Federico Tobon

LOS ANGELES

From Federico Tobon:

I’m Federico Tobon, a maker, and artist living and working in Los Angeles, California.

I have a passion for learning and for doing things with my hands. I’m a curious generalist: drawing, painting, metalworking, electronics, sewing – love them all.

I enjoy combining bold and strong colors and lines with delicate elements. I like the wonkiness and personality lines and hand-made objects.

Atelier Toit

THE NETHERLANDS

From Atelier Toit:

The candleholders consist of solid wooden blocks that seem to be balancing on an asymmetrical pedestal. A playful design that alludes to the eighties in its shape and the twenties in its colors.

Ilya Yashkin and Romy Boesveldt founded Atelier Toit, a new brand that sprouted from the experimental playground of their brand Studio ROOF.

Fueled by the enormous amount of colors and shapes that they designed, new three-dimensional shapes came into existence.

They built them from wood and painted them by hand, using their characteristic bold color palette. The objects they created are fresh, original and imaginative.

RYAN DOHERTY

LOS ANGELES

From Ryan Doherty:

Ryan Doherty is a Los Angeles-based artist whose illustrations and paintings are shaped by the storytelling conventions of animation and film. Through a lens of low humor and wry observation, his work delves into the raw edges of society by unraveling the complexities and nuances of fringe culture and class disparities.

Materials:
"American Home"
Colored Pencil, Gouache, Acrylic on Canvas
24"x72"

This prototype is available for pickup in LA. $2,200

PANISA KHUNPRASERT

THAILAND

From PANISA Objects:

PANISA creates wooden objects that are playful and sculptural, yet functional and sustainable. The design process often challenges traditional concepts of woodworking, which brings unexpected results. Made in a wooden toy factory, most pieces are crafted from small wooden pieces from the toy production, joined together into everyday’s objects of affection.

Panisa Khunprasert makes objects that combines sculptural and conceptual arts with functionalities. Graduated with a Bachelor's degree in Industrial Design from Chulalongkorn University and grew up in her parent’s wooden toy factory, her early design approach was very practical. While studying and working in New York City her creative approach has became more liberating and her interests in anthropology, art history, and emotional design became more evident in her oeuvre. She graduated with a MFA from The School of Visual Arts and worked as a visual and product designer at The Museum of Modern Arts. Panisa moved back to Thailand to join her family business Blue Ribbon Toys and to build the growing collection of objects under her name. PANISA brand aims to create products that are playful, poetic, and functional. Many of her designs are now carried by MoMA Design Stores around the world.

Thor Høy

DENMARK

From Spring Copenhagen:

Thor Høy transcends many genres, worlds and trades - sometimes even himself. His work points in many directions - but that is the point. Because when Thor designs, he pours all his experience into it to create everything from lamps and gold and silver jewellery for the brand Men Up North to the wooden tumbler series he has developed for Spring Copenhagen. Thor Høy isn’t a one-material guy. Every day he works with a wide range of materials such as steel, glass, porcelain, wood, plastic and gold and silver. Wood is the medium he constantly returns to. Alongside sustainability, quality and thoroughly tested functionality, he also strives to deliver poetry in his designs.

floris hovers

THE NETHERLANDS

From Ikonic:

Designer Floris Hovers is working for the furniture and design industry but apart from that he is also an artist who creates contemporary art pieces. He is well-known for his city models and skylines made out of scrap materials, which are sold in art galleries. With the Archiblocks, you can create your own city skyline! You can change the composition of this skyline everyday if you like. Be as playful as Floris, and go creative!

Floris Hovers was born in 1976 in Raamsdonksveer in the south of The Netherlands. After some basic training in engineering and advertising and presentation techniques in Utrecht, he studied at the Design Academy Eindhoven and graduated in 2004. In 2006 he started his own designstudio and workshop.

The designs of Floris Hovers are surprising in their disarming simplicity, the final result of a prolonged process of reduction. What remains is the essence - and almost cartoon-like composition of form, construction and colour. The work of Floris Hovers has been included in the permanent collection of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.

ZACHARY WARWAS

UNITED STATES

From Zachary Warwas:

Zachary Warwas is an artist and designer based in Altadena, CA. He utilizes woodworking skills to create wall hung wood sculptures and unique home products. The work is often colorful, interactive and playful. In creating artwork or a design, fabrication is a key component of creativity. The materials, tools and artist work together to create unique projects.

DAVID WEEKS

UNITED STATES

David Weeks was born in Madison, Wisconsin, raised in Athens, Georgia, and educated in Providence, where he received his BFA in painting from the Rhode Island School of Design. Weeks founded his namesake studio in DUMBO in 1996 as an umbrella for his diverse interests, ranging from metal fabrication techniques to contemporary toy culture. Brooklyn’s unique amalgam of the industrial and the artisanal informed Weeks’ sensibility, and his work in turn helped define the independent design movement that took root there: one that championed the maker and whetted contemporary styling and old-school craftsmanship.

CHEN CHEN AND KAI WILLIAMS

UNITED STATES

From AREAWARE:

Chen Chen & Kai Williams is a New York-based design studio working in furniture, products, interiors and mixed materials. The company was first established as an experimental design space in 2011 by Pratt graduates Chen Chen and Kai Williams - their work backgrounds undoubtedly contributing to their playful, yet functional products (Chen through his time at the former New York concept store Moss and Williams with his experience at Tom Sachs’ studio).

Currently operating in the commercial and art/design markets, Chen Chen & Kai Williams encourages new ways of design thinking. Illustrated through their real fruit-molded, Stone Fruit Planters and utilitarian Third Eye Vessels to one of a kind Resin Benches and towering Warp Core floor lights.

Past clients include Études Studio, Baggu and Mission Chinese, while presentations of their work have been held at the Museum of Art and Design (USA) and the Venice Architecture Biennale (Italy). 

ELIF BAKAR

TURKEY

From Noobuu Toys:

Elif Şişmanoğlu Bakar is an industrial designer based in Instanbul. She researched user-oriented approaches in the design process of furniture such as schools, houses and parks designed for children. She is currently a designer working on museums and art spaces.