This week North Kingdom won two great awards for the Google ROME & “3 Dreams of Black” project. First we won a Golden Egg in Stockholm and two days later, a Yellow Pencil at D&AD in London.

Earlier this year the same project was awarded by our 3rd People’s Choice Award, FWA. Thanks all amazing partners!

Read more — North Kingdom

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“So what are you waiting for, Roman Abramovich? Quit wasting your money on washed-up strikers, firing managers and ropey haircuts, and invest in this instead.”

A nice quote from the British Sport Magazine this month.

“Here it is: the table tennis table of tomorrow. A multitouch surface that records where a ping pong ball has landed, a ‘net’ with embedded sensors to show info on whether a ball has touched it, automatic scorekeeping and even an emotionless auto-ref that adjudicates the game for you (and also possibly harbours secret, Hal-type plans to kill you stone dead, Dave).”

Read more — The article.

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The game was going to be based on the Netguys TVC, filmed in London 2011, for the German market. The story follows four guys that helps you out, everywhere. Four guys that corresponded to the four network bars found on Vodafone mobile phones.

— The question for us was; what should we do? And how? The time was very limited.

The client asked for a simple and engaging web-based game and we wanted to push the boundaries for that by looking at a 3D solution so we got our inspiration from games like “Canabalt” and “Mirror’s Edge” for iPhones. The image above represent the first day work on the visual, trying to figure out what we will actually will see. We know the game would be in 3D, but we had to get our ideas down on paper.

— Graphic profile

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North Kingdom project — An online 3d game utilizing the hardware acceleration introduced in Adobe Flash 11.

The ATL developed by Jung von Matt focus on visualizing the possibilities and power of the Vodafone network through four main characters – The Netguys. These Netguys can be seen in TVC, Print, Out of Home and also in an interactive experience. In the interactive channel Vodafone wanted to give their customer a fun, casual and engaging game experience centered around the Netguys characters in the browser.

Our idea to communicate was that Vodafone customers have access to the Network of Tomorrow (im Netz von Morgen) but it is really up to them to make use of all the possibilities with Vodafone as a mobile provider.

More information — North Kingdom.
Play Netguys — English version

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For a couple of month ago I worked on this project as Art Director and designer. Netguys was a big challenge for us when we where working with the new 3d engine in Flash 11 with a very small team and a very tight time limit. However, this kind of projects can be really fun to do!

What is really cool in this project is that the 3D blocks in the city appears randomly so you never know what’s coming up, you never know how the city will look like. More about this later at our Behind the Scene section.

These 3d images have I done in Cinema 4D, just to make the screenshots from the game little more interesting. I bought the display model at TurboSquid.

A poster I did most for fun, but later on become the splash page you can see below.

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This winter/spring I have the honor to be part of two juries; D&AD in London and for the Swedish Guldägget here in Stockholm (The Goldegg). Today was actually the first day with Guldäggs jury. The next three days we will judge the mobile. at Stockholm Waterfront.

It takes pretty much time to be a part of a jury but it is also a very good chance to take a deeper look into what’s happens in the branch and to network with talented people from other agencies. The setup usually looks the same; first a prejudging period from home where you are going through the big mass and remove 60 - 70 % of the cases, and then 3-4 days together with the rest of the jury where you are discussing and judging the top level. It use to be very interesting and instructive days with lot of discussions.

I have actually participated in some juries before, which always have been very inspiring; One Show (2009), D&AD (2008), Art Directors Club New York (2007) and Creative Circle Denmark (2002). Guldägget is my favorite so far with the most professional arrangement.

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“Waldner” – the next generation ping pong table, is made with an advanced computer system integration. The table has a multi-touch surface, which responds to human touch and real world objects, like ping-pong balls. The table is also equipped with Siri voice recognition that monitors the game along with a Mac Pro 12-core computer. That means the table is very intelligent; it sees, feels and hears the game. You can even discuss a ball with it to improve your ping pong skills or argue about a point.

Under the surface we find two 2.4GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon E5620 “Westmere” processors and an ATI Radeon HD 5870 graphic cards, a Wi-Fi connection and 12 Bose micro speakers.

