Okay, I don’t really know if this one is a trend or not; I just think it’s really cool. Years ago when my family visited Disneyland we went to Mickey’s Land, or whatever it was called at the time. It was where all the cartoons lived and was opened right on the heels of the successful “Who Framed Roger Rabbit”. One of the parts that really impressed me was Minnie Mouse’s house. It was a cartoon styled house you could walk around inside. You could see all her rooms including her bedroom with its cartoon styled bed and cartoon styled dresser. In her kitchen was even a cartoon styled refrigerator you could open to reveal cartoon styled milk cartons and steaks! I loved it. I’ve always loved such attention to detail.
I’ve always thought that a child would love to have his/her room designed in this same way. Everything would be “swoopy” and brightly colored. I’ve been waiting for years for someone to do it.
Back in the nineties I did a project for Darigold, a Northwest dairy company. The small retail outlet featured a circus theme, with cows as the performers. Upstairs was a self-guided video tour of the dairy factory. Here I put the tv monitors inside cartoon-styled cabinets, based on my love of Minnie Mouse’s house. The video, produced by a Seattle based advertising firm, had a clutzy scientist moving around a kitchen that was……….you guessed it, cartoon-styled, just like Minnie’s house!
Finally, after years of waiting, I stumbled upon Dust Furniture from Indiana. This company has decided to venture into stylized furniture based on cartoons for children’s rooms. It’s about darned time!
Checkout some of their stuff; it’s pretty cool. I could see this stuff in more rooms than just for kids. Think about one iconic bookshelf in an office, or a retail store! Oh wait….I may be giving out a design secret I would want to use in the future. Forget you’ve seen anything and move along.
Dust Furniture can be reached at www.dustfurniture.com
Speaking of design, sustainability and furniture, I can’t help but think of a Cleveland company that reclaims wood from structures and designs them into furniture. A Piece of Cleveland http://www.apieceofcleveland.com . They will even do hours of research on a building to get the history of the piece.
I have written about APOC several times! Chris and his team do a great job. They started out making stuff like cutting boards, but are now doing a ton of cool stuff. I just saw a commercial kitchenette downtown all done in reclaimed wood. It was awesome!
I have to say this is a interesting post.