News — Small

Remodelista regulars no doubt have admired the work of George & Willy. They’re the cute, young New Zealander duo who made their design debut with the Studio Roller, a hanging roll of kraft paper for keeping To Do lists and making sketches. Since then, George Wilkins and Will McCallum have gone on to offer a suspended clothes drying rack, a fire starter inspired by Alaskan whalers, and a collection of signs including a Scrabble-like letter board. Their creations are all about modern utility paired with a delightful Down Under playfulness. They sum up their M.O. as “making your space exciting”—which...

When I was little, I was fascinated by Transformers, the toys that metamorphose from something seemingly mundane (like a car) into an action figure and back again. Lift a flap, pull down a tiny lever, snap down a pointy piece, and there you have it: Something that wasn’t there before, through a genius of design and concealment, is now before you. I couldn’t have cared less about the before (the car) or the after (the action figure), but I was transfixed by the process of transformation, and I made my parents buy me one so I could study how it...