The table is 2.74 m long, 1.52 m wide, 76 cm high and 5 cm thick. The surface, which is a huge screen, is made of soft acrylic that gives the correct smooth, low-friction coating. The screen is supported Apple’s new HiDPI, which gives a resolution of 2880 x 1800 pixel.

The “net” is a touch-sensitive screen from Samsung. With embedded touch sensors it shows information from balls taken in net.

After and during the game, all kind of statistics can be found on the table. Players can for example compare the balls hit areas (where each hit have been visualized by a circle and contains information like speed and trajectory. All data is stored and can be visualized as real time 3D on devices as iPad and iPhones

The tables’ interface activates with a simple two-finger scroll. During game the scores are showed on the surface and changes automatically via a collaboration of the tables sensors, Siri and the players voice. Yes, you can even argue with Siri about a ball and if you not are coming along with the referee; change the score with a swipe.

I wanted to have clean, thin and straight digits that come along with the rest of the design. Therefore I made these digits in Illustrator. If you like them and you need some digits, feel free to use them.

Digits Waldner DC — Download Illustration file (.zip)

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Background information — I have always been interested of product design and new technology, and specially the combination of these two. It’s very inspiring to think about what today’s ever-accelerating technology will impact on simple products we have today, as a ping pong table.

Thanks Kalle Gadd for brainstorming! If anyone is interesting in the concept and design, don’t hesitate to contact me. Who knows, maybe we will see this one in real life one day?

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For a couple of weeks ago North Kingdom, and myself, won FWA People’s Choice Award – one of the finest acknowledgements in the interactive industry. Earlier PCA; Get the Glass and Vodafone Future (these two sites did also won FWA Site Of The Year).

1 Year Long Global Competition
365 Site Of The Day Winners
12 Site Of The Month Finalists
1 International Public Vote
1 People’s Choice Award Winner

“Part of the goal was to move and inspire the creative community. Therefor it feels extra good to receive the FWA PCA 2011.

A big thanks to everyone involved making this happen: Chris, Aaron, Doob, Sandra, Thomas for giving us the opportunity. Special thanks to Branislav, Eskil, Bartek, Micke, Klaus and the rest of the guys involved pushing the limits. Full credits here – each and everyone on that list deserve a shout out for being so dedicated.”

Read more about the project here (North Kingdom) and about my stuff in the project here on the blog.

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NORTH KINGDOM PROJECT — Weetakid, an intergalactic mobile gameplay for kids, is a concept made by BBH London for Weetabix, which is a popular whole grain wheat breakfast cereal in England. The assignment for North Kingdom was to create a mobile game with an AR solutution connected to the cereal package.

I myself wasn’t so much involved as I use to be in this kind of projects when BBH London was in charge of the overall feeling, Yum Yum (London) made the characters and 3d, and Zoink Games (Gothenburg) took care of the games, including game bible.

My role was pretty much to take care of the first look and feel, concept designs, covers and some interface design/ mock ups. The final production was so so in my eyes… but it has some cool visuals so I thought it could be fun to keep it here on the blog for the future. The image above, with the three iPhones, have I done in Cinema 4D.

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This week I finished another design for Rob Ford and FWA when they needed a Mobile Of The Day (MOTD) award certificate. I was lucky and could change the award original color code when its blue was a little bit crazy (and we already had two blue ones). This green matches the other awards pretty nice I think.

Here can you see the other versions and on the FWA gallery site you can see how they are used around the globe.

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Feel free to download some minimalistic wallpapers for your iPhone, iPad and Desktop (2560×1440, 1920×1200 and 1440×900).

Download — Black Leakage Wallpaper Kit

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Last night I finally launched my small side-project Black Leakage; an online shop with vinyl wall art. I’m working with a nice small printhouse from my hometown Skellefteå called Vision Reklam with 15 years of experience who handle the printing, packaging and shipping.

Black Leakage concept — Unique wall art made by matte beautiful vinyl. All motives are named after oil tankers that where destroyed during World War II – as a small reminder that out of something bad, something good can come. 10% of the profit goes to Greenpeace Sweden to save our oceans from oil.

Check it out here — Blackleakage.com

Btw, if you wanna buy a Black Leakage you can use the code “designchapel” and you get 15% discount just because you are nice.

