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around something we often try to publish on the site — sneak peeks into a designer's practice in the form of as-yet-unpublished designs.
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A Japanese Graphic Designer Whose Still Lifes Look Almost Like They’re Moving

Moodboards at the ready: Here’s a body of work you’re probably going want to bookmark from beginning to end. Mina Tabei is a Japanese graphic designer and art director whose portfolio — which spans everything from CD design to still life compositions to frame-worthy flyers and book covers deserving of display — feels at once playful and scientific.
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These Colorful, Hand-Crafted Rugs Honor Mexico’s Lost Traditions

We keep coming back to these playful, colorful rug designs by the brand-new Barcelona-based company Rrres, which was started by Javier Reyes, a graphic designer from the Dominican Republic. The rugs are made with artisans in Oaxaca, Mexico, and are decorated with graphic, glyph-like symbols — although his more recent designs, which we're featuring here today, incorporate abstraction and curves.
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Pattern for Yemen affordable artist editions

Buying One of These Affordable Artist Editions Will Go to Help a Major Humanitarian Crisis

Pattern for Yemen, an initiative to raise money for the humanitarian crisis in Yemen, was organized by Melbourne's A Friend of Mine and The Souvenir Society, who asked 15 major artists to create an artwork on cloth in an edition of 50 — a wash of green ink from Ronan Bouroullec, an exploded geometry by Nathalie Du Pasquier, colorful grids by Darkroom designer Rhonda Drakeford, a blocky composition by Michael Wall, and more.
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If You Like Design and Books, You’re Going to Love [Reads]

We're living in a world where the algorithm pretty much rules all: The algorithm decides which high school friends are worth keeping up with, whether you might enjoy the new album by Gucci Mane, and if you're the type of person who would buy Loeffler Randall shoes from an Instagram ad. So it's refreshing — and kind of quaint — that the new book subscription and delivery service [reads] is curated by actual humans.
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This Swedish Illustrator’s Soft-Edged Work Might Be the Calming Influence We All Need Right Now

If you're a relatively highly attuned design person — and chances are, if you're here, you are — you might recognize the work of Swedish-born, Barcelona-based designer and illustrator Klas Ernflo (and not just because it often reminds us of another perennial SU fave, Geoff McFetridge). Ernflo's done work for Apartamento, Domus, Frame, IKEA, Mother London, Oyyo, and more, in addition to keeping up his own studio with drawings, paintings, and sculpture. But it's his latest project that we find the most fascinating.
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Meet the Up and Coming Finnish Illustrator Behind the Sight Unseen Suitcase Print

Earlier this year, when we began to think about who might design the pattern that would adorn the interior of the Arlo Skye x Sight Unseen suitcase, we first established a few parameters: We wanted the suitcase to be more sophisticated than playful, but to still embody the warm, colorful, graphic sensibility that we tend to favor. We needed the print to repeat, but we wanted the pattern to have the illusion of being more random. And we hoped that we might be able to shine a light on a lesser-known, up-and-coming talent.
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Digital Renderings of “Rocks and Light,” Inspired by Mono-ha

Plenty of designers are obsessed with Mono-ha. But when Swedish art director Anders Brasch-Willumsen looked closer at the Japanese art movement, he noticed one thing in particular he could personally relate to: the ephemeral nature of its works. "The works that came out of Mono-ha would often exist only in photographs," he says. "I felt connected to this idea because creating digital sculptures is similar: they only exist in images." Inspired by that realization, Brasch-Willumsen decided to create "Rocks and Light," a new series of digital artworks pictured after the jump.
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This Studio’s First Collection Is Inspired By Drinking and Fast Cars

You'd think that the new graphics and furniture studio Hey, Porter were based in Monte Carlo or St. Tropez based on the descriptions they've given their first designs: chairs inspired by the "1st running of the 24-Hour Le Mans Automobile Race in France," bar carts named after a "cunning craft cocktail ace from 19th-century London." Alas, their backstory is not quite as dramatic as their influences would suggest — but we're still intrigued.
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A New Book’s Palm Springs Still-Lifes — And Aging Female Models — Are the Epitome of Chic

The holidays may be coming up this weekend, but for our money, the best gift this season won't be available until after Christmas — that's when pre-orders start shipping for DUNES, a 96-page journal that serves as both a nostalgic love letter for and a thrift and vintage guide to Palm Springs, California. DUNES was conceived by photographer Lauren Coleman — who spent her childhood in an iconic Palm Springs house — and produced as a collaboration between Coleman, graphic designer Sarah Kissell, and stylist Tiff Horn.
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