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Personally, I'd stay away from things like lamps and magnifying glasses if you're designing desk-/table-top organizers, as those that use them tend to have specific preferences and they usually come as self-contained units, with their own stand and either a gooseneck or swing-arms to position them. For a smaller, lap-top painting tray, though, they'd be a novel addition. Of course, that would mean either finding units of an appropriate size and weight, getting enough stock on hand, and upping the price of your product accordingly, or picking a recommended model and leaving the appropriate space for the end-user to buy and install it themselves. Both options seem unnecessarily complicated, to me.
At the core, you already have a sense of the basic, "must have" accommodations - space for a water cup, brushes, and paint bottles/pots. For the water cup, having a spot on either end is nice, either to make the unit ambidextrous or to allow for separate cups when using regular and metallic paints, or to allow for water and thinner to be kept out simultaneously. For brushes and paint, 2- or even 3-layer racks are ideal (talking about structural sheets per rack, not number of tiers of racks), as varying the hole size of the layers allow for the secure storage of multiple container/handle shapes. Accommodating GW/Reaper pots, Vallejo/Reaper bottles, and potentially 2oz. craft paint bottles would cover your bases rather thoroughly.
Beyond that, I see a greater benefit to (small) tool storage than I do to in-progress model slots. People who paint without handles are already set, as based models can stand on their own. People using corks or dowels can very easily knock a hole into some scrap foam to hold their handles upright. People using empty paint pots or pill bottles don't need racks. Small tools, however, frequently get laid out on the desk haphazardly, get stood up in empty jars with blades pointing out, or are put away in drawers that make quick access impossible. Simple racks and/or shelves/dividers for things like pliers, sprue-cutters, knives, etc. would be rather handy (check out MicroMark's hobby tool storage department for some inspiration - a lot of the designs are dead simple, but highly effective), and could easily be made as separate add-ons to a core paint/brush/water rack.
Speaking of which, I think modular systems are the way to go, especially with flat-packed MDF or acrylic jobs that the buyer assembles himself. It would be dead easy to put a small notch in the bottom-center of each end-cap and include small connectors with each unit to allow for either secure, but still separable, setups, or individual free-standing units. Going modular would also allow you to make much more expansive setups possible without going beyond the scope of your cutter. A lap tray could only be 12"x20", but table-top racks could easily be butted together to span an infinite length.
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