Sina met Derek Chen, the founder and designer behind Urbana, at a talk at the California College of Arts and Crafts here in San Francisco. He’s our peeps, largely because his studio is on the same block as Sina’s apartment where we started the company. He was kind enough to loan us his vases and trays for a photoshoot and to display in our DOWNTOWN booth.

People LOVED them. Press LOVED them. I think it’s the colors — they look like candy.

The most common question: “how does he do the color?” The answer: fabric, set underneath a resin. The second most common question: ‘Urbana is Derek’s hometown in Illinois.

See more Urbana.

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1. Design Public launch. We relaunched Edge*Modern as Design Public! We did this to focus our brand more on fresh new design and community (I’ve written more on the reasons elsewhere). To celebrate the launch and bring our designers and customers together, we threw a launch party in the super-cool DOWNTOWN space. You can view the party photos, featuring some designer cameos, in our slideshow gallery.
2. Apartment Therapy contest. We co-sponsored a party with Apartment Therapy during which they announced the winner of their “Smallest Coolest Apartment Contest”. You can view photos from the party in our online slideshow. The winner? Patrick! Thanks to Maxwell and Paul at AT for including us in their fun event.
3. The DOWNTOWN show. We sponsored DOWNTOWN, NY’s leading alternative design show. We felt that as an online source of fresh new design, DOWNTOWN was close to our mission and a natural partner. You can do a virtual walk-thru of the event online and check out how we built our exhibitors booth. Lastly, if you want more information on each DOWNTOWN exhibitor, be sure to check out our online DOWNTOWN section — we put the whole show online. There’s a lot of great emerging talent there! (Special thanks go out to Erich Ginder, Derek Chen at Urbana Design, Anthony Marshak at Modern Bamboo, Corbett and Jim at Variegated, and Amanda at Gus Design for filling our booth with such cool products!)
4. The ICFF show. We spent a lot of time over at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair. Again, you can view a nice virtual walk-thru of the ICFF online. Tired of slideshows? Then read Becky’s blog posts about her 24hrs at the show (she’s our newsletter editor).

Here’s what you can do: 1. whip up a bacon-egg-and-cheese on a roll sandwich (we ate them five days straight). 2. ride around your town in a cab. 3. view our photo gallery slideshows to get a taste of what happened at Design Downtown (New York’s off-site fringe design show), ICFF, and more. (Flash required)

If you want more information on any of the designers we’ve featured, just drop a line.