Original post and photos by Pablo Enriquez. Used in partnership with Apartment Therapy Tech.

Give us a little info on your background. I make drawings and images for books, posters, packaging, advertising, animation, and magazines, which I’ve been doing for nearly 10 years. I stumbled upon illustration in a roundabout way. It started with a Graphic Design elective in the School of Mass Communication at the University of Colorado, Boulder. The instructor of that course, Michael Signorella, offered me a job on the last day of class. I went to work the very next day, skipping my graduation ceremony to go start designing and spent three years learning on the job the ins and outs of typography, visual communication, color, and composition. I entered school as a music major, playing drums, so it’s anyone’s guess that nearly 18 years later I would be a visual artist and designer. I moved to New York in 2002 and it’s there that I eventually quit working as a full-time designer and started my own one-man business as an artist, illustrator, and letterer.

Tell us about yourself and your work: what you’re passionate about, what inspires you, and where you’re going. My work is a mix of drawings, and painted and inked shapes that are scanned into my Mac and then pieced together into a final illustration. I most often look back to mid-century designers, vintage children’s books, tattered record sleeves, and old-fashioned book jackets for inspiration. The goal is for my work to be truthful to what is happening in this moment — reflect contemporary culture — while holding on to some simplicity and innocence embodied by images used in commercial art of the past. Since I wasn’t formerly trained as an artist, a lot of what I do is rough around the edges, so to speak, and I think there’s something to be said for approaching art and design from an indirect or obtuse route — working around limitations and personal quirks to solve a visual problem. I’m currently illustrating and writing children’s books and hope to have kids of my own someday. If all goes to plan, my kids will have a library of books made by their dad. In addition to my books and other commercial work for print, I’ve been directing and designing animated videos and I’m excited to see where that goes.

Today’s clue in the “Everywhere in Your Day” contest at the Herman Miller Store takes flight thanks to Fredericks & Mae, the art/design team of Jolie Mae Signorile and Gabriel Fredericks Cohen. Based in Brooklyn, the duo met after forming a “materials crush” on each other as students at Oberlin College. When they moved to New York City in 2008, they began collaborating on projects and soon found success with a series of decorative arrows hand-crafted from wood, feathers, thread, and gold or silver. “We became interested in the idea of making objects that had a muddled heritage,” explains Gabe. “We started looking at things that popped up in different places around the world, seemingly at the same time, and how those objects would then appear in other places and change over time and space.” The result is the studio’s current collection of objects for the home, garden, and sky — board games, kites, bocce balls, and a skim board included — whose ancestry can be traced throughout history and in several spots across the earth.

“The first real collection we did as a company was War Games, which started when Jolie came back from a trip to Greece and had played a ton of Backgammon,” says Gabe. The two started researching — a critical component in their creative process — and found out that Backgammon is the oldest known board game, with excavations in Iran showing a similar game existing there around 3000 BC. “The way games like these adapt to suit cultures as they move through the world — via colonialism, missionary work, or just as a natural extension of exploration — is exciting to us,” he says.

Their research also revealed the inspiration for the collection’s name: the Buddha games list, the earliest known listing of games. Dating back to the 6th or 5th century BC, it is reputed to be a naming of games Gautama Buddha would not play. “War activities are lumped in on that list,” says Gabe. “We started noting that most games take warfare as a format — capturing land, killing your opponent, etc.” The concept resonated, especially in conjunction with the idea that games are a communal activity in which family and friends gather to play together and feel close. “But games almost always produce a winner and a loser, so these communal activities differentiate and separate people. That became interesting to us as we were figuring out what to create,” says Gabe.

The studio’s focus on research also produced a collection of kites that mix new materials with traditional shapes. “We started with kite heritage in the UK and traced it back to India and to China. They appeared all over the place,” says Gabe. He says the diversity of kite applications beyond recreation was surprising. “Kites are used in fishing, to get lures past waves in the ocean. They have agricultural applications for spreading seeds. There was the famous electricity experiment. And kites were the real precursor to aeronautics; the Wright Brothers were incredible kite makers,” he explains. “I read once that kites are ‘tethered aircraft.’ It’s a beautiful way to describe how peculiar they are.”

