The following post is brought to you by Naked Binder. Our sponsors are hand-picked by the Design Milk team because they represent the best in design.
Can recycled office products save the world? Maybe not. But by creating products from recycled materials that are 100% recyclable and strong, they can keep 60 million pounds of toxic material from landfills each year improving air quality and preserving forests and wild spaces.
Here’s how:
Naked Binders are made in the USA from 100% recycled, 97-100% post-consumer waste board which means all Naked Binder products are 100% recyclable. They are proud to use FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) certified board when making their 3-ring binders and folders and are happy to be members of 1% For The Planet in which they donate part of proceeds to environmental organizations striving to preserve the wild spaces we all love.
A sustainable binder should also be strong and good looking, so Naked Binder designed them to be both. The Naked Binder is crafted from one piece of board with the hinge pressed directly into it. This leaves no weak spots on the binder and makes for a super strong 3-ring binder. An independent lab flexed the Naked Binder 250,000 times without failing which means if you use this binder 20 times a day for 34 years, you still will not break the hinge. Now that’s strong.
So, whether you’re buying a few for the shelf at home or cases for the office, you can be sure that your purchase, not only stylish, will go on to help the greater good.
Jeni Oye takes old bike tires and makes them into creative cuffs for guys and gals. Made from aluminum and old tires, they’re the perfect gift for bike lovers. Available exclusively at Oye Modern.
Glovers = gloves for lovers. ’nuff said.
Designer and architect Reinier de Jong has just released the versatile REK coffee table. The table grows and adapts to your needs. For example, when you’re not entertaining, perhaps you’d like to close it up, but when guests come over, you might want to move the sliding parts outwards to accommodate extra drinks and plates. Or, you can keep the sliding sections and store magazines and other things underneath.
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On our press trip to Copenhagen, we were treated to a tour of the new Bella Sky Comwell Hotel on the outskirts of the city center. As you can see, it’s a striking piece of architecture. Designed by the Copenhagen-based architecture firm 3XN, Bella Sky is the largest hotel in Scandinavia, with 23 floors, 812 rooms and 30 meeting spaces and conference rooms. It’s comprised of two towers, with angled facades, joined by a walkway. The hotel just won the “Best Architecture in Europe” award at the International Hotel Awards in London. We were definitely wowed by the architecture and interiors when we visited.
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Charlotte Lancelot partnered with Gandia Blasco’s GAN division on a new collection of rugs launched at this year’s Maison & Objet show in Paris. Using cross-stitch patterns, Lancelot reinterpreted an age-old traditional craft into something completely new and exciting.
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Maison & Objet’s designers of the year 2012 are Humberto and Fernando Campana, originally from Brazil, Hubert le Gall from France and Tokujin Yoshioka of Japan.
To celebrate, each designer was given the opportunity to create an installation for the show. It was the Campana Brothers’ installation that really caught my eye.
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Sticks is a cabinet system designed by Gerard de Hoop that is made of boxes in four different widths and four different heights, standing on one leg. Since each Stick’s height and width can vary there are tons of fun combinations to create your own custom sideboard or wardrobe.
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We met Spanish-born industrial designer Vicente Garcia-Jimenez, who now works out of Udine, Italy, on our trip to the lighting company Foscarini in Venice this past fall. In addition to having designed three pendants lights for Foscarini (Le Soleil, Fields, Big Bang), Garcia-Jimenez has also designed numerous other lamps, as well as sculptural and functional furniture pieces. He also works in ephemeral architecture and brand installations. He recently earned the Elle Decor International Design Award by the magazine’s Spain edition. For this week’s Friday Five, Garcia-Jimenez shared images that represent the starting point for some of his designs. He says, “All these pictures inspire me to think about concepts in my work. Every picture, if you observe well, is fantastic, rich with beauty, fascination, and magic.”
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I’m adding a couple of prints this week to The Design Milk Dairy, my collection of Society6 artist prints and accessories. I wanted to share some artwork centered around the theme of love, an appropriate topic considering this month contains the most romantic day of the year (or as us married people say call it: “next Tuesday”). Pictured above is Total Ellipse of the Heart by Michael Paukner.
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