Shopping With Design Bloggers - Fall Picks From Those Who’ve Seen It All

Josh Rubin, the editor of the five-year-old blog Cool Hunting, describes the mission of his site as “an aggressive seeking of stuff.” It’s a phrase that could be applied to innumerable design blogs, which have been breeding like mosquitoes since the beginning of the decade. “We are constantly scouring the Web, magazines and television for fresh new ideas and inspiration,” said Maxwell Gillingham-Ryan, who runs the four-year-old Apartment Therapy blog; on top of that, his offices are awash in an endless flood of submissions from designers and manufacturers. (And of fans: “People show up all the time,” he said. “A few weeks ago, an organizer from Germany” — an organizer of the clutter-busting variety — “brought us a bag of madeleines.”)

Stephen Drucker, the editor in chief of House Beautiful magazine, calls the best design bloggers “guerrilla editors, constantly taking the temperature of the design world.” Deborah Needleman, his counterpart at Domino, is publishing a blog guide in her November issue, a primer on the styles and sensibilities of various sites. “There are so many of them that you can find one that matches your style and point of view,” she said. “That’s what you want from a blog: a voice and point of view you want to check in with.”

Because design bloggers are expert sifters and seekers, as well as tireless sorters and linkers, spending more time online than is perhaps ocularly prudent, they make the keenest guides to all that is urgent, odd and delightful in the design world at any given moment.

The eyes behind seven sites shared their favorite new things for fall.

Maxwell Gillingham-Ryan, 42, New York City

Soothing, prescriptive and communal, four-year-old Apartment Therapy reflects the personality of the man who co-founded and runs it, Maxwell Gillingham-Ryan, a Waldorf school teacher turned design therapist, author, and Internet entrepreneur. It is focused on urban life and is quitely evangelical on topics like slow food, tiny offices, and green homes. It is also huge ― the Apartment Therapy banner waves over four other blogs, like the ecologically minded Re-Nest ― and claims more than 2 million unique visitors monthly. "We believe the home is the most important space any of us have," said Mr. Gillingham-Ryan, who moves among a barn, a yurt and a small Manhattan apartment with his wife, Safa, a food writer, and their daughter, Ursula, age 2. "We support regular folks who want to make it beautiful, organized, and healthy, day in, day out."

$12,500, Jennifer Levin Atocha. "Solves a storage problem and honos the desire to collect."

Tim Yu, 27; Josh Rubin, 34; Ami Kealoha, 30; Evan Orensten, 42; New York

Despite the geekiness of its 90s name, Cool Hunting shows off some pretty cool stuff, like a body-temperature-regulating jacket from Helly Hansen; the faux-naïve paintings of Michael Swaney, a Barcelona-based Canadian; and a "saddle stool" made from an actual saddle by Fernando Akasaka, a Brazilian furniture designer. Josh Rubin, who has been a Web and CD-ROM designer, started the site as a design-source archive for his own use (he used blogging software, he said, because it was well-suited to making an archive). Five years later, Cool Hunting has been redesigned for advertising and, as of Wednesday, has amassed 5,152 entries. Its general theme, said Mr. Rubin, who lives in Chelsea with Mr. Orensten, two dogs and some Jean Prouvé chairs, "is the obsessive-compulsive process." Last month, he added, it had more than 330,000 unique visitors.

$300, Hulger. "Natural materials used for cutting-edge technology."

Grace Bonney, 27, Williamsburg, Brooklyn

Design Sponge is the indie girl band of the design blogosphere. Devoted to crafty, handmade things like felted sculptures, letterpress stationery and hand-drawn wallpapers, it has a girly sensibility with an edge, and a particular interest in the work of independent designers working in its creator's neighborhood. Maintaining the blog is the full-time job of Grace Bonney, who is also a contributing editor at Domino and Craft magazines. There are contests, podcasts, and design guides to cities beyond New York, like Portland, Me., all sweetly laid out on an endless linen runner with a lacy border, giving the site the feeling of a Martha Stewart Living for millennials ― 30,000 of them each day, Ms. Bonney said.

About $16 a yard, Alan the Gallant. "A welcome change from all of the damask."

$1,400, Paul Loebach. "A great way to play around with bright shades without taking a huge risk."

