <a href="http://cargocollective.com/chavetta" target="_Blank">paper collages</A>. “My job is multiple undos all day in InDesign and Photoshop,” Chavetta says. “I like to do something where I can’t go back.”</p><p style="width:530px; text-align:right; font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://www.sightunseen.com/alejandro-chavetta-art-director-and-collage-artist/">Read More...</a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/sightunseen/Qwlu/~4/FISkIUgegAw" height="1" width="1"/> http://www.sightunseen.com/alejandro-chavetta-art-director-and-collage-artist/feed/ 0 http://www.sightunseen.com/alejandro-chavetta-art-director-and-collage-artist/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/sightunseen/Qwlu/~3/qD-l7Hyru6g/ http://www.sightunseen.com/letter-to-jane/#comments Fri, 22 Jan 2010 14:51:37 +0000 Jill Singer http://www.sightunseen.com/?p=2192 <p style="width:530px;"><a href="http://www.sightunseen.com/letter-to-jane/"><img src="http://www.sightunseen.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/ltj4-530x530.jpg" width="530" align="left" style="margin:0 0 10px 0;"/></a><br />And just like that, it’s 1991 all over again: The economy is down, unemployment is up, and 20-somethings in the Pacific Northwest, facing diminished postgraduate prospects, are pouring their energy into small, independent ’zines. We were recently introduced to a new one out of Portland, Oregon, called <I>Letter to Jane</I>. With interviews and features on the likes of Passion Pit, Yoko Ono, and Hedi Slimane, it fits the ‘zine mold to some extent, but it’s elevated by the singular vision of Timothy Paul Moore, the 25-year-old photographer who devised and designed the project and whose ethereal images comprise more than two-thirds of the 180-page book.</p><p style="width:530px; text-align:right; font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://www.sightunseen.com/letter-to-jane/">Read More...</a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/sightunseen/Qwlu/~4/qD-l7Hyru6g" height="1" width="1"/> http://www.sightunseen.com/letter-to-jane/feed/ 0 http://www.sightunseen.com/letter-to-jane/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/sightunseen/Qwlu/~3/994XRcDZOlE/ http://www.sightunseen.com/neuland-the-future-of-german-graphic-design/#comments Wed, 20 Jan 2010 15:52:12 +0000 Monica Khemsurov http://www.sightunseen.com/?p=2142 <p style="width:530px;"><a href="http://www.sightunseen.com/neuland-the-future-of-german-graphic-design/"><img src="http://www.sightunseen.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/TISSOT3_W_packaging-530x353.jpg" width="530" align="left" style="margin:0 0 10px 0;"/></a><br />The editors of Neuland, a recent compendium of up-and-coming German graphic designers, struggled with all the usual big, philosophical questions while putting their book together: What is German design? What is German? Who cares? If they were Ellen Lupton or Steven Heller, they might have spent pages upon pages ruminating on these issues. Instead, they did what any editors who are actually designers by trade might do — they asked their 51 subjects for the answers.</p><p style="width:530px; text-align:right; font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://www.sightunseen.com/neuland-the-future-of-german-graphic-design/">Read More...</a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/sightunseen/Qwlu/~4/994XRcDZOlE" height="1" width="1"/> http://www.sightunseen.com/neuland-the-future-of-german-graphic-design/feed/ 0 http://www.sightunseen.com/neuland-the-future-of-german-graphic-design/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/sightunseen/Qwlu/~3/h4qM-8TOaqE/ http://www.sightunseen.com/the-rosshaar-mattress-by-daniel-heer/#comments Fri, 15 Jan 2010 17:12:24 +0000 Monica Khemsurov http://www.sightunseen.com/?p=2104 <p style="width:530px;"><a href="http://www.sightunseen.com/the-rosshaar-mattress-by-daniel-heer/"><img src="http://www.sightunseen.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/DH_introstudio-530x382.jpg" width="530" align="left" style="margin:0 0 10px 0;"/></a><br />From birth, Daniel Heer was groomed to take over his family's leather- and mattress-making business. He learned the necessary skills early on, honing them through an adolescence spent at the Heer workshop in Lucerne, Switzerland, watching his father and grandfather work. His post-secondary education focused on one thing and one thing only: how to ply his trade. And then when he moved to Berlin at age 20, he left it all behind.</p><p style="width:530px; text-align:right; font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://www.sightunseen.com/the-rosshaar-mattress-by-daniel-heer/">Read More...</a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/sightunseen/Qwlu/~4/h4qM-8TOaqE" height="1" width="1"/> http://www.sightunseen.com/the-rosshaar-mattress-by-daniel-heer/feed/ 0 http://www.sightunseen.com/the-rosshaar-mattress-by-daniel-heer/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/sightunseen/Qwlu/~3/sWX0r1-i2so/ http://www.sightunseen.com/julien-carretero-product-designer/#comments Wed, 13 Jan 2010 14:17:59 +0000 Monica Khemsurov http://www.sightunseen.com/?p=2072 <p style="width:530px;"><a href="http://www.sightunseen.com/julien-carretero-product-designer/"><img src="http://www.sightunseen.