Some of Fredericks & Mae’s current kite offerings combine silk-screened Indian kite paper in the shape of a British diamond kite. “The form is nostalgic, but in a new material vocabulary that hopefully creates a little confusion around what the heritage of this particular object could be,” says Gabe.

A love for summer and time spent on the beaches in the Rockaways in Queens inspired the duo’s Endless Summer collection. “It’s mostly about Jolie and me feeling enthusiastic about summer. A lot of these products — Skim Board, Beach Tennis — have been brewing for a long time,” says Gabe. The objects also reflect Fredericks and Mae’s “muddled origins” theme. “Beach life and beach culture has a funny consistency all over the place, but it obviously looks different in different countries,” he explains. “That’s what we’re tapping into.”

Learn more about Fredericks & Mae at fredericksandmae.com. To find the clue inspired by the art/design team in our Everywhere in Your Day contest, visit the Herman Miller Store and enter for a chance to win several prizes, including an Eames Lounge Chair and Ottoman.

Photos: Darroch Putnam

Can you give us a little info on your background? I graduated from Rhode Island School of Design in 2002. I work as an illustrator and pattern designer in Brooklyn, New York. I do editorial work for newspapers and magazines like The New York Times, The Washington Post, Food & Wine, and Bloomberg Businessweek. I also make patterns and have a range of products like wallpaper, stationery, and fabric and make patterns for companies like Anthropologie, Urban Outfitters, and Crate and Barrel. I authored and co-authored The Where, the Why and the How, Farm Anatomy, The Exquisite Book, and Drawn In and am currently working on a book about New York City that will come out next year. I’m also part of a three-person company called ALSO with designer Jenny Volvovski and animator Matt Lamothe.

Tell us about yourself and your work: what you’re passionate about, what inspires you, and where you’re going. Lately, I’ve become more interested in working on self-driven projects. Whether it’s a book project or a set of patterns, I like doing work that generated from my own ideas because it gives me complete freedom to do what I want. I’m currently trying to experiment with new mediums, too. I’ve always drawn with a tight pen line so lately I’ve been switching to a thicker brush and trying to loosen my work up a bit. I’d really like to push the handmade quality of my drawings and use the computer as little as possible.

Describe your studio space. What’s the aesthetic? What do you like or dislike about it? How is it different from your home office? The studio is great because it’s completely different from my home office. At home, I have a tiny room that’s basically closet-size and it’s always a complete mess. Sometimes you can’t see the floor because there are papers and drawings everywhere. I decided to have this second space because I wanted a cleaner place that I could go to to work on bigger projects, away from my computer. I bring my laptop to the studio, but mostly I come here to paint and draw. It’s about a 35-minute walk from my apartment in our Park Slope neighborhood to the studio in the area of Crown Heights. I like that it gives me an excuse to walk a little bit, especially now that the weather is getting so nice.

The space has really high ceilings and great light. There are two enormous windows and they look out over subway tracks. The train runs right outside the window every 20 minutes, only a few feet away. The first few times it happened I gasped because it comes so close.

Before Caroline and I moved in here, her boyfriend, designer Joel Speasmaker, shared it with Meredith and another designer. Joel left some of his stuff behind for us to use which includes shelves, flat files, and a giant ladder that they found. He has great taste, so we’re lucky that he’s lending his furniture to us.

The floor above us has another studio of our friends, illustrators/designers Josh Cochran, Mike Perry, and Jim Datz. It’s great to have them close by to visit or get coffee with.

Tell us about your studio mates. What are the advantages of sharing the space with Caroline and Meredith? What’s a typical day like? Do you influence or inspire each other? Caroline Hwang is an amazing illustrator and artist and Meredith Jenks is a super talented photographer. But honestly, we don’t see each other that much. We have such different schedules that it is pretty rare that all three of us are working here at the same time. The day we took these pictures was an exception.

