We Asked 10 Designers to Make Us a Birthday Card — Here Are the Results

For our last bit of 10th anniversary content this week, we followed a tradition set forth on our first and fifth birthdays — asking a select group of designers to make us a “birthday card.” This year, without any prompting by us, most of the submissions centered around something we often try to publish on the site — sneak peeks into a designer’s practice in the form of as-yet-unpublished designs. Moscow-based Maxim Scherbakov of Supaform explained his inspiration: “I made a special imaginary scene for Sight Unseen’s 10th anniversary. All of the pieces are drawings that I took from my sketchbook. Initially these pieces were created not for final production, and perhaps they would have remained in a notebook. It’s a kind of uniqueness — just like your approach to design.”

In addition, Sabine Marcelis sent us a resin donut; Note Design Studio sent an unrealized object from their new series for Fogia; Sophie Lou Jacobsen and Suna Bonometti made us a pair of eye lamps; Agnes made a weaving in a special color palette with artisan women in Guatemala; Dokter & Misses dug up screen prints from their archive; RoAndCo created an animated birthday gif (above); Pedro Paulo Venzon sent us a sneak peek from his new collection; Daniel Emma sent us a piece of “cake” with a cherry on top; and Germans Ermics sent us an unpublished photo. “Sometime in 2010, during my internship at Robert Stadler, an assistant showed me this website,” Ermics recalls. “I still remember how it looked. It felt like I had tapped into a secret source, and yet everything seemed unusual and distant. I would never imagine that five years later I would meet Monica and Jill in Milan, get featured in Up and Coming, take part in their OFFSITE show and see them pretty much every year since then. None of this would have happened if they weren’t there for us supporting and promoting the design community worldwide. Thank you and happy anniversary!”

Top image: RoAndCo