Sandra Backlund

Hello, hello! This is a special post for me, because it's my first day of self-employment! We decided it was time for me to move on from my architecture job in order to focus on Sub-Studio full time. We're very excited to see how things progress and are looking forward to spending some quality time on new projects!

Anyway, back to the blog: Sandra Backlund is a Swedish fashion designer whose work is more wearable art than every day fashion. I love Sandra's use of unusual materials (clothes pins?!) and the way that her knitted textiles are taken to the next level by becoming larger, rope-like pieces that are woven together to make the whole.

Sub-Studio NSS Booth

Whew! The NSS is finally over and I am home drinking peppermint tea and am ready to pass out...Overall it was a great experience and I met lots of really great people. It was exhausting and expensive, but well worth the effort. Just a few quick shots of our booth above - I am posing with the lovely ladies from JHillDesign, Ink & Wit, and RSVP Press, all of whom were great booth-mates. A contractor I've worked with previously built all of our wall panels and shelves - if you EVER need a contractor for a renovation you are doing in the NYC area, I highly, highly recommend him! Feel free to email me any time for his contact info!

By the way, a huge thank you to New York Magazine, Design*Sponge, Modish, and Design Milk for the write ups about our work, and to Venus Zine for the shout out to our little blog!

Regular posting will resume tomorrow...

Sub-Studio at the NSS

Phew...we're beat after spending all day yesterday and today setting up our booth for the NSS show. Sorry for not posting yesterday - setting up took a lot longer than expected! For the same reasons, there will most likely not be many posts until Thursday. Wish us luck at the NSS - it's our first time! If you're in NYC and are checking out the show, we're booth 2246 - come by and say hi!

Young Designers Market

We are in last minute prep for the National Stationary Show...which is right around the corner, YIKES! If you are visiting ICFF or the NSS, be sure to stop by our booth (#2246) to say hi!

Also, if you live in New York, I will be selling both Brevity jewelry and Sub-Studio cards, prints and our new Frame journals (above) at the Young Designers Market (268 Mulberry St. between Houston and Prince) tomorrow (Saturday) between 11am - 7pm.

Supermarket Interview

Ryan of Supermarket and Elsewares was kind enough to interview Sean and I about Sub-Studio and Brevity. You can check it out here.

Brevity website launch

Hi all! Hope you had a good weekend...I finally finished the website for Brevity, my line of jewelry, and launched it late last night. It features all of the original acrylic pieces, as well as brand new stainless steel versions. I hope you'll check it out and let me know what you think!

2007 Survey results

Before I push this off too long and it's suddenly 2008, I wanted to extend a huge thank you to everyone who participated in our 2007 survey! We really appreciated your taking the time to tell us a little bit about yourselves, and also the number of you who provided us input on what you like and what you'd like to see more of on the Sub-Studio Design Blog. Curious to know a little bit about our community of readers?

12% are between 21-24, 46% are between 25-29 (that's our age bracket, too!), 18% are between 30-34, 12% are between 35-39, 9% between the ages of 40-44, and 3% are over 50.

36% of our readers are male, and 64% are female.

While our most solid readership is in the United States, we are a very diverse crowd with respondents from S. Korea, Canada, Poland, Puerto Rico, Taiwan, Israel, Singapore, Australia, the UK and France! And our Google analytics stats show us that we have readers from 117 countries, which I think is just amazing!

Most of you like the blog as is (thanks!), and enjoy it for the variety of design that is presented and for the (mostly) affordable objects we highlight. We were surprised by the number of you that want to see more architecture projects on the site! There were also requests for more posts and slightly longer write ups about products, as well as one person's great observation that for a design site, the actual design of ours is fairly static...so starting in 2008, we will change up the banner each month. There were several technical suggestions which we would love to implement if we could figure out how to (previous/next buttons, directing people to similar posts that they might enjoy) A project that is in progress that many of you expressed interest in as well: interviews with our favorite artists/designers. That is something we hope to implement early next year.

Again, thank you so much for taking the time to fill out the survey, and for your encouragement and constructive criticism. We really appreciate our readers and love all the great comments and emails that we receive. We aren't always able to respond (something we are trying to improve), but we really do appreciate it!

We promised prints to three randomly chosen respondents (courtesy of random.org) - congrats Ron, Denisse and Mike! We'll be in touch!

Thank you cards above by Sesame Letterpress.

Notcot Gift Guide

Sean and I put together today's gift guide over at Notcot. It's filled with (mostly) affordable picks from our favorite designers. We hope you will check it out, along with the rest of the gift guide that Jean has worked so hard to put together...

Left to right: Decanter N°2 by Etienne Meneau, Full Contact Spice Grinder by Mint, and Bubble necklace by Brevity (yes, me!).

Happy holidays!

Last call

Hey, peeps! Thank you so much to all of you who have filled out our survey! We love the input that you have given us and are very much enjoying finding out a little bit more about who you all are. We will be closing the survey soon, so if you haven't already filled it out, now is your chance to do so! Don't forget, three randomly selected respondants will be able to choose the print of their choice from our store (22:28:09 - 22:31:00, from our Visible:Invisible series shown above).

2007 Survey

As you know, the Sub-Studio Design Blog is a little over a year old. Our readership has been steadily increasing (we have doubled our monthly readership since June) and Sean and I have always been curious as to who you all are! To help us find out - and in an effort to improve the SSDB - we've put together a quick survey (only ten questions, four of which are optional). We would really appreciate it if you took a minute to fill it out. We want to know what you like and don't like about the SSDB, so don't be shy (we went to architecture school - we're used to critiques)!

To thank you for filling out the survey (and for being such great readers) we are giving away three of our prints to three randomly chosen participants. The winners will get to choose between any of our hand-screened prints (detail of the Abyssal and Celestial Extinction prints above; see our store for other options). In order to be eligible for the prints, you will need to fill out the optional last question of the survey (where we ask for some piece of identifying information - email, name, or blog - otherwise how will we know who you are to give you the print?). The survey only allows for 100 participants, so be quick if you want a chance to win the prints.

Thanks again for all of your support over the last year - we love trolling the internet for the best design, and love the emails and comments that you send our way. Take the survey here.

Mapping the Way Exhibit

Sean and I are very excited about this weekend - we are heading up to New Hampshire tomorrow to attend the opening of our show at the Artstream Gallery. We are so thrilled to be in the company of these great artists - Susan Schwake, Heather Smith Jones, Edibeth Farrington, and Stephanie Levy. You can check out more images of the show here, and also on our process blog, Submerge.

Sub-Studio at the Shiny Squirrel

As promised, here are some product shots of the limited edition prints and cards we did for the Shiny Squirrel. The prints above are from the Kingdom Spirits Series and draw from ancient mythologies of supernatural animal-beings that roam the land, sea, and air. The cards below are from our Bloom Series. Jessica also will be selling a new print from our Celestial Extinction series. Congrats again to Jessica on a great launch. We hope to see you all at the launch party!