Caroline is here nights and I get to see what she’s been doing when I get in the next day. Lately she’s been indigo-dying fabric which looks like a crazy science experiment. There are tubs filled with colored liquids lining one side of the studio. Her results are stunning, rich blue fabric pieces and color-saturated clumps of yarn hanging around the studio drying. She’s preparing for a big show coming up at Beginnings, a gallery she, Joel, and some other friends run in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Sometimes she’s working on illustrations in studio and she uses embroidery in most of her work. Her desk is full of string of every color and there’s bin under her desk full of hundreds of fabric pieces. I’m always peeking at her desk to see what she’s been up to, whether it’s a drawing for a New York Times article or a little zine she’s put together.

Meredith keeps absolutely tidy and it’s rare that I can tell what she’s been working on since it goes straight from her camera to the computer. The other day, though, I found a stack of gorgeous test proofs from a shoot in our recycling bin and had a hard time throwing them out. She’s able to really capture stories in her photos and they all have such beautiful bright palettes. One of my favorite photos of hers, that she hung behind her desk, is a photo of an abandoned ice cream cone that had fallen to the pavement. Caroline asked her if she set the whole thing up because it seemed to be such a perfectly captured moment, but Meredith said she just found it that way. It takes a really good eye to notice that something like that would make such a striking picture. Currently she’s traveling for a big editorial photo shoot of some famous chefs.

You have a few vintage Eames molded plywood dining chairs in the studio. Which chair is it, and why did you choose it? What do you like about it? In the middle of the studio, we have a little common area that has a table and a couple Eames molded plywood chairs. These we also got from Joel and were all in place when I arrived at the studio. I asked Joel where he got them and he told me he found them at a small furniture store in Richmond, Virginia, many years ago. I always eat my lunch at the middle table; they’re pretty comfortable.

Photo: Meredith Jenks

How did you get your start? When I was a child, my mom saw me creating drum sets and playing with pots and pans. So she had me begin piano lessons at the age at three. She loved taking family photos and listening to a wide variety of music, and she and my dad gave me my first Polaroid and toy portable record player, which I took everywhere. While growing up in Uniondale, Long Island — which at the time was a West Indian suburban neighborhood — my visual and musical sense became more pronounced. I heard and saw traditional, modern, suburban, and urban black-and-white cultures. My family also traveled extensively throughout my youth. Through all the adventures, I truly enjoyed the exposure, but I really wanted to create my own art and music.

When was your studio established? What led to that point? Years ago, while working in the corporate music industry as an artist and producer, I became frustrated with the struggle to define my art by the titles that my music didn’t fit. It became a daunting task to negotiate with the gatekeepers who tried to filter my vision. I was determined to create a genre that defined my musical style and interests. I also wanted to execute all aspects of my vision. To fully navigate the creative process under my own terms, I started The People’s Republic of Sound about four years ago to showcase my work as a complete musical, visual, and technical artist. My company’s first release is the video “I Got Love” in which I wrote, sang, and mixed the song, produced and played all the instruments, and directed, filmed, edited, and designed the video. I see myself as an artist who starts with the thought, builds out the concept, and executes my total vision from beginning to end.

Tell us about your work: what you’re passionate about, what inspires you, and where you’re going. Right now I am passionate about merging moving images and music as one complete thought made by the same person. Technology now allows me that option. I don’t have to hire a video director, graphic designer, or photographer. I can produce all the things I want without any interference.

I am inspired by various sources. Museum exhibition inspires my music, be it photography, films, sculpture, art, or dance. Photography mainly influences my film work, and sometimes music inspires my photography. I’m also very much into Polaroid photography, and have two SX 70s that I love to shoot with.

