About Us

What is Sight Unseen?

Over the past two decades, Sight Unseen has established itself as the ultimate source for discovering talents and trends in design and the visual arts. As an online magazine and gallery spotlighting independent designers, and an incubator for those designers via curated exhibitions, Sight Unseen has been, as journalist Aileen Kwun wrote in the New York Times in 2022, both “arbiters and archivists of contemporary design … acting as a divining rod for the social media generation, for whom design has not been a niche interest, but an integral part of a hyper-visual, increasingly self-broadcast lifestyle.”

From 2010-2018, the editors behind Sight Unseen produced the Noho Design District, then Sight Unseen Offsite, highly curated design fairs that ran during NYCxDesign and were considered New York design week’s most exciting platforms for new ideas and talents.

Sight Unseen also produces events, designs products, and provides editorial and consulting services for a variety of forward-thinking clients. These have included Heymat, Kasthall, West Elm, Sonos, Glossier, Moda Operandi, Hotel Tonight, Arper, Arlo Skye, Ford, Paypal, Everlane, COS, The Ace Hotel, Herman Miller, Shinola, Ikea, The Standard East Village Hotel, Lumens, Lightology, Lincoln, and more. You can view some of those projects here, or contact us if you’d like to add your company to our list of clients.

About the Editors

Since founding Sight Unseen in 2009, editors Monica Khemsurov and Jill Singer have been pioneers and leaders in their field, raising the profile of design not only in their capacity as editors of the most influential design publication in America, but also as a powerhouse curatorial team, helping to launch and champion the careers of countless designers. They are also the co-authors of the acclaimed interior design book, How to Live With Objects (Clarkson Potter, 2022), which introduced their viewpoint to a wider audience and cemented their status as global authorities in design.

Khemsurov is also a contributing editor for T: The New York Times Style Magazine as well as the founder of the artistic hardware showroom Petra, while Singer’s writing has appeared in PIN-UP, Elle Decor, New York Magazine, T Magazine, W, GQ, and more.

Sight Unseen in the Press

“Jill Singer and Monica Khemsurov may have together shaped our design tastes even more so than the bold-faced talents they continue to cover and uncover. Their platform, Sight Unseen, started out as a blog and has evolved into a hybrid trend incubator–cum–north star for the collectible design industry, spotlighting emerging makers and teasing out the stories behind some of the most viral decor.” — Sean Santiago, Elle Decor

“The site [is] a go-to resource for inspiration for design lovers around the globe, embracing all that’s fresh and fun while maintaining a consistent aesthetic. Even as they cull projects from up-and-coming, independent designers all over the world, a clearly defined, “Sight Unseen” style has emerged—particular colors, shapes, and mixed materials that could quite conceivably define the way the world looks back on the 2010s, say 50 years from now. In an era when independent designers around the world seem to all be doing their own thing, the Sight Unseen choices give us a sense of a larger design movement.” – Anna Carnick, Pamono

“In the years since its inception, Sight Unseen — the online hub run by the writers and curators Monica Khemsurov and Jill Singer — has not only documented new currents in the design world, but defined them.” — Eviana Hartman, T Magazine

“While Sight Unseen has helped set a number of trends — the Memphis revival, wiggle graphics, and statement ceramics, to name a few — their perspective is anti-trend and anti-decorating: Singer and Khemsurov believe interiors should reflect “your personality and your obsessions, your experiences and your memories, your desires and your intentions.” — Diana Budds, Curbed