MPGMB, Industrial Designers

We never really thought we'd be featuring someone who'd also graced the pages of Modern Cat magazine. But that's exactly where Montreal designers Marie-Pier Guilmain and Maud Beauchamp ended up a few years ago after they hit it big with their chic, flat-packed cardboard teepees and cabins for cats. Back then, the two were known as Loyal Luxe, friends and designers who'd met and hit it off studying industrial design at the Université de Montréal. But a year ago, the two decided to change course. Their Loyal Luxe designs now mostly licensed to Suck UK, Guilmain and Beauchamp embarked on a new adventure, which they called mpgmb. In some ways, their mission is the same as it was when they were known as Loyal Luxe — to imbue everyday objects with beauty and sophistication through the manipulation of materials, textures, proportions, and form. But here, they're more interested in items at a human scale: beautiful, turned wood and marble pedestals, patterned stoneware, and colorful wall decals that all have in common a major graphic impact. We recently spoke to the two designers by email to find out more about what's influenced them in the past (we love the Sottsass table they chose!) and where they're going next.
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Introducing Your Newest New York Design Week Destination

Here at Sight Unseen HQ, we've been keeping some pretty major news under wraps for a few months now, but it's time to finally let the cat out of the bag. If you've been reading our site, you know that we founded and ran the Noho Design District, a satellite show during ICFF, for four years. This year we made the tough decision to retire the NDD and launch in its place a new event that shares our namesake: Introducing Sight Unseen OFFSITE, a brand new design fair happening in New York from May 16-20, 2014, that will feature a curated selection of furniture and product launches by the best independent designers and forward-thinking brands, all under one gigantic roof.
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Cassie Griffin, Ceramicist

Cassie Griffin is a Brooklyn-based ceramicist who was introduced to us by our friend (and sometime model) Lulu Wolf. However, when we went to search the Internet for more information about Griffin’s dreamy ceramics — and their goofy everyday object–styled photos — we came up empty, save for a post on Design Sponge. So we reached out to Griffin herself, who gave us the scoop.
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A Memphis-Inspired Wall Mural Pops Up in Melbourne

We were pretty beside ourselves last week when the news floated our way that not only was the terrific Melbourne art and design shop Third Drawer Down opening a second location but that its exterior was going to be hand-painted by Camille Walala, the French-born, London–based graphic designer and illustrator whose work we've been obsessing over for the last year and a half.
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Week of March 10, 2014

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week was, weirdly, all about fruit (perhaps it's the influence of the unstoppable pineapple?). We also said a (temporary) goodbye to a beloved New York retailer and a hello to the best Ikea collection in years.
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Week of March 3, 2014

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: foam that looks like marble, a digital print that looks like a painting, and the hot new decor trend that borrows from the gym, of all places.
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The 2014 Whitney Biennial

Perhaps the most telling moment regarding this year's Whitney Biennial came when we posted an image of Dutch artist Peter Schuyff's spiral-carved pencils on Instagram. "Where is this craft show?" joked Mondo Cane's Patrick Parrish. "Bedford Ave?" he asked, referring to Brooklyn's main hipster thoroughfare. Yep, this biennial feels decidedly different than years past. There are still inscrutable videos, and works we simply slid by for lack of interest, but this year had moments that felt smaller, more tactile, more intimate — and for us, more compelling — than in years past.
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Alex Proba on A Poster A Day

In her day job, Alex Proba works as a graphic designer at Kickstarter. But every night when she comes home from work, Proba sits down for 30 minutes at her computer and creates a poster, either from manipulated found imagery or from shapes and patterns she's created on her own. Then she posts the final product to Tumblr, as she has every day for the past 250 days. It's the kind of experiment that every creative person says they'll do — what writer hasn't vowed to pound out words in the early hours of the morning? — but hardly anyone ever makes good on.
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Week of February 17, 2014

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: inside the homes of two design powerhouses, a visit to fave duo New Friends (above), and a Richard Serra parked in the middle of Manhattan.
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Fort Standard’s Home Goods

Today, a trifecta of awesomeness: The entire home goods line from Brooklyn designers and Sight Unseen favorites Fort Standard, photographed by talented SU contributor Brian Ferry, and styled by Monica Nelson — a new name to us, but you can bet we've been perusing her portfolio of great work for brands like Urban Outfitters and Wilder Quarterly. Greg and Ian of Fort Standard have been majorly expanding the scope of their work lately — designing interiors for clients like Steven Alan Home and Harry's, furniture for Matter and Roll & Hill, and, you know, creating a massive beer luge for our Bowery Hotel party last year — but it's their growing collection of beautifully considered home goods that's making them a household name. Pretty, minty sand-cast aluminum bowls, hanging wood-plank cutting boards, geometric stone trivets — and they've never looked better than they do here.
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François Halard at Demisch Danant

When we think of the legendary Chelsea gallery Demisch Danant, we picture insanely luxurious fur-covered daybeds by Maria Pergay, or foofy round Pumpkin chairs by Pierre Paulin. We think of furniture — not photography. And yet somehow the exhibition on view there now through March 1 makes a perfect kind of sense. The French-born, New York–based photographer François Halard is showing a series of portraits he's made over the last 20 years of architecture and interiors created by some of the last century's most significant artists and designers — the Palm Springs house by Albert Frey (top image), the Italian studio of Cy Twombly, the Villa-Noialles by Robert Mallet-Stevens, and, one of our favorites, the Captiva Island home of Robert Rauschenberg.
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Eskayel’s Watercolor-Like New Wallpaper Collection

You know those Instagram feeds where it seems like the person is always off on some fantastic holiday in a remote locale? In our feed, that person is Shanan Campanaro, the multitalented artist and designer behind Eskayel. The San Diego native calls Brooklyn home, but in the past year, she's been to Bali, Belize, Nicaragua, Vail... the list goes on. But in Campanaro's case, all that travel isn't necessarily just for fun — it provides inspiration as well for the watercolors that will eventually become bleached, beautiful patterns for her wallpapers and fabrics. Eskayel's newest collection, which we're featuring today, is called “Jangala” which means jungle in Sanskrit. The new collection is a bit of a departure from her signature aesthetic, in that some of the colorways are more highly saturated than in the past, but the effect is the same. We love these styled shots Campanaro shared with us, with their overflowing greenery and little totems picked up on travel — not to mention their cute product loans from Rich Brilliant Willing! See more of our favorites after the jum, and then go to Eskayel's site to view the full collection.
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