Science, design, and architecture are my secret passions. How is it made, how can it be made, what are the effects on our future, our culture, and humanity — these are questions that underline my work. My favorite visual artists are Chris Ofili, Bansky, Chuck Close, and Ron Mueck. Architects and designers Ray and Charles Eames, David Adjaye, and Santiago Calatrava shape my work. In film and video, I am inspired by the moody and futuristic tones of directors Chris Cunningham, Michel Gondry, Stanley Kubrick, Spike Lee, and Ernest Dickerson. Japanese cyberpunk animation like Ghost in the Shell and Appleseed influences my style; I like how humans interact with technology. In music, my taste is so varied: Gregory Porter, Radiohead, Aphex Twin, John Mayer, The Spinners with Philippe Wynne, Prince, Wolfgang Gartner, Crosby Stills and Nash, James Taylor, Bjork, and The Gorillaz. Brazilian soul music and anything with soul moves me. I also use Pinterest as a source of inspiration to collect, tell, and define my style.

Tell us about your space. How would you define your aesthetic? What do you like or dislike about it? With my company, I’m trying to redefine a creative person — to make a boutique multimedia label based around one person. The space I live presently is not ideal. When I bought the house, my girlfriend and I had to rent out the top two floors. I was going to put a studio in the basement, but I wanted to have some natural light. At the moment this is a temporary space until I take over the floor above me; I’ll then turn it into one big visual and music studio. In the meantime, I created a small workstation much like a graphic designer’s and less like musician’s, which I’ve grown to like. Space is very challenging, because on occasion, clients come over or I need to record vocals late at night while my girlfriend is sleeping. Again, it’s temporary. I’m working on making it more modern with an organic, warm feel and a touch of cyberpunk.

You have a SAYL chair in the office. Why did you choose it? I decided to buy a task chair because I sit a lot and my back was beginning to hurt me. I wanted to buy something that was the right price with great quality. I was used to the Aeron chair in bigger recording studios, but wanted something smaller and lighter for this small space. I was always a big Herman Miller fan. (I still have dreams about the Eames lounge chair.) I love the SAYL’s futuristic design, which is unlike any other chair on the market. It fits just like any other Herman Miller chair: supportive and comfortable, yet easy to maintain. The design fits well with my modern aesthetic — I just fell in love with it. You don’t know how much strain you are putting on your back until you get a good chair and you feel the relief. And I love that it photographs well, too.

Photos: Thomas Piper; Tie by Pomi Power

1. How long have you worked from home? And where is home? I started doing freelance illustration upon graduating from Pratt Institute in 2007. I have an apartment in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, that I share with my wife, Morgan Elliott, who is also an illustrator. I typically do editorial and print illustration for clients like The New Yorker, The New York Times, or McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, though I have also done work as different as designing billboards for Puma or drawing patterns for dishware.

2. Describe your style? How would you define your aesthetic? That’s tough! I probably need a few drinks to answer this accurately. I’m typically attracted to an essentialized aesthetic, which is what I aim for in my illustration as well. I try to make every line count; no decoration or superfluous marks are allowed. The same goes for my living and workspace, I suppose!

3. As an illustrator with multiple clients how do you keep your office organized? I’m thinking here of the physical space but also your computer. Are there any particular programs you find really useful? Living in New York, I (along with everyone else in the city) am forced to make every square foot of my apartment count. My poor office shelving is working overtime to help me keep supplies, sketchbooks, papers, and everything else in order. A system that works for me is: whatever I’m not using at any given moment immediately goes back into storage. This helps me keep everything organized while at the same time opening up my workspace. As for my computer, I have developed a system where work is categorized first by client, then by year, then by assignment. Each assignment folder has all the reference, sketches, versions and finals.

4. Is there any piece of home office furniture you covet? I’ve always wanted an Eames Storage Unit. It would make organizing papers and supplies so much easier. I also need to bite the bullet and get a laptop at some point soon!

5. What is a desk accessory you can’t do without? I have a vintage Dazor drafting lamp that I’ve come to depend on. It’s a classic, the same kind that illustrators have used since the 1940s. It gives off the crispest light that is perfect for keeping my eyes focused on the detail of what I’m drawing; it’s also articulated in such a brilliant way that I can get light from any direction.

