Design and you

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Andrew Mau

Andrew Mau is a Chinese American designer who grew up in Honolulu. At 22, he’s a recent graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design (where he focused on furniture design) and Punahou School (the high school that President Barack Obama also attended).

Mau talked to Creative Cat about his work and aspirations. Read on!



How did you get into art?
My interest in art/creative pursuits began at a very early age. My humble beginning with Play-Doh and crayons led to ceramic classes at the age of 9, and the pursuit of anything creative during my high school years. I have an interest in teaching and learning as much as possible, and have ventured into jewelry, glass blowing and casting, ceramics, essentially anything three-dimensional.

What do you want to do now that you've graduated?
Now that I've graduated, I would love to continue designing. I am looking for work in New York City, and hope to find it soon. Ideally, I would be designing for a large company for now, but would love to own my own design firm/company in the future.

What's your favorite piece that you have created so far? Why?
I hardly have favorite anythings in general. I don't have a favorite color or a favorite designer. I tend to find some pieces I've done significant or important to my growth, while not necessarily my favorites. My piece PERCH, the porcelain bowl with feathers that was shown at ICFF in NYC this May has had the most press, and drawn the most attention, however I feel as though it does not demonstrate the clean design that I am more attracted to. I enjoy ELLIPSE (the table for John Maeda) and SLIM VESSEL, the bent laminated wood vessels that won the 2009 Niche Student Award, because they both demonstrate a simplicity that I strive for.

What's your biggest design pet peeve?
My biggest design pet peeve is the mass of uninformed "green" products. Bamboo is a great resource, yes, however, the processing and glue it needs to be used as a planar material, seems to outweigh the "ease" of this material. I think the most "green" thing we can do is invest in quality, and change our disposable lifestyle. Buying used or vintage pieces instead of new pieces from IKEA would decrease waste period.

What's your favorite trend that's happening now?
I don't really have a favorite trend. (As I mentioned before, I'm not a type for favorites). I enjoy mixing materials and using them effectively, and can most appreciate the direct application of materials in their most effective solutions. I design like an engineer, understanding each materials properties and using them effectively in this sense. I would never design something out of wood, just because I could, I would much rather consider a material that would be appropriate for the construction of that particular design.

What are your five favorite Web sites?
I like facebook, dislike twitter. I play Settlers of Catan online. I have many design websites that I enjoy, but none worth mentioning in the top five. I am rarely online, and enjoy the outdoors much more. I love Trendy Blanks for affordable clothing, and also enjoy dumb video clips on YouTube.

Chamomile, please

At only 30 years old, Rachel Koo has her own clothing line and is churning out five collections a year. Right now she's in the middle of designing spring dresses and tops that will be unveiled at shows in Las Vegas and New York this fall.

Koo is a California native who uses Los Angles as a home base. She has been working on her label, Tea and Honey, for almost two years. Much of the clothing is in silk or cotton-silk combos that are sometimes washed down to give the fabric a vintage feel. Often, Koo's designs feature bare shoulders and bright vibrant colors. Purple in all shades -- violet, lavender and lilac -- are some of her favorites right now.

Koo initially studied art while attending UCLA. "I loved the colors and really loved the clothes and this was a way to bring the art and clothes together into something you can wear," she said.

Now, she uses friends' travel adventures, National Geographic photos and fashion blogs for inspiration.

"It's really exciting," Koo said. "I love what I do. It's great to be able to put your creativity into something tangible."

Tea and Honey designs can be found at Nordstrom, Anthropologie and Macy's, among other retailers.

Nom, nom, nom

Paper tableware by Wasara could redefine my definition of a picnic. This Tokyo-based company creates eco-friendly goods, made with reed pulp, bamboo and sugarcane waste. Each dish is designed to be held while a person eats. But more than anything, I admire the simplicity. Considering that cooking can be such a blissful experience, shouldn't consuming the end result be that way too?

Wasara dishes are sold in stores throughout Japan, and are also available on the company's Web site.

Sunnyside up

Illustrations by Cathie Urushibata are oh-so-cheerful. Maybe it’s her Southern California upbringing. Her illustrations are charming.

A Japanese American Nisei, Urushibata moved east to attend grad school at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. She has called Manhattan home since then, living in Chinatown and working in the Flatiron district.

Urushibata currently works at a boutique agency, called 3SL Creative, doing design and illustration. “When I'm not doing something creative, you can always find me snacking on something or looking for a new restaurant to try,” she told me recently.

Urushibata is a lady after my own heart: For her, inspiration comes by way of vintage flea market finds. “I really admire good vintage design,” she said. “The fact that it may be 40 years old and aesthetically it still looks good, you know you did something right.”

She’s also a bit enamored with the color navy. Two recent vintage handbag purchases were a nice navy blue, as was a dress she wore to a friend’s wedding. “I've always been drawn to blue tones,” she said. “It just has a calming affect and it reminds me of the beach.”

Urushibata sells pins of her art on Etsy.

Kitchen central

Rethinking the kitchen, via Designboom and Dornob.

Feel the flow

Jennifer Tran is a recent graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, and is now based in Brooklyn. The last photo features Tran's Flow Chair, which was featured at this year's International Contemporary Furniture Fair.