$12 to $52, Up in the Air Somewhere. "Feels beautiful and solid, not thin and precious."

Hollister Hovey, 29, Brooklyn

Ms. Hovey's aesthetic is an eccentric version of decaying WASP-y, Teddy Roosevelt by way of John Derian. (Ms. Hovey's apartment, she said, "may be the least PETA-friendly home in Brooklyn," because she has embellished it with a herd of vintage animal heads ― a sheep, a springbok, an antelope, and more ― and a zebra skin rug.) The blog's mandate, she said, "is to help the classices have a place in the cyber-world filled with ubiquitousmodern design. "Diaristic and appealingly personal, recent posts include photos of old stock certificates, thoughts on the Ralph Lauren fashion show, and a "yard sale" at Chatsworth. The blog receives about 500 visitors a day, Ms. Hovey said, with 84 subscribed to her newsfeed, a number that includes her father. "He seems to think that I'm e-mailing these all to him directly," said Ms. Hovey, "like little missives about my life. He responds accordingly, 'Thanks for the update. Love, Dad.'"

$750, Coleen & Company. "Can't all indoor furniture go outside?"

$1,800, Darr. "Looks like Thomas Edison may have fiddled with it."

Harry Wakefield, 47, Montreal

More like a traditional magazine than a blog, MoCo Loco (MoCo is short for modern and contemporary) is slick and adult, and focused squarely on modern architecture design and art, a Dwell-ish site of pre-fab housing and high-design objects from around the world. Now five years old, it has 28,000 subscribers to its daily news feed, said Harry Wakefield, its editor and creator, and gets up to a million pages views a month. "In 2003 I couldn't find a design blog I wanted to read, so I started one," said Mr. Wakefield, who has worked in magazines and advertising. "I live in a tiny house with my wife and two people I affectionately call 'the destroyers,'" he said, "which is why most of my favorite MoCo objects are on the blog, not at home."

$429, Designfenzider. Focuses the eye on "the mystery and beauty of the flame."

$350, CGF Group Design Italia. "The essence of the cuckoo."

$1,200, Sherwood Forlee. "Functional architecture for our night table."

Jennifer Boles Dwyer, 36, Atlanta

Jennifer Boles Dwyer is an admirer of Charlotte Moss, Sybil Connolly and Parish-Hadley, and a booster for classic English decorating and its effluence: demilune tables, good lighting, books by Bunny Williams, Brunschwig fabrics. Here is a personal blog ― in other words, no advertising ― with about 2,000 daily subscribers, she said, and 1,500 additional "readers." (One of them, Stephen Drucker, the editor of House Beautiful, hired her as a contributing editor.) Ms. Dwyer, who has been helping run the family business (which makes printing presses), turned to the blog as an outlet for her interest in design history. "My goal," she said, "is to encourage people to look to the past while embracing the new and modern. You can find a lot of inspiration in the past. It's how you present it that makes it new."

$1,300, Currey & Company. "The classic waterfall shape and rich parchment finish make this work in contemporary and more traditional homes. And it costs a lot less than an original Jean-Michel Frank."

Stephanie Murg, 28, New York City and Steve Delahoyde, 29, Chicago

According to its founding editor, Jen Bekman, UnBeige was named in honor of the late graphic designer Tibor Kalman, who dismissed off-white and beige as the color choces of those afraid to offend. "By definition," Kalman once said, "when you make something no one hates, no one loves it." Part of the Mediabistro group of blogs, the three-year-old UnBeige is on its fourth and fifth editors, Steve Delahoyde and Stephanie Murg. They were hired, Ms. Murg said, because of their interest in what she described as "imperfections, quirkiness, insanity, unpredictability."

The blog is an arch, pop culture-oriented Web magazine, a Gawker for those who are as comfortable discussing Charles Gwathmey's addition to the Art and Architecture Building at Yale as they are deconstructing Metallica album covers.

$129, CB2. "Shattering reflections into multiple views, for the lazy Cubist."

$9,900, EcoSmart Inc.. "The design world loves a good juxtaposition."

$4,000 to $5,800, Kayiwa. "A Museum of Natural History meets the Container Store aesthetic."