Caroline Z. Hurley’s Gee’s Bend–Inspired, Stitched-Together Paintings

Caroline Z. Hurley is best known for her block-printed quilts, tablecloths, blankets, and fabrics by the yard, but if you follow Hurley on Instagram, you know that painting is also a huge part of the Brooklyn-based artist's practice. Her newest works combine elements of both mediums, using vintage fabrics or cottons woven by hand by artisans in Oaxaca as the base for painted and stitched-together canvases.
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Nicolette Johnson Assemblage vases

These Surrealist-Inspired Vases Are the Breakthrough That Resulted From a Creative Block

At the beginning of the pandemic, some designers may have viewed the ensuing solitude as an opportunity to "bloom where you grow." But not everyone found it easy to stay inspired. "After lockdown started in the early months of 2020, I felt completely unmotivated to make work," confesses the Brisbane ceramicist Nicolette Johnson. After a while, however, Johnson gave herself permission to make literally anything, and began sculpting shapes out of soft clay — inspired by Surrealist and Constructivist motifs — and attaching them to small wheel-thrown vases.
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In This Pride Month Fundraiser, 11 LGBTQ Designers Share Their Experiences and Advice

By focusing on a diverse array of experiences with facial and body hair in its branding, the shaving brand Harry’s has always (in its short history) taken pains to avoid the machismo messaging its competitors rely on to move a product that is, essentially, genderless. For Pride Month, the company is doubling down on that message with a new campaign and fundraiser celebrating a dozen queer designers and artists, Design With Pride.
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Candle Wax Tables and Mattress Foam Chairs: Tour One of the Best Waste-Material Reclamations We’ve Seen

Carsten in der Elst's recent graduate project, Heavy Duty, is every design student ever's wet dream — traveling around to different regional factories, asking them to identify their primary waste materials, then collaborating with them to use their existing production processes to turn those byproducts into something new. Unlike every other design student ever, though, in der Elst's results actually transcend his original thesis, amounting to a vast collection of objects that, if a gallery like Kreo or Friedman Benda released them from a mid-career designer, we wouldn't bat an eyelash.
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A New Collection of Steel and Stone Chairs That Combine Minimalism With Personality

The work of Danish interior and product designer Lisette Rutzou is characterized by a funny sleight of hand — at first you think you're looking at something really classical and elemental, and then you realize she's snuck in a whole other aesthetic language, more vibey and directional than you initially understood. Her newest collection of chairs and benches, Ego, has that same feeling.
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High-End Editorial Set Design, But Make It Cuddly

For its March issue, the Italian magazine Icon Design came up with an amusing way of spotlighting one of the pandemic's unsung heroes — the pets keeping us sane during lockdown — by pairing high-end set designs by stylist Greta Cevenini with portraits of eight dogs belonging to influential Italians. It's genius, because how many of us feel like luxury design is relevant to our lives at this exact moment? But make it cuddly, and it's a whole other story.
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The Designer Behind Your Favorite Shell-Shaped Accessories Just Dropped a New Collection

Where do you go when your last collection captured the Zeitgeist to a T? That's the dilemma that faced Rosa Rubio of the Barcelona-based Los Objetos Decorativos, whose saturated pastel ceramic seashell vases and catchalls went epically viral when they were released two years ago. For her latest collection, Rubio turned to another material that's been trending — colored glass — and again made it her own.
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Feeling Anxious? Calm Down With an ASMR Interior Design Video. (Yes, It’s a Thing!)

We discovered recently that there's a whole genre of ASMR videos devoted to faux design consultations, from whispery kitchen renovation meetings to a guy who's just narrating himself drawing the floorplan of a house for 30 minutes. We're sharing our favorite examples of interior design ASMR here, which, trust us, are exactly what you need right now to lift your spirits, whether they chill you out or make you laugh — or both.
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