"The Flow Chair was born from extensive form exploration, trial and error, and pure chance," said, a native of Texas. She would heat the plastic until it was malleable, then free-form shape it by hand. Sure beats playing with Play-Doh. Or does it?

Slim Vin

Wow. Love these.

Big bags are a necessity in my business. As a journalist, I'm constantly lugging around a mishmash of computer cords, recording devices, notebooks and miscellany.... Pens, tape, thumb drives, chapsticks, you name it.

All this makes the purses and totes from the Brooklyn-based company Skinny Vinny seem like a fashionable investment. Founder Vincent Lai is a 2006 graduate of Carnegie Mellon. He spent time at a design consultancy in Soho before launching his own line.

"I wanted to combine my product design education with the soft goods and pattern-making knowledge I gained growing up in a garment factory," he said.

Lai, who named the company after a teasing nickname, makes the product samples himself. They are then reproduced at a small factory in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. Hooray for handbags!

Sprouting ideas

Love to go green? Meet Jenny Poon, an Arizona-based entrepreneur who runs Eeko Studio. It's little design boutique with big ambitions.

Eeko does Web design, apparel, editorial and advertising work with a twist: The company focuses on sustainable methods and materials, and donates a portion of profits toward local environmental charities.

Paper waste triggered the creation of Eeko. "I have never been a 'die-hard' hippie tree-hugger, but I am big on being non-wasteful," Poon said.

The budding company's blossoming goal is to rethink traditional design.

"Traditional design follows this timeline: think, design, create, print and trash," she said. "Design has a lifespan just like human beings. There is birth and there is death — and hopefully there is love in there too. You get a project and you design based on clients' needs and when it is completed you are done. The audience gets the printed piece and then it gets trashed."

Eeko also aims to rebuild design into a cyclical, sustainable process. "From the get-go we think about ways to lessen the waste, use recyclable material, from there we go into the aspects of HOW it will be used and think of alternative uses to prolong the life of the piece," Poon said.

There's lots of great green products out there. Here are a few of Eeko's favorites: D.I.Y. wine cork boards and recycled shipping container houses. Tree-hugging, indeed.

Link love

The design blog Seeds and Fruit has an interesting interview with furniture maven Maria Yee. Her work can be seen at Crate & Barrel and Room & Board, among other retailers. Check out the interview here.

Also out there on the Interwebs, The New York Times style section is featuring (their definition of) "up-and-coming" clothing designers, including Prabal Gurung, 30, who was born in Singapore and grew up in Nepal. It's a good read.

Slurp

Morning coffee just *might* taste better in this "forest monsters" mug. It was designed by Peskimo and is available for purchase on Poketo.

Squeeeeze

These awesome illustrations are by Anneka Tran, of the United Kingdom. Too entertaining to pass up. Via Penguin and Fish.

On whimsy

Life is too serious sometimes. Or at least mine is, unfortunately. That's why work like Kim Haller's is so necessary. We're talking whimsy to the max here, people.

Haller is a mom and a part-time high school art teacher in Milwaukee, Wis. (Also, she's a Korean adoptee, like me!) She has an amazing collection of illustrations and prints that she sells on Etsy.

Here's Haller — in her own words — on inspiration: "I spend a lot of time making notes of things that my husband, daughter and son say and do. We have post-its everywhere in our house. I also have a collection of them in my head. Most of my work is inspired by these floating phrases and pictures. I like to build them into the characters and patterns that I create, mixed with little bits and pieces of my own various collections, obsessions, quirks and childhood stories. I hope when people look at my work they can find a sort of familiarity, whether it be in a particular character illustration itself, a pattern, texture or color that I used or a relatable environment that I created."

An uplifting way to start the week, m'thinks.

Pandamonium

Artwork by Stephanie Grace Lim makes me smile. Grin, really. Afterall, who doesn’t need a healthy dose of pandas, sumos and ninjas, especially on a Friday?

Lim is an artist, illustrator, designer and overall creative firecracker who is based in California. She most recently worked as a creative designer at PayPal, but her background is in newspapers, logging time at the San Jose Mercury News, The Charlotte Observer and The Ann Arbor News.

Fulfill even more of your (OK, my) panda fixation here. Tai Shan, the panda cub at Washington, D.C.'s National Zoo, turned 4 on Thursday. He celebrated with a beet cake!

Type calendar

Parker Hu is a young designer who is creating cool work out of Connecticut. She’s currently searching for a manufacturer that can produce this eye-catching 2010 type calendar she designed for the Society of Typographical Arts.

So noted

Joy Deangdeelert Cho is a Philadelphia-based graphic designer who runs Oh Joy! Studio and OhJoy.com. She transfers her love of color and pattern into products for the likes of Swell by Cynthia Rowley and Ilene Rosenzweig, Target, Mattel, QVC, Charlotte Ronson, Michele Varian Home, Otis & Claude, Pfiff Lingerie, Mari's New York, Joya Candle and Urban Outfitters.

Current offerings include a winsome set of notebooks available via her Web site. I am especially fond of the “Noted” Olive Ombre Notebook, pictured above. So pretty! File folders, available through Chronicle Books, are also tempting. Why waste precious desk space on boring manila?