The other office item that I can’t do without is this turn of the century drafting table, which was manufactured at an engineering school in Worcester, Massachusetts. The angle of the top is adjustable, as is the height, making it perfect for every medium. Mine was a gift from Morgan’s father, who remembers his father (an illustrator) working on one exactly like it. Back in the 40s and 50s, there was a resurgence of interest in this kind of classic drafting table; apparently, all the young illustrators in New York and Westport, Connecticut would use them and refer to it as “working on the board.”

6. What would you change about your own workspace? I’m actually pretty satisfied with my workspace; I think that in New York, once you spend a few years doing paintings while sitting on your bed or hunched over the kitchen sink, you’re thankful for even an empty corner! But if I could change anything, more space would be nice. And yes, I did once spend a year in a studio apartment doing paintings over the kitchen sink.

7. What do you most love about your space? I get great sunlight and fresh air through two big windows. That makes such a huge difference when I’m working! It also allows me to have plants in my work area, which makes the space more inviting.

8. What inspires you? Oh, anything, everything… mostly drawing in my sketchbook or reading fiction and philosophy. Going out for long walks in the city never fails to inspire me, too.

With healthcare top of mind right now it seemed timely to include an interview with Jay Parkinson, the co-founder of Future Well. Parkinson is a pediatrician and preventive medicine specialist with a masters in public health from Johns Hopkins. He works from his apartment in Brooklyn and hopes to make the country not just healthier but also happier.

First tell us about Future Well. The site is only a few months old and like a lot of start-ups you’re working from home. How much time do you spend in your home office? The Future Well is a creative firm that marries the worlds of design and health. We identify creative opportunities within the health space and design beautiful solutions that positively impact health and happiness. Sometimes we identify the opportunity and find the right partners to execute it and sometimes we build it ourselves. Other times, we help guide clients so the product/service is simple, elegant, and wrapped up with a business strategy that leverages their core competencies.

Health needs products and services that make optimizing our health and happiness fun, easy, and, most importantly, simple. This applies to to the traditional healthcare industry as well as this new consumer space we’re calling health creation. So we work with some traditional companies as well as companies who are looking to enter the consumer health space.

We launched The Future Well in the beginning of February after I left Hello Health and Grant Harrison left Humana as VP of Innovation. Scott Switzer, the co-founder of Open X is our third partner.

I actually spend a ton of time in my home working on my laptop. In fact, it’s by far the unhealthiest thing I do in my life. I want to be active as I work. Just think if we could replace sitting with moderate activity! So many people sit for 8 hours staring at glowing rectangles. It’s really a public health problem. What if we could replace just one of those 8 hours with activity? Our nation would shed billions of pounds!

How would you describe your workspace? What is the design aesthetic? I’m a minimalist and don’t want to have any more space than I really need. If I don’t use something on a weekly basis, it doesn’t exist in my home or office. I’d much rather buy experience than things. And I have this thing for symmetry. So I feel a bit weird buying two of everything, but I like the balance. My space also has to be bright and happy. The natural lighting has to be magical and blanket the most important parts of a room.

I also love photography. I consider myself a photographer so I tend to hang photos I’ve taken of my friends or people I love. And I can’t let go of my roots. I grew up in rural Missouri and my grandfather had a zoo of taxidermy in his trophy room– so I convinced him to give me a few of them. I have a javelina and a reedbuck. I also a dog and don’t want him sitting home alone for hours on end. So I really enjoy working from my home and don’t see us getting an office space anytime soon. We’d all like to keep the structure of The Future Well as decentralized as possible. Nowadays, so many things can be done virtually. I think the definition of “workspace” is significantly changing.

Does anyone else use your home office? Does my dog count? He uses it as a play space but only when I’m trying to get serious work done. Scott and I sometimes meet here to do some work, but that’s rare.

How do you organize the space? Since I don’t have many things and mostly work only on my MacBook, I try to arrange a room to maximize open space. I have a long and narrow Brooklyn apartment so furniture is arranged to feel like I have more open space than I really do. Many people have walked into my apartment and asked if I just moved in!