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/JC_vases-530x396.jpg" width="530" align="left" style="margin:0 0 10px 0;"/></a><br />Julien Carretero's work invites metaphor the way cheese fries beg to be eaten — make a bench that's perfectly shaped in front and slowly morphs into chaos in back, and suddenly it could be about anything: humans' ultimate lack of control over the universe, politics, the pressure to succeed, mullets. For the Paris-born, Eindhoven-based designer, though, it's mostly just about one thing.</p><p style="width:530px; text-align:right; font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://www.sightunseen.com/julien-carretero-product-designer/">Read More...</a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/sightunseen/Qwlu/~4/sWX0r1-i2so" height="1" width="1"/> http://www.sightunseen.com/julien-carretero-product-designer/feed/ 0 http://www.sightunseen.com/julien-carretero-product-designer/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/sightunseen/Qwlu/~3/P1RYfxPoOk8/ http://www.sightunseen.com/the-linz-stool-by-thomas-feichtner/#comments Mon, 11 Jan 2010 13:35:59 +0000 Shonquis Moreno http://www.sightunseen.com/?p=2031 <p style="width:530px;"><a href="http://www.sightunseen.com/the-linz-stool-by-thomas-feichtner/"><img src="http://www.sightunseen.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/Linz_mainimage-530x483.jpg" width="530" align="left" style="margin:0 0 10px 0;"/></a><br />You don’t have to stare at Thomas Feichtner’s work for very long to detect a theme — facets and folds everywhere, on desk lamps, chairs, teapots, even a set of futuristic cutlery. Rather than imparting severity, though, the lines are a more artful alternative to minimalism: “I think things should work properly,” says the Austrian designer, “but do they really need to look like it?”</p><p style="width:530px; text-align:right; font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://www.sightunseen.com/the-linz-stool-by-thomas-feichtner/">Read More...</a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/sightunseen/Qwlu/~4/P1RYfxPoOk8" height="1" width="1"/> http://www.sightunseen.com/the-linz-stool-by-thomas-feichtner/feed/ 0 http://www.sightunseen.com/the-linz-stool-by-thomas-feichtner/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/sightunseen/Qwlu/~3/toHpGW0UvJc/ http://www.sightunseen.com/atelier-nl-product-designers/#comments Fri, 08 Jan 2010 13:00:55 +0000 Jill Singer http://www.sightunseen.com/?p=1886 <p style="width:530px;"><a href="http://www.sightunseen.com/atelier-nl-product-designers/"><img src="http://www.sightunseen.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/object-1-530x353.jpg" width="530" align="left" style="margin:0 0 10px 0;"/></a><br />Atelier NL’s Nadine Sterk and Lonny van Ryswyck keep a studio in the airy loft of a ’70s-style church in Eindhoven. They live there, too, but you wouldn’t exactly say that’s where they work. More often than not, the designers can be found doing fieldwork, whether that means scouring the area’s secondhand shops for mechanical knickknacks to inspire their more analog designs — like van Ryswyck’s hand-cranked radio — or digging up clay in the Noordoostpolder, an area of reclaimed farmland north of Amsterdam that until the 1940s was submerged under a shallow inlet of the North Sea.</p><p style="width:530px; text-align:right; font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://www.sightunseen.com/atelier-nl-product-designers/">Read More...</a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/sightunseen/Qwlu/~4/toHpGW0UvJc" height="1" width="1"/> http://www.sightunseen.com/atelier-nl-product-designers/feed/ 0 http://www.sightunseen.com/atelier-nl-product-designers/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/sightunseen/Qwlu/~3/oebkN6gQGsE/ http://www.sightunseen.com/peter-buchanan-smith-graphic-designer-and-axe-maker/#comments Wed, 06 Jan 2010 13:00:05 +0000 Jill Singer http://www.sightunseen.com/?p=1866 <p style="width:530px;"><a href="http://www.sightunseen.com/peter-buchanan-smith-graphic-designer-and-axe-maker/"><img src="http://www.sightunseen.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/wall_o_axes-530x397.jpg" width="530" align="left" style="margin:0 0 10px 0;"/></a><br />Ah, the impotence of the urban dweller. Ever since the Best Made Company axe debuted this spring, you’d be hard-pressed to find a New Yorker who isn’t dying to snap open that wooden case and heave the Tennessee hickory–handled thing at… well, what, exactly? “At first I thought a lot of New Yorkers would buy them,” says Peter Buchanan-Smith, the New York–based graphic designer who founded the company along with his childhood pal Graeme Cameron. But it turns out the best audience for an axe — even one with a handle saturated in gorgeous shades of spray paint — is a person who actually might use an axe. </p><p style="width:530px; text-align:right; font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://www.sightunseen.com/peter-buchanan-smith-graphic-designer-and-axe-maker/">Read More...