Creative, persuasive, stimulating, and versatile; design and its many sub-fields have long been applied to large-scale world issues in politics, economics, and culture. The 20th century is rich in examples of design’s influence in the shaping and the response of relevant world events, from the economical office building boom that helped spur the International Style, to the ideological and aesthetic…
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Natural energy
From daytime textile designers to moonlighting developers of sustainably dyed fabrics, the trio behind the Grand Rapids, Michigan-based Eso Studio are driven by a passion for textile design that has come to include equal parts art and science. Inspired by the renewal energy of nature and committed to the act of reusing, the designers form a studio dedicated to natural,…
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Q&A: Carrie Long Interiors
Home offices spaces have perhaps never played such an integral and important role in everyday function as they do now. Nationwide, homeowners can be found flipping entire rooms, secluded corners of their houses, and even kitchen tables into makeshift office spaces where the same daily work duties are performed as they were in the workplace. The differences between these home…
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Modern retrospective
In December 2019, the Cranbrook Art Museum in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan unveiled three textile and craft-centric exhibitions that will run until March 2020 exploring how innovative people and teaching methods influenced design for generations. One of the exhibitions showcases the lifework of one of Detroit’s formative figures in interior and textile design. The exhibit, titled “Ruth Adler Schnee: Modern Designs for Living,” posits designer…
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Awarded motif
During the 2019 Hospitality Design Expo, or HP Expo, on May 16 to May 18, 2019 in Las Vegas, Nevada, Brentano Inc.’s centerpiece fabric of the Sovereign collection was honored by the International Interior Design Association, or IIDA, with a Product Design, Textiles award. The fabric, known as Quill, was recognized for its color palette and historical inspiration. The HD…
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Textured classics
Like many other facets of art and design, fashion provides a highly sensory method of self-expression and creativity, but it stands apart in its proximity to the user. As designs that encompass the body, garments hold a unique responsibility for their users, and as Chicago-based fashion designer Bhavana Jain knows, balancing the responsibility of designing for a specific customer while…
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Tactile language
In the 1990s, Founder and Artistic Director Iris Wang noticed sunlight through a cascade of maple leaves outside of her kitchen window, which doubled as her studio at the time for the humble warehouse operations of Brentano Inc. It would serve as the catalyst for the small company as Wang then blended a painted Japanese-inspired maple leaf with a series…
