Cutting Edge Design Firms

A lot of people aspire to be designers, but in order to get mentioned on Trend Hunter, there's got to be something pretty cutting edge about your company. The Apartment definitely makes our list.

The New York City design agency uses every opportunity to innovate and try new marketing, branding and design approaches. Led by Stefan Boublil, it's hard to do otherwise. The Head Creative Director has been known to challenge client ideas and propose outrageous ones of his own.

The first image in the gallery shows yelo, a vibrant wellness center and the second shows the end result of a conversion of the first YMCA club into a 5 bedroom/7000 sq. ft. apartment. Other images show an all-white dining room and The Apartment's SoHo office.

One architectural client had asked The Apartment to design a space that would mirror the ambiance of Shanghai at midnight. Boublil then suggested, "How would you feel living inside a shiny black space?"

"That was our only proposal, which was, of course, based on the detective work we had done about her life, but which nonetheless required holding her stare at the presentation meeting until she understood what we meant," he said. "This would be a place for her to arrange her life, for her habits and possessions to shine, to set it upon a black canvas instead of a white one. She went with it. In short, if you speak up, people will listen."

I love Boublil's philosophy and approach to life.

"Put simply, I want to live an interesting life, to respond to the road's will, not to try to bend it to mine," he told Behance. "And through that journey, I'm hoping to have a good story to tell when my time comes for the big exit. Self-awareness is the greatest tool at your disposal, use it to decode universal truths that you can apply to your work."

How great is that?

Take two seconds and check out The Apartment website. It's truly inspiring!