ICFF, May 17th

ok, so my reviews are late. i'm sorry! i'm having a lot of trouble judging exactly how long things are going to take me with my little one here!

first, i'll review the ICFF, which i attended with my husband dave and little miss anna jae. we saw a lot of great items and displays, and even anna got to have some fun!

amuneal, who had my favorite booth last year, wowed us with their 2009 booth build. fabricated by this amazing company, the booth was aluminum and iron (i think). dragonflies adorned the outer walls, while the lights from the javits center shone through the openings. plus, their sign was just yummy typeset-like goodness. =)





artemide's chandelier, with text on the interior of the shade, was refreshingly different.



chato & co. had fun, whimsical wallpaper prints in the most outrageous colors.

anna jae takes a ride on magis' dodo rockers.


lovely furniture from diane paparo studios. all locally made and striving towards a greener home.

tables/footrests at hastens display. i just love the concept of a dog with a paper. =)

the japan pavilion at the ICFF.

jonathan adler's display was lovely. both a living and selling space at the same time.


kikkerland design, based in harlem, created their display from 3000 campbells soup cans, purchased from supermarkets in the city. after the show, they donated the cans to city harvest to feed those in need. it was an amazing display, both from a visual and a human perspective.


miss print's lovely pendant lamps and wallpaper.

gorgeous gold placemats from chilewich.

and finally, i give you my husband's prized parking job on the day we visited the ICFF. he insisted on taking pics of it while i got anna in the car (you can see my head in the back), and insisted even further on me posting it on the blog. so, i hope you all appreciate his efforts. =)

ICFF and the Stationery Show

so design week is over around these parts. it was a great show season this year. i attended the ICFF with dave, little anna jae, and my friend loren. and the stationery show was just me and little miss anna, as press for the event. while overall anna did great at both shows -- and managed to be a star at them, entertaining everyone around her -- she did complicate things a bit. sadly, i didn't get to do as much at the stationery show as i would have liked. next year, i think i may need to go without her!

i will post my reviews starting tomorrow. i thank everyone that i met with this year -- it was truly a fun few days. can't wait until next year!

lessons in theft

as a member of the design community, i stay in touch with a number of designers all across the country. when one of my fellow designers is ripped off, i feel the need to tell the story.

my friend at burn creative found one of his illustrations in the portfolio for another so-called designer on logopond.com. it wasn't just "influenced by" or "derived from" his illustration -- it was his exact image placed on a new background. this other designer was claiming it as hers, and gave a false story of how she came up with the idea and the illustration. she was also getting a lot of great feedback on the piece, with everyone amazed at her talent at such a young age.

this girl is 16-year-old julie kapral (julieK on the site).

burn creative posted quickly in the comment section of the image page, letting everyone know that he was the real creator of the piece. julie posted back, at first saying that she did not steal the work, and then later stating that she found it in a book (hmmm... which is it?). soon, the image was taken off her portfolio on logopond.

after further investigation, burn creative found at least 2 images that were stolen from other artists -- one from designer lina khesina, another from orla keely. we are now convinced that all the images julie has claimed to be her own (a few which have sold as logos to unsuspecting customers) are actually ripped off from other designers.

from burn creative's blog post about the theft.

julie's portfolio has been deleted from logopond.com, and her website has also been taken down. however, she still has a twitter name up @juliekapral.

situations like this really get to me as an artist and designer. there are a lot of people out there that don't think twice about stealing someone else's work and using it for their own purposes. it seems as though everyone thinks that things posted online are fair play. it makes us all very concerned about our work and our good name, since some designers who have created the original work have been accused of plagiarizing!

julie kapral seems to have taken it a step further. she has concocted stories about how she arrives at these brilliant pieces and taken the praise, apparently to great extents all over the internet. there were people talking about how she's so inspiring and that she's really going places, and she has played right into it. it's almost delusional.

in the end though, she was caught. as are all people who steal from others. and she will not dig herself out of this hole for a while.

to read more about burn creative's story, go to his blog here, or read about it on the HOW forums here.

bklyn designs -- quick post

so if you kept up with my mobile tweets on saturday, then you would know that i wasn't thrilled with bklyn designs this year. there were a few standouts, but overall it was less than interesting. there was a lot of bland or predictable design, which i thought was a real shame. that being said, there were a few standouts with innovative designs and high quality, and that made me smile.

i will write more about bklyn designs tomorrow. i also wanted to remind you to look for my tweets and reviews of ICFF and the stationery show next week.

nyc design week begins!

oh man, i always love this time of year. design is in the air here in NYC people! and it all kicks off this weekend with bklyn designs.

bklyn designs used to happen the same weekend as ICFF, at least for the first year. but there's so much going on the weekend of ICFF that they moved it to the weekend before. we're thinking of attending on saturday if time (and baby) allows. it is mother's day weekend -- my first mother's day!!! -- so it's a bit inconvenient. but whatever. design waits for no one. =)

who am i excited to see there you ask? well, argington is one of my most favorite baby furniture designers. flavor paper uses unique prints to make gorgeous wallpaper. and pratt institute always has interesting pieces there from their design students. dave was one of the grad students featured at bklyn designs 5 years ago. so i have a soft spot for those students and what they can become.

i will report back next week!