</a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/sightunseen/Qwlu/~4/oebkN6gQGsE" height="1" width="1"/> http://www.sightunseen.com/peter-buchanan-smith-graphic-designer-and-axe-maker/feed/ 0 http://www.sightunseen.com/peter-buchanan-smith-graphic-designer-and-axe-maker/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/sightunseen/Qwlu/~3/LqcMEed1V2g/ http://www.sightunseen.com/kiosks-portugal-collection/#comments Mon, 04 Jan 2010 13:00:25 +0000 Jill Singer http://www.sightunseen.com/?p=1928 <p style="width:530px;"><a href="http://www.sightunseen.com/kiosks-portugal-collection/"><img src="http://www.sightunseen.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/toilet-paper-530x397.jpg" width="530" align="left" style="margin:0 0 10px 0;"/></a><br />It’s hard to put a finger on just how the New York store Kiosk — which peddles quirky housewares from around the world, one country at a time — vaulted from cherished destination of a few to the kind of place Jasper Morrison, London's best-known everyday-object apologist, feels obliged to check out when he’s rolling through town. But while the 4-year-old Soho shop has begun to shed its air of secrecy, it has never lost its charm. Climbing a set of graffiti-covered stairs to its second-floor entrance, you never know what you’re going to find at the top.</p><p style="width:530px; text-align:right; font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://www.sightunseen.com/kiosks-portugal-collection/">Read More...</a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/sightunseen/Qwlu/~4/LqcMEed1V2g" height="1" width="1"/> http://www.sightunseen.com/kiosks-portugal-collection/feed/ 0 http://www.sightunseen.com/kiosks-portugal-collection/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/sightunseen/Qwlu/~3/IaGjFf5JFH4/ http://www.sightunseen.com/alpha60-clothing-designers/#comments Wed, 23 Dec 2009 19:07:50 +0000 Monica Khemsurov http://www.sightunseen.com/?p=1816 <p style="width:530px;"><a href="http://www.sightunseen.com/alpha60-clothing-designers/"><img src="http://www.sightunseen.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/ALPH_portraitLEDE-530x374.jpg" width="530" align="left" style="margin:0 0 10px 0;"/></a><br />When you're a graphic designer and an aircraft engineer with zero fashion training, and yet you find yourself becoming the go-to clothing line of Melbourne — worn by the likes of Patti Smith, LCD Soundsystem, and Jamie Oliver — you learn to get really good at improvising. And trusting your instincts. So it goes for Alex and Georgie Cleary, the brother-and-sister duo behind Alpha60, who base its designs not on fashion trends but on whatever random pop-culture reference they happen to be into at any given moment.</p><p style="width:530px; text-align:right; font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://www.sightunseen.com/alpha60-clothing-designers/">Read More...</a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/sightunseen/Qwlu/~4/IaGjFf5JFH4" height="1" width="1"/> http://www.sightunseen.com/alpha60-clothing-designers/feed/ 0 http://www.sightunseen.com/alpha60-clothing-designers/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/sightunseen/Qwlu/~3/B2IcTM2yVkM/ http://www.sightunseen.com/sandro-desii/#comments Mon, 21 Dec 2009 19:00:11 +0000 Jill Singer http://www.sightunseen.com/?p=1778 <p style="width:530px;"><a href="http://www.sightunseen.com/sandro-desii/"><img src="http://www.sightunseen.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/L1010240_laminated-530x353.jpg" width="530" align="left" style="margin:0 0 10px 0;"/></a><br />In the mountains north of Barcelona, deep in the heart of Catalonia, a renowned gastronomer toils in an experimental food lab, researching and testing dozens of flavors each year. Beloved by his peers, he has thousands of loyal fans. But he is not Ferran Adrìa.</p><p style="width:530px; text-align:right; font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://www.sightunseen.com/sandro-desii/">Read More...</a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/sightunseen/Qwlu/~4/B2IcTM2yVkM" height="1" width="1"/> http://www.sightunseen.com/sandro-desii/feed/ 0 http://www.sightunseen.com/sandro-desii/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/sightunseen/Qwlu/~3/vWUO6ttt_WM/ http://www.sightunseen.com/lauren-kovin-clothing-designer/#comments Fri, 18 Dec 2009 20:59:01 +0000 Monica Khemsurov http://www.sightunseen.com/?p=1738 <p style="width:530px;"><a href="http://www.sightunseen.com/lauren-kovin-clothing-designer/"><img src="http://www.sightunseen.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/LK_Dresses3-530x379.jpg" width="530" align="left" style="margin:0 0 10px 0;"/></a><br />Lauren Kovin had one of those creatively privileged childhoods we all dream about: Her father was a graphic designer, her mother an interior designer who stocked their New Hope, Pennsylvania, home with Memphis furniture and modern art. Kovin spent more time in galleries than in shopping malls. An Avedon portrait of a nude Nastassja Kinski hung over the family’s dining room table. Heaven, right? Wrong.</p><p style="width:530px; text-align:right; font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://www.sightunseen.com/lauren-kovin-clothing-designer/">Read More...</a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/sightunseen/Qwlu/~4/vWUO6ttt_WM" height="1" width="1"/> http://www.sightunseen.com/lauren-kovin-clothing-designer/feed/ 0 http://www.sightunseen.com/lauren-kovin-clothing-designer/