USS Neosho placed at my apartment in Stockholm. I have the Medium; 162 cm wide.

The logotype is based on my Designchapel symbol.

Each motive has a story which is placed on the paper tubes used for shipping.

In the package you will also find two small Black Leakage. Here is one of them placed on the entrance door at North Kingdom’s Stockholm office.

A small instruction movie showing how to install Black Leakage.

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North Kingdom, Woodbot Pilots — We received the second round of prototypes a couple of weeks ago. One step forward, two backwards. I really like the way they solved the logotypes, which here are carved into the wood, but there are pretty many parts that not are solved yet and I start to wonder if they really can make it as we want it or if we need to made the design simpler or use another material. It is pretty interesting to work with China factories when you don’t know what you get. Our blue print had for example one black cable on the left arm, now we have two red ones, which is fine; most important is to see what can be done and not. But I am very concerned that they do not follow the feedback at all and they mix up the parts. Our big dude have here the small characters arms…

We have tried a new way to make the eyes which looks pretty cool. The faces (the screens) are one part we have not been able to see how it can be made. Unfortunately.

Three prototypes of pretty much the same body. As you can see, you need to be open minded of what you get. The shapes have become more rounder in the last model which is perfect. The color should be more like the one in the middle but it was great to see how a lighter version would look like. The horns have get a pretty strange shape thou…

The middle stripes is missing which is a shame when I think they do pretty much to the overall feeling. Hopefully we will have it on place on the last, third round of prototypes later this month.

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This spring we at North Kingdom did a small web project including both an iPhone app and five movies with Forsman & Bodenfors for Volvo. We created an online guide with the 25 most spectacular winter adventures in Scandinavia, a project called Volvo Cross Country Travels. With the app you can receive special designed badges from each location. Forsman & Bodenfors made the concept idea, my role was Interactive Art Director.

To mock up the first design (B) I received some rough sketches (A) from Forsman & Bodenfors, who wanted a clean magazine so it could run on an iPad. Therefor we chose HTML5 as a platform.

Some screenshoots of the final result (small changes have been done since launch).

We created some cool badges for each location which you could get digital if you checked in at chosen location. Our idea was also make them physical so people could receive them by post so people could put it on their cars. Illustrations by Anton Eriksson, directed by Jakob Nylund.

We also sent two guys for 3 weeks of filming. Jakob Nylund and Riccardo Tagliabue made five beautiful spots (above). I sold in the idea and really wanted to go with them, but the time issue made me to stay at the base.

You can read more about the filming here — North Kingdom is filming for Volvo XC Travels

The total result turned out so so I think except for the badges and the videos that had higher level. Some annoying tech problems with external partner cut down almost all love. Instead of doing the whole thing with HTML5 we ended up with a hybrid solution (Flash) the last two weeks of the project.

However, it was great to work with my old friend Staffan Lamm at Forsman & Bodenfors again. They are doing such excellent work these guys! Mathias Lindgren (North Kingdom 3D) and I was working inhouse at their Gothenburg office the last week. On the picture you can see Mathias at their total orange place, 8.45 PM, Friday night. We where the last one leaving. (Photo taken by iPhone)

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I have now found the perfect vinyl and technique for the Black Leakage project. Here are some photos from my own apartment on the final product. I will hopefully have the shop with five different motives up and running before the end of the week when I only have some instructions and documentation left to do.

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Logotype design and positioning.

The idea is to keep the original color of the wood where the logotypes and the stripes are. The rest of the body will be made darker. To make it clear for the factory in Hong Kong I have made this mock up in Photoshop.

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Finally we have got our first prototypes from Hong Kong delivered. They haven’t been corrected from my last post except the wood have been stained. On the next version we will see how we to make the stripes and logotypes (the idea is to keep these areas without coloring so they stay in original light wood, instead of stickers), all details fixed from earlier feedback, head separated from body and the varnish wood.

We haven’t spent so much time on the packaging yet but they actually made some first rough boxes for us for free in this delivery, without asking. That is what I call service! The idea is also to place the woodbot inside a small designed bag, placed inside a wooden box. The color will be the same as the woodbot I think.

The eyes looks pretty funny when they just have done some big fat white dots. Here can you see the hand issue as well. They have done the hands functionality really nice when you actually can bend the fingers, but it looks little to chunky. The photos are taken on the pier outside my apartment by the way… just after the sunset.

