Furniture Factory is a pine wood furniture collection by Dutch designer Lucas Maassen and his three sons. Maassen employs his sons to paint each piece of handmade furniture. As per their contact, they each get paid 1 Euro for every piece they complete. They are limited to three hours of work per week, which is all that is allowed under Dutch laws. In order to meet the production time frames, they must paint rapidly which results in the look of each one-of-a-kind piece.
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I bet you’d never expect to see a modern sled! We Never Give Up! is a design by Polish designer Szymon Hanczar that’s an update to the traditional winter sled.
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UK design studio millergoodman creates modern classic artistic inspirational open ended toys for kids and adults such as the wooden block games ShapeMaker and PlayShapes. They launched a new block toy called FaceMaker at the London show HOME that just debuted this past week.
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One Laptop Per Child, the non-profit organization whose mission is to help every child worldwide gain access to an up-to-date education, in conjunction with tech company Marvell, unveiled the XO 3.0 tablet at the 2012 International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The low-cost, low-power tablet, which can be charged by solar panels, is the successor to the laptops that the charity has distributed to more than 2.4 million kids in 42 countries.
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We wrote about the Emerson Dollhouse by Brinca Dada a while back, but we are so smitten, we wanted to show you the other modern models, as well as their line of lovely little furniture. Real people would be lucky to have such well-designed sofas and such.
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Ok, here they are… the absolute best of the best, crème de la crème, most popular posts of the year. If you read only ONE post on Design Milk, this is it!
Jumpfrompaper handbags
Up-and-coming Taiwanese designers Chay Su and Rika Lin certainly have a bag full of tricks, literally. These may look like posters, but they’re actually three-dimensional, fully-functioning bags.
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Okay gadget guys and gals. We’ve curated the best of Design Milk’s technology offerings this year, and they encompass the cute (a kiddie iPad) to the crucial (great workspaces) to innovative (grocery shopping via billboard) to the just plain useful (a soundless alarm clock). While some are simply for play, others allow you to take existing gizmos to a whole new level.
anaPad
anaPad is a children’s magnetic white board made in the exact dimensions of an iPad that comes with an erasable marker and app-style magnets. Almost as good, though twice as cute, as the real thing.
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From the details that distinguish a space, like a set of wholly original stairs to a cleverly executed thematic design (think pirates) to some very personal projects (yup, House Milk), the design of residential and commercial interiors are as important as the overall architecture. After all, it’s the area you’re actually in. In case you’ve missed any of Design Milk’s myriad of interior design posts, or if you just feel like a refresh, here are the top ten of the year.
When Life Throws You a Curve Ball, Make Lemonade
Design Milk’s own Jaime and Jordan had lots of projects planned for the first six months of new home ownership. And the they found out they were having a baby. Suddenly, designing a nursery took precedence! Since then Little Milk has arrived, and she’s happy as can be in the finished room!
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Every now and then, products, rooms and installations catch our eye, and we find ourselves thinking, “WTF?” We’ve rounded up eleven of our favorite “What were they thinking?” items for an end-of-year WTF extravaganza.
Ghost Urns
Yes, these are what they seem: ghoulish ghost-shaped urns for ashes — actual ashes. Designed by Anna Marinenko, they’re fitted with a glass test tube compartment for the ashes, and the interior walls are done in pretty pastel hues. Definitely for those with a morbid (healthy?) sense of humor.
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Our most popular Art posts this year tend toward the graphic in style, with clever shout outs to the social media realm as well as references to the historical. We’ve also included the crafty, like the insanely intricate cutting of leaves, the kitschy (hello My Little Pony), and some good, old-fashioned mixed media work. More than anything else, we find it’s a sense of humor that binds them.
The Positive Posters
Bisgràfic studio and The Positive Posters collaborated on a series of prints handsomely broadcasting optimistic phrases that can be downloaded from your own computer. There are iPhone and iPad wallpapers too.
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