San Francisco Design Week Open Studios - Tuesday

Last week here in the Bay Area was San Francisco Design Week- hosted by AIGASF. Though I found out a bit too late to attend the more formal design events, but on Tuesday and Thursday evening, many of the design studios in SF opened their spaces up to the public, and Jake, Monika, and I made a trip out to see as many of them as possible. Amongst the inevitable wine, cheese, and pretentious banter was the air of creative thinking and the expectation that these spaces will bring about awesome ideas.

Tuesday: IDEO, Adaptive Path, FuseProject, HOT Studio, New Deal Design, Ammunition

IDEO's studio was right on the waterfront, at Pier 28. While the space looked interesting enough, it isn't the home base in Palo Alto- something I'm going to have to make some time to try and see. Too much of the studio was closed to public and cameras to really enjoy it I think.

Adaptive Path is a experience design and branding firm, not our focus here, but they have a wide open space, and gave an informative tour.



We agreed that our favorite studio from the night was the one opened by FuseProject. Yves Behar did not make and apprearance, and though some spaces were closed to the public, it was only through this screen of grass-like plastic rods, so it was visible, if not accessible.



In the basement, there was this incredible materials wall, with samples of just about anything you could think of to make something out of- for inspiration when designing.



There was a slide show on the work they had been doing, and a large number of projects out on display for visitors to gawk at. So Big Name Studio + Great Show of Work + Great Accommodation for Visitors = Winner!

Hot Studio had one of the coolest spaces we saw that week- a loft-style layout with offices up top and a two-story corridor running down the middle. Would be an awesome place to have to go to every day, I just wish they did product design there.



New Deal Design was a small space, but the entire studio was open to the public. Individual workspaces, meeting rooms, project areas, all could be fully explored. I hadn't heard of them before, but I recognized many of their products. They have done all the netgear modems and routers, and most high profile, all of those Dell computers that look awesome, but aren't really sold much on the website.

Its a real shame, but Dell waited too long to get these on the market, and people already associate Dell with bad build quality and proprietary parts. But anyway- cool looking computers.



Unfortunately we were already behind schedule by the time we hit New Deal, and Ammunition was another 8 blocks out of the way (excuses, excuses) so we did not get to see their probably awesome studio.

I hope this gave you a look into some of the really neat spaces where creative folks work- and when I'm working in one soon, I'll invite you over to check it out. I'll give you the rundown on Thursday's Open Studios soon!