Details from behind. I like the back of the big one best; a solid color, without any differences in tones. It gives the woodbot a luxury feeling. The reference have been Kay Bojesen’s wooden toy monkey.

Woodbot Pilots — North Kingdom’s wooden toy robots. Prototype No.2.

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For a couple of days ago we put up our first Black Leakage wall sticker and it was much easier then I thought. This first one is placed in my sisters apartment who lives pretty close to me in Stockholm.

The shop will go live within two weeks at BlackLeakage.com.

This sticker has the medium size; 115 cm high. The idea is also to have them in different colors.

Some shoots I took the night before with my iPhone camera.

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Last month we received the first photos of the woodbot prototypes from the factory in Hong Kong. However, it was first now I found time for feedback (yes it is a side project) so hopefully I will see a new version of these guys soon. The biggest issue right now is the small details, specially the hands. So I am very excited to see what solutions they have on my feedback. Do we need to redesign or do we need to find another solution? Plan B is to make the hands in plastic.

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IN PROGRESS — A wall art decal (vinyl) made for my apartment that soon will be available at my online shop. You will find them in two different shapes and two different sizes.

For a couple of years ago I found a screenshot on the net, showing a broken screen from someone’s MacBook . The upper right corner on the diplay had got a punch and some liquid had start pouring inside the screen. It was something in that abstract shape I liked so I saved the picture on my hard drive for another day. This winter I started to think about my living room’s big white wall. I’m not so fond of placing prints or frameworks behind the TV so a vinyl print felt like a better solution. Therefore I made this print based on this crashed display. I liked the idea to have fine shapes with a little bit of attitude.

Right now I’m waiting for the real prints, so it will be great to see how it works. The idea is to add these to my upcoming online shop if it turns out well. Black Leakage will be printed on matted vinyl and available in two different shapes;

Black Leakage No. 1 (Portrait)
Black Leakage No. 2 (Landscape)

If you want a Black Leakage for your home as well, just send me a mail and I will notice you when it is available. And of course, you will get 40% OFF just because you read this! And if you recognize your broken display I will send you one for free! :)

If you are interested, just send me a note here. It will be available in a couple of weeks.

I have made the illustrations in Adobe Illustrator. More to come when it´s available and I have test it in my apartment.

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Last month Marcus Ivarsson and I got the honor to be invited to London by the D&AD President Sanky. He asked us to speak at one of their D&AD President’s Lecture, which is an event they hold six times a year. Earlier speakers have been Neville Brody, Shane Walter and Kyle Cooper for example and it’s just one speaker at each event. The arrangement was very professional done, so we had a great time both on stage, with the great audience (over 700 people!!), and at the dinner and the clubs afterwards. Thank you so much Sanky btw, for the nice opening words you gave me! I will remember them :)

On stage we talked about North Kingdom and how we are are making our projects. We talked about “finding and follow your butterflies” and how to “be one big brain”. This is how we were presented on D&AD’s website;

“D&AD Black Pencil-winning North Kingdom is a world leading digital creative agency. Their spiritual home is Skellefteå, a small town next to the polar circle in Sweden. Depending on the season, the team enjoys 23 hours of sunshine or darkness a day.”

It was also great to see the following week how people from the audience wrote review articles about our presentation;

Review — Higher Ground Creative (Picture)
Review — Young Creative Council
Review — Tom Cornfoot

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Concept art by North Kingdom (Robert Lindström & Mathias Lindgren). Deer by Mirada.

Three screenshots from the final work and the landingpage of ROME, everything made with webGL.

Read more about the project here and check out the huge making of article at our North Kingdom blog here. This post on Designchapel only concerns my involvement and my personal notes.

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A couple of weeks ago we launched a little different project from North Kingdom called ROME, an interactive music video made in webGL from Google Chrome. To learn more about the technique you can read more at ROME technology site.

I wasn’t so super involved myself unfortunately when it was the music director who was in charge of all the visual stuff. I only did some early concept drawings together with our 3D artist Mathias Lindgren and some design directions on the website. These pictures will I show here below.

