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Putting the fun in function, Pacifica’s Cool Your Jets design studio creates playful bookends, eye-catching lighting options and more. The brand is the brainchild of Danyel LaTour, who’s long been very interested in the elements of home design and decor – “the things that surround us, how we make those choices,” as she put it.
Cool Your Jets’ goods are “things that I want to put in my house and things I want to give my friends,” she said. “I just like really big, bold silhouettes and I love bright colors.”
Taking inspiration from the likes of postmodernism, brutalism and the Bauhaus, LaTour’s designs aim to add a splash of aesthetic joy to any space, be it a living room, a coffee shop or an art gallery.
“I’ve always been a very hands-on person,” LaTour said. And among her most notable wares are her “book hug” sets – versatile, playful bookends shaped like pairs of hands.
“Hands are very precious things to me,” she said. The book hugs have been offered in a variety of colors, including shiny chrome and bright red, and the currently available sets are made of steel.
Her husband has joked that, thanks to the hugs, “I get my hands on everybody else’s books,” she said. A keen vinyl aficionado, she also makes record “hugs” to hold LPs. Other designs include her oversize chain-link lamps, whimsical plant sticks and handy kitchen clips, all in a variety of vivid hues.
Keeping production local to the Bay Area and sourcing materials sustainably as much as possible, with minimal waste, is part of Cool Your Jets’ mission. LaTour has even worked with local frame and sign shops to use offcut materials that would otherwise be discarded, and, when possible, saves and collects her own studio’s scraps to be turned into future projects.
LaTour said she comes from a “family of makers,” with an engineer dad who helped her with designing from a young age. She went on to study and work in graphic design, then did stints as product managers for a number of businesses, including World Market and Coyuchi, the Bay Area-based organic textile company. Eventually, she decided to leave the corporate world behind and take a shot at creating a brand all her own.
LaTour’s deliberate design process and emphasis on sustainable and local manufacturing means that Cool Your Jets fans – she has more than 38,000 followers on Instagram – must sometimes exercise patience when the goods they’re coveting are sold out.
In fact, the studio’s name is a humorous reflection of LaTour’s journey and ethos. When she was leaving her corporate career, people would ask her what was next and she would tell them, “I was going to ‘cool my jets’,” she said in an email. When she was naming her new business, the phrase stuck. “I loved that it jokingly pointed to the way I like to design slowly and with lots of consideration,” she said.
Cool Your Jets seems to fit in well with the Coastside’s somewhat sleepy-yet-funky vibe. LaTour grew up in Denver and moved from the East Bay to Pacifica about four years ago, a place she’d been fond of since childhood.
“My grandparents lived in Pacifica when I was a kid,” she said. “It was always very ideal to me.” She and her husband were seeking a small-town feel and convenient proximity to San Francisco. “Pacifica really just nails that,” she said.
Much of LaTour’s business comes from private commissions, and she said she often works with interior and industrial designers, with many opportunities coming from good old-fashioned word of mouth.
She loves supporting her favorite fellow local businesses, and that sense of community has led to some fun collaborations. For example, LaTour’s been a big fan of Pacifica’s Craftsman Coffee since before it opened its own brick and mortar at 1750 Francisco Ave. last year.
“We were really excited when they opened a spot in town,” she recalled. She became fast friends with co-owner Judy Hayes, and some of LaTour’s work adorns the space. On March 15, Cool Your Jets launched Extra!, a design-inspired pop-up shop within Craftsman, featuring used and new design and art books, gifts, cards and a bargain record bin.
“Our shop design denominator is always going to be a clean welcoming aesthetic with pops of bold pieces that everyone can enjoy,” Hayes said in an email. “I love color and always wanted to share our space with and amplify local female creative point of views. It was a no-brainer that working with Danyel made sense.”
LaTour said she’s excited to be a part of the burgeoning Pacifica artisan scene, calling the town a hidden gem.
“There’s a lot of spirit here. Everybody’s so connected. We see the same people every day, but in a great way,” she said with a laugh. “Everybody wants to support each other.”
More information is available at coolyourjets.co; Instagram: @coolyourjets.
