When Sight Unseen was founded more than 15 years ago, the goal was to invite readers into the minds and studios of designers, in order to help readers understand how things are actually made. Though the site is about so much more now, we still get a perpetual thrill from learning how some of our favorite furniture pieces go from the wisp of a concept to a fully fleshed-out product. Much has changed within the actual design process in those 15 years as well, as new tools have completely transformed the way creatives work, and digital technology has evolved beyond our wildest dreams — icons are still made with a saw, but they’re also made on a screen. We checked in with three contemporary designers to see how their process has changed over time, and how they’re using tools like the iPhone, iPad Pro, and Apple Pencil Pro to bridge analog design processes and digital technology. Each designer also made a video for us to document their journey.

Alexis & Ginger

“It’s been such a wild ride these last couple of years,” says Ginger Gordon of Alexis & Ginger, the studio she founded with Alexis Tingey straight out of art school in 2022. As they’ve navigated new territory, a constant part of their practice is a deep love of material exploration. “We have such a hunger to play in different materials. I think we like to look at a material and how it’s not currently used, and try to push it in a way that might be unexpected,” says Gordon. The result is pieces that are almost like sculptural collages, juxtaposing carved wood, metal, inlay, or textiles; lately they’ve been into the mix of metal and fused glass and the interplay between them.

There’s an architectural rigor paired with delicate, occasionally surreal details in their output, rooted in research. Delving into archival picture collections is key; there are stacks of books all over their studio, and they make regular pilgrimages to the New York Public Library. “We find so many beautiful, unexpected ideas or moments or spaces in these images that we wouldn’t find through an algorithm,” says Tingey. “We’re able to see mood and emotion captured so well, and that helps us to articulate what we’re trying to express through our work.” Regular visits to museums (the Met, the Neue Galerie) are another ongoing source of inspiration, along with simply being attuned and attentive to New York, from noticing an incredible bit of ironwork to being taken with the lights of the nighttime cityscape — “like a mosaic of stained glass,” per Tingey. Other influences lately include the rich color-blocking of 1970s cinema, the craftsmanship and community of the Wiener Werkstätte, and the intricacy of lace-making and embroidery. Back in the studio, the pair scan the photos and create digital moodboards on their iPad Pro, to live alongside their drawings, adding a depth and richness to their process similar to a pin-up board or a handmade model.

Tingey and Gordon work on each product, from ideation to fabrication, from their studio in Brooklyn. “Our iPad is essential for our studio,” says Tingey. “Apps like Procreate and Procreate Dreams have been an amazing way for us to explore layering and collage. For 3D modeling and space planning, we use Rhino and SketchUp, which are then used to build out components or full objects. Those tools help us to see what an object could look like in space, play with materiality, understand how light will interact with a piece, and how its proportions are feeling. They’re are also very useful for planning photoshoots!” Once any models are done, Gordon and Tingey use a variety of fabrication techniques, from welding metal to laminating wood.

There’s a fluid back and forth between them; their dynamic involves “a little bit of magic,” as Gordon puts it, describing one of the first objects they ever made together: “One of us would go in and we’d carve, and then we’d bring it to the other one. And they would carve. It was this very sweet moment. Like reading each other’s movements and trying to figure out how they speak to each other.” Tingey likens their creative process to a dance or a state of flow. Which comes through in their work: beautiful, dynamic objects with a touch of mystery.

Tristan Louis Marsh

For Tristan Louis Marsh, a sculptural lighting and furniture designer in Los Angeles, “form is the primary thing that I’m working with.” Marsh typically envisions an object and then figures out which material would work best to bring it to life, whether it’s wood that’s glazed or painted to achieve an almost stone-like finish, or colored glass, or more recently, metals like aluminum. He’s often shaped them into structures marked by a biological, even musculoskeletal quality: evoking viscera, bones, tusks, but smoothed out and made elegant. While he’s still feeling pulled toward organic shapes — “I grew up as an athlete, and was briefly an athlete in college, and I think body stuff is something that I’m always aware of,” he says — he’s lately been drawn to the botanical world. Plant life and “the way things blossom and flower,” along with symmetry and repetition, have increasingly found their way into his work, as has an interest in objects that lean baroque and hyper-decorative.

Marsh channels that interest in the organic and natural through the mathematical complexity of digital tech. Working as a sculpture technician after college, he became skilled at CNC-machining, learning how to “push and pull digital material like it’s clay,” he says. Things clicked, and the approach became an integral part of his practice. He bought his own CNC a few years ago, and now “it’s just like this odd extension of myself.” Designing on an iPad Pro has allowed him to have a looser, less-pressurized approach. “I do about 90% of the creative development of my work digitally, toggling between Rhino on my desktop and Nomad on my iPad to create 3D models. Nomad has been an absolute game-changer in my process. It’s an incredibly intuitive software and, because it’s native to the iPad, I can do it literally anywhere. I regularly wake up early on weekends and “sketch” in Nomad on the sofa, on airplanes, in coffee shops… It’s really nice to be able to directly manipulate the model on the screen, and it’s also got a pretty fun rendering engine. Nothing looks super real, but it has a pretty sweet digital quality and is super handy when wanting to figure out a color or send over images for clients.” And there’s a certain spontaneity to this kind of work, too: “The less I can think while I’m starting the better; I can just let something come out.”

A human element, though, runs through Marsh’s work, both in the way he conceives of designs and in the finishing processes, as well as knowing that these objects have to work in the non-digital world. On a functional level, of course, but also on the level of perception: the unpredictable role that space and depth, and shadow and light, and our own senses always play.

Ben Willett

When we last checked in with Ben Willett in 2023, the former creative director was translating his years of working in spatial and experiential design into making the kind of furniture we can’t resist — mixing references to Modernism, ’70s and ’80s Italian design, and Postmodernism to arrive somewhere unexpected: pieces shot through with an architectural sense of scale, proportion, and integrated forms. At the time, he was on the verge of launching Willett, a Los Angeles-based brand based on exploring “new ways in which furniture and built spaces coexist.” Since then, his first collection debuted last fall, with an extension of the line coming out later this spring. The line is marked by a rounded elegance and ease in the bent wood of the Radi and Otto sets of tables and chairs, the Fluous day bed, and the Shorty and Gio credenzas, while the lacquered gloss of the Baby Grand coffee table and Popo dining chairs gives off a casual glamour.

Because the relationship between an object and its environment is so key for Willett, his process ideally begins with visiting the space where a piece is going to live. From there, it’s on to concepting with SketchUp on the iPad Pro; once that stage is complete, he collaborates with a builder to refine the dimensions and the materials he’ll use. “It is a holistic approach, much like architects of the 20th century,” he says. Guided by that way of working, Willett says he’s been going back to the same sources of design inspiration, but “with a hyper focus on only the essentials, and following my intuition instead of the market.” The result is furniture that stands out but is also harmonious, with an immediate sense of place.