LOL. You all must realize how much I like color by now. A fun topic, it’s changing like crazy of late, which gives me much to talk and therefore write about.

Alas, its time to move on from red. So, where shall we go? From images of Maison Objet 2008 and the ever so creative and innovative Campana Brothers, it’s a little bit of everything with heavier influences of pink and purples which is putting the reds into blues and popping it with greens and yellows.

Campana Brothers Sushi Chairs: (above left: Sushi IV Chair) (below Sushi II Chair)

Maison Objet 2008 (taken from NY Times article) and Dior Fall 2008 (Style.com):

Maison Objet 2008 (Image taken from 3 Layer Cake blog):

New York Gift Show 2008 (Pablo Pardo, images from Apartment Therapy):

NY 2007 Gift Show: John Pomp Glass

I want to talk more about the Campana Brothers, because those chairs are from 2003 and produced in limited editions. They’ve come out with some more recent stuff that I think will also have a waterfall effect in home design (next post). If you are wondering where to find the chairs featured here MossOnline, ExtremeMoss, carries them or you can go directly to the Campana Brothers website.

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Webkinz. As Alison Zisko reported 2.11.08 for trade journal Home Furnishings News, “For the uninitiated, Webkinz, manufactured by Ganz, are small plush toys that come with a secret code that unlocks a secure Web site, enabling children to take care of a virtual pet online. It offers games, trivia questions and all sorts of ways for children to mind the health and well being of their pet, as well as create and decorate rooms for it on the computer. Webkinz are introduced periodically. Introduced in April 2005, they retail for around $12.95 apiece.”

The article further states ,”“We sold almost half a million dollars in Webkinz last year,” said David Calcaterra, vice president of Thrifty Florist, which operates 16 of the combined flower and gift shops in the metropolitan Detroit region. “People bought other things. In the month of December, it made a difference.”

So far what they are talking about is the selling of the stuffed animals, Webkinz, themselves. What about actual products that license them. Seems like a terrific boost to sales of anything i.e. bedding, tabletop items themselves, furniture, pajamas….lunchboxes, backbacks. It’s a thought, or more like a recommendation. I haven’t checked into licensing the product myself, not yet.

I will say that it is one of those things Moms are recommending to other Moms and is a topic of conversation between Moms….always a surefire way of seeing the beginnings of something very big.

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Mother Nature never loses her ability to inspire, be it the poet, the artist, the photographer, the designer…her wonders never cease.. So this next entry, certain to create buzz, comes with a double whammy: inspiring and useful.

This shelving system is quite literally based on the honeycomb as a design element. By Clive Wilkenson and introduced at the Milan Furniture Fair ‘07, you can find out more at their website, Quinzeandmilan.tv.

Here’s their description of the design:

“Honeycombs, one of the oldest architectural concepts known, inspired this design of a flexible shelving system. The individual units are made from rotation-molded thin walled polyethylene resulting in an exceptional transparency and rigidity. A straightforward riveting system allows for an efficient and reversible installation with unlimited and flexible compositions.
HONEYCOMB, which was developed together with Intelligent Design, ensures an enhanced structural capacity that allows stacking up to 7 meters in two directions and even allow the removal of units within a built wall to create ‘windows’. So keep your things in place, your peeping neighbors out or your friends in and make your own humming environment… Available in orange (honey), green (mint), red (cherry), light grey, white and black - or email us for custom colour requests.”

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I have a prediction for me for 2008 and that is that this is going to be a year of firsts; everything I am coming across of late just tops it all. This latest one is from Discovery News and I think I’ll be throwing many things out once this gets to market cause it solves just about all of my desktop organizational problems; Smart Quickie Notes Organize Themselves (and other uses for RFID tags): an official solution to the ubiquitous Post-It-Note.

Read On….

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I have a confession to make. I am a pile person…the sort of person who can magically pull that precise piece of paper from an unsuspecting pile and who, when all piles have been organized and filed, can’t find anything. Don’t ask me about this skill. It remains a mystery to me. And while I also confess to being pleased at how my work style still manages to pull everything together, I do ponder dreamily of the paperless office.

I would like for Bill Gates and his cohorts to approve of me.

So to that end, I have searched the globe and the internet tirelessly in hopes of finding the “perfect workspace,” “the perfect storage/file system.” I have even at one point tried a professional organizer with some success, and had a brief encounter with a pre Blackberry Palm Pilot. Then I took a stab at creating my own calender system having been an avid student of the Franklin Planner System, then the Franklin Covey Planner System, and now the At-A-Glance Quick Notes Planner (I still need the written word). It is a subject of great pride for me that I got my daughter started on a planner system when she was in middle school.
Professionally I work with several companies on creating storage and organizational products for home, home office, office and back to school (including dorm storage).

So as you see, I am a passionate consumer as well as creator of storage and organizational products and things….that said, I do believe I have found the perfect workspace and organizational system to, alas, put to rest the anxiety of this self proclaimed clutterphile and become, ahhhh, organized. Here is my perfect officespace, compliments of Ikea. What’s yours?

If you need a little help, check out Ikea’s Small business guide. It helps you organize your thoughts by getting you to understand want you wnat to achieve out of your space, then you can build it out from there, all online. And their tips and recommendations for workspace stations helps to direct your focus. In fact exploring Ikea’s Workspace Solutions in general is like chicken soup for the clutterphile’s soul, beginning with the small business solutions, making a pit stop at De-Clutter and Organize and then moving on to any other spaces you may want to organize with images of totally cool spaces and the product that fills them from every room of your home.

Let me know how it goes….maybe I should do a before and after myself since this is something I plan to get under control for 2008 and there’s no time like the present to get started.

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