When winter gets as unbearable as it has been for the past few weeks here in New York, we find the tiniest ways of coping — allowing ourselves to occasionally venture out of the house in our sweatpants, say, or to eat an inadvisable amount of ramen, or to shirk all our errands in favor of staying in bed just a little while longer. Music can’t technically warm us up, of course, but it helps too; it keeps our minds off the cold, keeps us moving. And for those who spend their days in huge, drafty workshops, doubly so. With that in mind — and inspired in part by RoAndCo’s annual “Wintry Mix” — we invited 13 designers and studios to share with Sight Unseen the songs they’ve been listening to this winter, and to tell us what they’ve been working on while listening to them. Click on the studio names below to check out their playlists on Spotify.
(Pictured above: Graphic Design Study of the Snowflake by Andrei D. Robu)

Anton Alvarez
“This winter I’ve mainly been working on new pieces for my solo show at Gallery Libby Sellers, which opens on March 6.”
www.antonalvarez.com

Atelier Takagi
“In the studio we are working on a couple of new things for Field (the label that I edit), several new lighting projects for undisclosed clients, planning for NY Design Week, and re-capping a Silverface Fender Champ guitar amp.”
www.ateliertakagi.com

Bec Brittain
“This winter we’ve been spending quite a bit of time prototyping and preparing for ICFF; these songs have been crucial to keeping us moving in the cold hours.”
www.becbrittain.com

Brendan Ravenhill
“In studio we’ve been working on new lighting pieces that we will be launching this spring, while also continuing to design furniture and objects for both self-production and licensing. We’re keeping our hands dirty.”
www.brendanravenhill.com

Doug Johnston Studio
“We spent the first part of the winter working on holiday orders and a set of special collaborative pieces for the Textile Arts Center shop. Now we are working on new projects and orders for 2014, and these songs have been keeping me company, along with a never-ending stream of audio books and podcasts.”
www.dougjohnston.net

Fort Standard
“This winter — on top of filling orders for furniture and Art Basel, and taking some vacation time — we’ve been designing new lighting and furniture to launch this spring at ICFF, where we will be showing for the first time, and preparing for the Architectural Digest show in March. We also tightened up some of the branding and packaging for our line of home goods and did a really fun photo shoot with Brian Ferry and Monica Nelson to create some new content for our website.”
www.forstandard.com

Hilda Hellström
“I’ve been working on a large 3-dimensional wall atlas, a new Sedimentation bench and urn, and a collaboration with Bec Brittain, plus some other top-secret stuff.”
www.hildahellstrom.se

New Friends
“We’ve been experimenting with new techniques (possibly airbrushing) and materials (definitely cotton twine), and focusing on our new works, to be unveiled this spring.”
www.new-friends.us

Nous Vous
“This winter we’ve been working on illustrations for the Green Man Festival, some children’s book designs for the Tate, a shop front for Mitcham, a workshop program in a converted mobile library, and keeping dry!”
www.nousvous.eu

RO/LU
“We’ve been reading and writing, as always, while also working on floating furniture, outdoor furniture, edible furniture, and invisible furniture.”
rolustudio.com

Studio Lin
“We’ve been working on an identity, website, and store design for Chamber, a new boutique devoted to exclusive limited editions and unique works of art and design. In addition, we’re designing the next issue of Tunica, an art publication.”
www.studiolin.org

Snarkitecture
“This winter we’ve been working on a wide range of projects in the studio: our Inverted Chukka, a shoe made in collaboration with Del Toro shoes that launches today; collaborations with fashion labels En Noir and Public School for their upcoming FW14 shows; a large-scale public installation in Milan for the Salone del Mobile; and a new series of smaller functional objects that will be released this year on shop.snarkitecture.com.”
www.snarkitecture.com

The Principals
“This winter, we’ve lived by three rules: never get less than 12 hours of sleep, never play cards with a guy who has the same first name as a city, and never get involved with a woman with a tattoo of a dagger on her body. Now you stick to that, and everything else is cream cheese.”
www.theprincipals.us