What impact do you think color has on a workspace? There are happy, productive colors and sad, distracting colors. The color of a workspace should surely be designed for happiness– because productivity and creativity stem from happiness.

What desk accessory can’t you do without? I’m such a minimalist, I don’t even have a desk! So I’d have to say my MacBook. But next to my sofa I have two Bisley file cabinets where I hide things when I’m not using them. They’re beautiful little storage pieces that hold more than they should. I have two white ones next to my bed as well. When you live in a small space, creative storage is key. I couldn’t live without those Bisley’s cleaning up the clutter of my space.

Is there a piece of furniture you’d love to replace? I’d love to replace my sofa as my primary workplace. I’m on a mission this weekend to find a standing desk, drafting table, or maybe even a pulpit!

What inspires you? People who design elegantly simple things in response to questioning the status quo. I’m so frustrated by health and healthcare in America. I truly believe being healthy can be so much easier if we rethink our physical environment, what it means to receive and pay for healthcare, the supply of food we eat, and the small changes we can make in our life that make a huge impact on a person’s sustainable health and happiness. Our nation’s health has been quickly deteriorating. If we want to improve our health, we have to use good design as a trojan horse to create things that make a healthy lifestyle as easy as possible.

Matt Hickman, is a freelance journalist and consultant who covers lifestyle, design and green-living. I talked to him about his Brooklyn home office.

How long have you worked from home? I’ve worked from home on and off for six years — half of which was spent as a graduate student. Home/work for the past three years has been a two bedroom, fourth floor walk-up apartment in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn. Red Hook, a heavily industrial waterfront area was once marked by gangster grittiness of all stripes … first the mafia and later urban gangs. The waterfront area is now infamous as a haven for working artists, designers, and writers since it’s slightly off the grid. Geographically, Red Hook is no Siberia but the lack of a convenient subway stop keep the rents low. Everyone seems to know each other and the smattering of bars, restaurants, and boutiques are predominately run or staffed by locals. There’s an organic farm, community gardens growing in vacant lots, historic longshoreman bars, waterfront parks and piers, and, um, an IKEA [the frame below in Matt's entryway is from IKEA]. I couldn’t imagine working from any where else … although it is refreshing to shed the pajamas every so often and attend proper meetings.

What does a ‘normal’ day entail? An average work day revolves a lot of moving around from bed to desk to couch to a stool in the kitchen. Lots of “walk” breaks and trips to Fairway market for lunch. Workdays kind of flow on and on, starting early and ending late. I spend a lot of time looking out my windows and thinking since there’s great light, little noise, and few distractions. I have city views and a full-frontal view of Statue of Liberty sitting in the lower New York Harbor. During late summer afternoons, I charge my laptop, grab a a blanket, and head to my roof where I get WiFi.

Is there any form of technology that helps you? My MacBook desktop is cluttered with Sticky Notes, otherwise my virtual organization habits are pretty minimal. I keep an old fashioned paper calender. IM is my virtual water cooler. Since I do miss the daily interaction of being in a proper office full-time, saying hello to friends and colleagues while taking a work break is a godsend (most of the time).

How do you organize your space? Is there a desktop tool you can’t do without? Working from my living and bedrooms, I have to keep everything organized and in-order (organizing and cleaning and redecorating is my ultimate work-from-home procrastination tool). Public radio is usually on at all hours and there’s a steady supply of caffeine in the fridge. Magazines and books (mostly fiction and memoir) are on hand for periodic recharging. Stamps, good pens, my Blackberry, and loose pieces of paper are all required in my work area. And then there’s cable television ….

What inspires you? Living in a creative enclave in the middle of the city really keeps the inspiration levels high. If I was working from home elsewhere in the city, I’d feel flat-out stifled, much more claustrophobic. It’s liberating (but, yes, at times lonely). I’m often inspired by — and frequently write about — the people around me … sustainable furniture designers, clothing designers, gardeners, art curators, dancers, web designers, eco-entrepreneurs, musicians, craftspeople. I don’t have to venture far. And I like that.