The beautifully Norah Jones, one of my favorites, is singing “3 Dreams of Black” in this interactive music video with Jack White from Danger Mouse & Daniele Luppi’s album ROME.

Some really early concept drawings. I had an idea of a mirror world underneath the surface, a more twisted version of the dream world.

“A dark world is found under the surface, as if you would look under the water’s edge. This dark, odd, bizarre world contains a mirror image of the “real” world but within another shape. Here will you find the dark soup. A soup that could have same style in all three dark worlds.”

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We are always looking for new talents to North Kingdom, where I’m trying to keep an eye on designers and art directors. The best mix is of course to have both seniors with international background and juniors from the schools (where we for the moment work very close with both Hyper Island and Berghs here in Stockholm). However, to be honest it doesn’t matter what school you have studied at, it’s your portfolio we are interested at. So if you want to live in one of the best cities in the world; Stockholm and you have a great showcase, then you should definitely send us and email.

Apply here — jobs@northkingdom.com

Be sure you are proud of your work and that you have all details on place, otherwise I’m not sure we have time to get back to you.

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Tonite I have modified my illustration from the wallpaper “En kopp kaffe” to match a 50×70 cm print for an upcoming exhibition. I will definitely play around with it more later, regarding colors and graphic elements. The print will be a limited edition of 25 or so…

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Some first ideas of the package design — a box in wood.

For the moment we are in contact with a factory in Hong Kong who hopefully will help us with the production. This blueprint is made for them to start making the prototypes. I really hope we will have some nice looking prototypes in the office soon!

The new arms in place. The smoother design gave them a better overall look I think. (Logotypes are missing.)

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“Overloaded design can be both boring and distracting, while minimalism’s ability to cut to the chase gives it a decided commercial edge. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry defined the style as being “not when there is nothing more to add, but when there’s nothing left to take away”.”

“Clean, unfussy, functional, minimalist… these are the kind of adjectives that would spring to most people’s mind when the subject of Swedish design is raised.”

In the latest issue of IdN, v17n6: Minimalism Issue, you find lot of Swedish creatives from varies fields. Really cool to see what’s going on in the neighborhoods;

— Oskar Kron Design (Stockholm, Sweden)
“I find it interesting how typography can set a tone or convey a message in the way it is treated rather than what it necessarily says. It’s a bit like a bolt, it just holds everything together.”

— Anneli Olander (Stockholm, Sweden)
— Chevychase (Stockholm, Sweden)
— Diftype (Umeå, Sweden)
— Slobodan Zivic (Stockholm, Sweden)
— Bergen (Stockholm, Sweden)
— Daniel Carlsten (Stockholm, Sweden)
— Dalston Creative (Stockholm, Sweden)
— RBG6 (Stockholm, Sweden)
— BVD (Stockholm, Sweden)
— Patrik Lindell (Stockholm, Sweden)

More minimalistic stuff here.

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Work in progress — I’m drawing new arms for Woodbot Pilots…

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This weekend I have played a little with my (alternative) DC logotype to see if I could make it more unique. I have done some small changes with its head and made a new solution with the body/ cross.

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Got a mail from Shawn Pucknell, Director at FITC Events, today; “Just got all the prints today and sorted them all out and hand numbered them. They look great. Attached is a shot of the prints and album…”

My print is the one in the lower left corner. Great to see how the other artist solved the assignment. My favorite is the one by James Paterson.

“As part of our celebration for the ten year anniversary of FITC, we selected ten FITC Speakers from the past ten years and asked them to design a print with the theme ‘TEN’”.

Read the whole post at FITC.

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Yesterday we had one of our first soccer practice outdoor at North Kingdom Stockholm. Of course we were dressed up with our new, supernice outfits from adidas.

We kicked Perfect Fools butts in the last game, which made us to the best agency in Sweden (regarding to the trophy we won from them), so let us know if you want to challenge us for the title and the cup. Otherwise you will find us at Vasaparken every Wednesday at noon.

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This weekend I have modified another nun illustrations from 2001/2002. The original illustration was never mentioned to be bigger then 800 pixels high so I have done some adjustments now in Photoshop, so it will work better in print. Work in progress…

“Designed Swedish Religion — The Red Nun”. 50 x 70 cm, 300 dpi.

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