NYCxDesign ran May 14–20 this year, New York City's official design week. It's a citywide festival rather than a single venue: more than 250 events across the five boroughs, ten design disciplines, two trade fairs, a day-long AI summit, and a packed calendar of talks, tours, and product launches folded into seven days. We spent the week moving between the opening party, the ICFF show floor, a couple of Women in Design meetups, and IDSA's circular design celebration. Here's what we saw and what we're carrying back into the studio.
The opening party
The festival kicked off with a party that set the tone for the week, hands down the most lavish event of the festival. It's a good warm-up — equal parts reunion and reconnaissance for the week ahead.
ICFF and Afternoon Light
The festival's two big fairs. We walked in with a prediction: this would be the year of blobby, hard furniture. The floor confirmed it. Rounded, oversized forms turned up across booths — chunky tubular frames, soft-looking silhouettes carved from solid ash and oak, edges rolled until the wood read almost like clay.
For a studio that works in all kinds of materials, a fair like ICFF is always a great materials read. The pull toward heavy, sculptural wood says a lot about where product and furniture design are heading: away from thin, minimal lines and toward weight, warmth, and tactility. We saw the same instinct in the lighting, where designers leaned on texture and saturated color rather than the clean white forms of a few years ago.
This was Sherry Chiu's second year walking the fair, and it felt a little quieter than the last. Past a certain point, the sheer volume starts to blur together, and individual pieces lose their edge. Even so, ICFF stays on our calendar — we've gone every year, and we plan to keep it that way.
The standout: Women in food design panel
The moment that stuck with us came from an unexpected corner. At the Women in Design "Taste Makers" panel, three designers talked about how they each found their way into food design — through education, performance art, and catering. Marjorie Artieres, Amanda Huynh, and Emilie Baltz walked through work that ranged from ice cream you play like a musical instrument, to squid-ink pasta shaped like bike chains, to plates so finely made that guests kept trying to eat them.
It was a reminder that design reaches further than most people assume. It was fun to hear about the design principles we use everyday - how something is made, how it feels in the hand, how a material behaves applied to a dinner plate or a frozen dessert.
Community: Women in Design and IDSA
A good chunk of the week happened away from the show floors. We proudly co-sponsored the Women in Design's "Sip & Belong" meetup, a community of incredible people that we strongly believe in and support.
We also stopped by IDSA's circular design celebration, which put sustainability and end-of-life thinking at the center of the conversation. It's a topic we think about constantly: a product's footprint is set long before it reaches a shelf, in the choices around materials, manufacturing, and how easily something can be repaired or recycled. Seeing a full room organized around circular design suggests it's moving from a talking point to a working constraint.
What we're taking away
A few threads ran through the week. Furniture and product design are getting heavier and more tactile, with solid wood and saturated, textured finishes replacing thin minimalism. Sustainability is shifting from a label to a design requirement, with circularity driving real decisions. And the most interesting work is coming from designers applying industrial design thinking to places you might not expect it.
We left the week with sore feet, a full camera roll, and a longer list of people we're glad to know. And, somewhere along the way, a six-foot baguette. That's about the best outcome a design week can offer.
Working on a physical product and thinking about materials, manufacturing, or a full product family? Let's talk.
