TEN QUESTIONS, TEN ANSWERS: Isak
THE SCANDINAVIAN GRAPHIC DESIGNER and illustrator, Sandra Isaksson, has been designing lifestyle products for her label Isak since 2006. She lives with her partner and sons Theo, 5 (pictured left reading with Sandra) and Eden, 8 months - his new bedroom is pictured bottom - in the beautiful, historic English town of Arundel. Her Isak products focus largely on eating and drinking, as well as a growing range of illustrated posters, textiles and wallpaper (her penguin design is pictured below) for children…
LittleBig: What do you want your kids’ products to say?
Sandra Isaksson: I want them to be user-friendly and kind, the kind of things you want to look after and save for your own children when you grow up.
LB: How has having children made you more design-aware?
SI: Without them I would never have started to design for children. Yes, through their needs I have become more design-aware. Or its made me understand what was lacking out there.
LB: What influences have you tapped into in your designs for children?
SI: My childhood! I was brought up by a family of trolls in the heart of a Swedish forest. Summers were spent sculpting clouds and painting rainbows. In the winters I carved with wind and whittled skybears from snowflakes. I want my children to be as blueberry kissed and filled with magic as I was.
LB: Why your (initial) focus on tableware?
SI: Because I like to eat! And cook! And all my childhood memories are around food and the pleasures of sitting down with family, talking and eating. We had great fun going fishing with granddad, berry and mushroom picking with grandma, coming home and cooking it and sitting down and eating it. We did
proper things, ran around naked in the woods and swam in lakes. My grandparents grew their own veg, went hunting in the woods for meat. And Swedes love eating in the garden! Read the rest of this article
Posted 3 June 2009 in Designer Profiles
REAL LIFE, EAST SUSSEX: Florence’s Rooms
WE ARE JUST A LITTLE bit envious of Nubie owner Amanda’s 2-year-old daughter Florence. For this is her bedroom and playroom at her home in East Sussex, filled with goodies that Amanda has sourced for her modern kids’ goods boutique.
“We moved house when our daughter Florence was just 6 weeks,” explains Amanda. “This isn’t something I’d recommend when you have raging nesting hormones plus I was also in the process of setting up Nubie with Mischa my business partner. The up side though was that as we sourced products for Nubie I also took the opportunity to choose things for Flo’s nursery.” The décor evolves around the zebra cot made by ninetonine, which Amanda spotted at the Kids Modern show in Dulwich. “It was love at first sight! Not only is it creative and fun, but beautifully and thoughtfully made, with great detailing such as slanted bars and wheels. Florence just adores it and feeds and pats it.” Read the rest of this article
Posted 18 May 2009 in Real Life Interiors
TOP SHOP: Mini Moderns Shoppe
THE BOYS AT MINI MODERNS - they of the Modernist-influenced wallpapers, dinnerware and soft furnishings for kids - have finally opened their own online shop - in recognition that their customers around the world were keen to get their hands directly on the boys’ goods. The Shoppe - contains Keith Stephenson and Mark Hampshire’s best-selling wallpapers, £38 a 10 metre roll, including the newest number and our current favourite, the ‘Sitting Comfortably?’ print - featuring images of modern chair classics - in a warm buttercup yellow, as well as their brand new shopper, £20, available in ‘Are You Sitting Comfortably?’ in black 
(see right), ‘Do You Live In A Town?’ in milk chocolate and ‘Six of One’ in pear green, (LittleBig’s Ed has been using her black bag for the last few months). Plus look out for four new wallpaper designs later this year (they’re currently being printed), and a range of stationery is in the offing too… Mini Moderns’ desire to manufacture and print all their products ethically within the UK (using water based inks and sustainable papers) means a relatively slow new-launch process - but this just adds to their appeal.
*And don’t forget to see some of their prints transformed into DIY sewing kits for Clothkits
Posted 7 May 2009 in Shop Watch
LITTLEBIG LOVES… Center Parcs. Yes, really.
By Jenny Dalton
“I THINK IT’S LIKE a secret club,” says Tara Bernerd of interior designer outfit Target Living. “The more people you ask the more admit they’ve been, but no one really talks about it.”
No, we’re not talking rehab, but Center Parcs. This, says Tara over lunch, includes her nephews and nieces who have been with Bernerd (her sister isn’t brave enough), who herself fell for the place during her research into Center Parcs’ major interior re-design renovation project, which her design company is spearheading. It also includes one of Tara’s new clients: the head of a huge telecommunications company, who took his son for his birthday.
Yes, you heard right. Center Parcs, in a bid to seal its status as the new, cool eco destination for caring parents around the country who are keen on lowering their carbon footprint whilst giving their kids a traditional yet safe ‘outdoorsy’ holiday, brought in the fashionable design team behind Marco, the Marco Pierre White restaurant in Chelsea, and Aspinall’s casino last year to renovate a good proportion of its more upmarket lodges. And luckily Tara, who loves a luxury development, gets equal kicks out of lower-budget design challenges, which she manages to carry out in her own inimitable style whilst avoiding a Read the rest of this article
Posted 14 April 2009 in Travel
REAL LIFE EXTERIOR, NEW ENGLAND
SIXX DESIGN‘S Robert and Cortney Novogratz know families (they have seven kids, including two sets of twins) and they know houses (they’ve been renovating them all their married life). And so it was an obvious thing to share their knowledge in a book about renovating chic family homes that is genuinely useful. Our favourite tips from Downtown Chic (released the end of April, see sneak peek visuals below) include getting to flea markets before 6am, because all the best stuff goes before then; probing your local restaurant owners as to where they source their functional, stainless steel kitchens; go to the design fairs which are now open to the public as well as design professionals; don’t overextend yourself on your holiday home and do rent it out to help pay the bills. But although Robert and Read the rest of this article
Posted 26 March 2009 in Real Life Interiors
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