How is it that we looked up from our calendar and found ourselves in July?

Last time we checked we were preparing for Memorial Day and it’s already time to pack away our Fourth of July-themed BBQ attire!  We’ve been super busy with Muu and the challenges of raising young children– they are a joy but also have a magical ability to alter time and space.

That said, we wanted to share two recent articles that ran around Father’s Day.  As you may know, Muu was founded by parent and woodworker Robert Kwak and the idea for the collections came out of his experience as a new parent.  If you are frequent reader of modern parenting and/or design blogs such as ohdeedoh, daddytypes, or any of the number of other great resources, you know that it is an exciting time for children’s product design with so many parents creating great, functional products.  We feel that some of the best (we hope to write about our favorites soon) clearly come from a very personal experience, which for us translates into thoughtful items designed for how we really live.

At Muu that meant, for example, designing the Sam Twin Bed with storage in the headboard for your child’s favorite books–an idea that came from a brainstorming session where we shared stories about our children wanting to hear the same story over . . . and over . . . and, ahem, over . . . again, or designing the Sam Storage Unit without a lid that still hold plenty of books and toys.

When shopping for products, particularly nursery products, we always try to put them though our imaginary 2 A.M. Test: is this something that makes sense to you when you are sleep deprived and waking up for the 2 A.M. feeding?  Are the drawers (or buttons or latches or whatever you need to grab onto) in a place that makes sense in a dark room?  Are you trying to hold your child steady with one hand but forced to awkwardly feel around in two directions simultaneously for that last wipe wishing you had a third hand?  These are the kind of thoughts we ponder when designing our products.  It’s our belief that good design means safe and sensible design of quality products.  It doesn’t preclude playful warms and whimsical elements –just that those details are build on the foundation of things that just work.

With those reflections, here are several of the pieces that ran last month around father’s day –supporting the idea of parent-driven design:

The Babyzone featured us in their review of Dad-Made products they love:

Muu on Babyzone

Robert was also profiled by LilSugar.com and discussed the challenges and rewards of making Muu furniture here in the US:

Tags: press, Shamless Self-Promotion