Max Gunawan is a architect and industrial designer with an inspired light above his head. After leaving the corporate work world, he grabbed that light and created Lumio - a multi-purpose, portable lamp that looks like a book. After a wildly successful run on Kickstarter, Max is off to manufacture his first production run. But first, we asked Max to shed some light on his musical inspirations in this week's Playlist. Take a look and listen.

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Inspired by a 1980's British advertising agency (June 1983, to be exact), paper and set designer Alexis Facca handmade this cartoonish, yet convincing paper reproduction of a workplace. Love the colors!

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Designer Javier García keeps himself busy not only as an industrial-designer-turned-graphic-designer/illustrator working in San Francisco, but also as an avid collector of mid-century modern design. Take a peek inside his Bay Area home office — a treasure trove of vintage pieces, including several by Charles and Ray Eames — in our latest tour.

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Unconventional compact desks are gems in small spaces. Unique features like flip down, pull-out nesting, slide out floating, convertible wall-mount and even classic open-front school desks, make these desks wonderfully efficient. More

Joy and Corey loved their downtown Los Angeles loft, but its small footprint made finding storage space pretty challenging. So they figured out a way to take advantage of their 13' ceilings by going vertical. More

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We all like to flip through the pages of a catalog to get design ideas. And while, yes, we know we shouldn't be striving to have a picture perfect catalog living space, I often become envious of the vignettes on display. Follow along with me as I try to pull some inspiration for updating my workspace in the latest CB2 catalog. More

Product: DeLonghi Lattissima Plus Nespresso
Price: $359.99 (Amazon)
Rating: Strong Recommend*

I've become increasingly particular about how I make coffee at home. I'm still pretty easy going about the quality of a cup of good morning from a coffee shop or restaurant, but at home, I tend to geek out with a carefully concocted cup (two at most). This means starting off with freshly roasted whole beans (my current bean of choice), filtered water, a digital scale, a manual burr grinder, and an Aeropress...it's a morning ritual which doesn't cater to the "get caffeinated as quick as possible" mentality. But as one special agent professed, the measured process produces "a damn fine cup of coffee". Thus, I approached moving over to a one-touch automatic espresso maker with a bit of trepidation. Coffee in capsules? Bah! [Puts on coffee snob mustache]... More

The perfectly coiffed office doesn't have to cost a fortune. Some of the best storage solutions — the ones that keep office clutter sorted, numbered and at-arms-reach — are right under your nose (or a short drive away). Here are our favorite finds from popular retail chains across the country. More