To celebrate our five years anniversary we went with the whole team to Norway and the beautiful island Lovund outside Mo i Rana. We had a great time with deep fishing, lovely food and great sightseeing.

The last week our and GSP´s Get the glass where competing in awards shows around US for the last time. And it ends as it started; totally incredible. It has won every single competition it has joined. Winning awards should never be purpose of its own ofcourse, but still it is a good way to show that your company exist and it gives you more work. But most important is that the campaign actually are doing some purpose for the brand, and for Get The Glass it have done that to;

Visitors: 3,3 millions (9000 visits a day in average).
Unique visitors: 2,5 millions.
Time spent: 9 min in average.
Browsers: 63% IE, 28% Firefox

From where?
Direct: 37%
123spill.no: 170 000 visitors (5 %).
Minijuegos.com: 118 000 visitors.
FWA: 85 000 visitors.
USA dominates with 1,2 million visits, and then Norway with 250 000 visitors.

(Data from Feb, 2008.)

Clio Awards 2008 Miami Beach, 49th Annual One Gold (Get The Glass for Animation), one Silver (Get The Glass for Brand Building) and one Bronze (The Coke Zero Game).

I had the chance to be in Miami Beach in person together with Roger Stighall and his wife Sofia. In the ceremony, placed at the great Jackie Gleason Theater, I and Mike Geiger (from GSP) went up to the stage together which was something else! Great feeling to go up there! It was the first time I have actually went to an award ceremony, and I hope it won´t be the last!

BIG thanks to Mike Geiger and his very nice gesture when he told us to keep the statues! Thanks a lot! I hope to work with you this winter!

Great also to see that almost 25% on the shortlist where from Sweden.

The One Show 2008, New York One Gold (Get The Glass for Microsites Corporate Image)

Sweden finished on third place after USA and Great Britain.

The successful fairytale continues! Absolute amazing! Last night in London our gettheglass.com campaign we did with Goodby Silverstein & Partners won two pencils at the D&AD Awards. It is only the third time in history an interactive project won a Black Pencil! It is little shame thou that we did not get so much cred at the ceremony as usually when we works with bigger advertising agencies. But still totally awesome! For GSP it was the first Black Pencil every in its 25 years history! How cool is that? GSP is one of the best agencies in USA today.

It is only the third time in history an interactive project is given a Black Pencil.

Personally I´m in Miami right now for the Clio Show so I missed the possibility to be in place but I guess it must been amazing. David Eriksson and Mikael Forsgren from North Kingdom where at place thou!

6 Black Pencils where given this night. iPhone and iMac was two other winners of this big price

A couple of month ago we where included on a list I never had dreamed about.

“The list represents the biggest innovators of the year, who—through repeated demonstration of sheer brilliance or even just one spectacular feat—brought new spark to their respective fields of advertising, entertainment, marketing, technology, design and beyond.”

Absolute amazing! A great award for our whole office!

The article of North Kingdom.
The article about Creativity 50.

We were invited to Toronto and FITC 2007 this year (Flash in the Can), so myself and Staffan Lamm visited this beautiful town in Canada. We where very impressed how professional arranged this Flash festival was! Everything was located in Hilton Hotel. Great job by Shawn Pucknell among others. We had the last lesson and we could not believe our eyes when over 1000 came to hear about what we had to say. We talked about North Kingdom projects; “How is a small company like North Kingdom, located in the north part of Sweden, thinking and working so leading global brands/agencies would like to work with them? North Kingdom will go through some recent projects from sketches and ideas to final production.”

Me on the left side, playing poker. Photo by Shawn Pucknell.

Here is their presentation of myself btw.
And here is a short review from Ping Mag, Japan.

We won both Grand in the 2008 New York Festivals (NYF) Innovative Advertising Awards and also won Gold for Best Microsite. It is amazing how much good publicity this project have given us! Unfortunately we did not have time for this years Got Milk campaign for Got Milk, but I hope to have the chance again next winter.

Here is an article in the Swedish Resumé for the awards.

“Det har talats länge om hur filmberättandet tar plats på webben. Men med Coke Zeros kampanjsajt inför fotbolls-EM 2008 visar Skellefteåbyrån North Kingdom att det är från spelvärlden webben har mest att hämta.”

Read the whole story here.

I have launched a new version of Blaugallery with a minor concept change. I have now focused on very few artist and motives but made them very exclusive with signed Limited Edition of 10.

You can check out the site here: Blaugallery.com

   More pictures and information here.

This spring I had the honor to join the D&AD 2008 Website Jury in London. First two days of voting from home and then three days of voting and discussing at ExCel in London. It was a very inspiring and fun!

   More pictures and information here.

When we worked directly with Coca Cola for The Coke Zero Game project, the whole process took a while when we did everything from idea and concept to the whole production. Here will you find photos I took from the filmday and some work in progress.

   More pictures and information here.

Project: Website by North Kingdom. My work: Art Director & Lead Designer. Client: Coca Cola Zero Germany.
Information: We developed the online concept in near collaboration with Coca-Cola Germany. North Kingdom was responsible from concept thru filming, production and delivery, collaborating with many of our favourite partners and subcontractors.

Results: 1 400 000 visitors (completed games). Avarage time spent on site: 9,5 min.
Awards: FWA Site of the day and Site of the Month, Bronze at Clio Awards 2008, Silver at Cannes Cyber Lion 2008.

Some of the screens from the four games you have to go through to complete the mission. The scenography is built and filmed in a studio in Skellefteå. Check out the Making of “Coca Cola Zero” here if you want to see how we did it.

To get a stronger game feeling I wanted an illustrated manner between the games and to the tutorials. This was done by Anton Eriksson.

   More pictures and information here.

Andreas Philström(AD, North Kingdom) and I have just launched a design inspiration blog called Reform & Revolution with authors like Rob Ford (FWA), Chris Hewitt (dstrukt), Peter Jaworowski (The Hejz) among others. Here we will post and discuss stuff that inspire us!

Shit! We did it again!! We won x 2!!

FWA Site Of The Year
FWA People Choice Award

“This is only the second time in FWA’s history that the same site has won both the SOTY and PCA awards, so huge congratulations!” - Rob Ford, The FWA

Last time we won the doubale was with our Vodafone Future Vision back in 2004. Amazing!

1 Year Long Global Competition
12+ million site visits
365 Site Of The Day Winners
12 Site Of The Month Finalists
1 International Public Vote
82872 votes cast
1 People Choice Award Winner

“Holy Cow! Getting the FWA PCA is from our view the greatest prize you can win. We have always tried to put the users in the first room and this is a proof that we have succeeded!” - David Eriksson, CEO North Kingdom

It is also a recognition to the whole North Kingdom Team and a reward for all the love and passion we put into our work.

Here is a Swedish article as well by IDG.

As I will re-locate to our North Kingdom Stockholm or Gothenburg office shortly, we need to find someone that can take my Art Director position and responsibility at our northern head quarter, where this photo is from. There are also some other openings that might be of interest to you like Creative, Flash Developer, Information Architect, Production Manager and Account Manager…

Read more here.

Some of our team in Skellefteå… I’m the glad one in the middle with hat.

This weekend we went to Svansele Wilderness Camp, 60km from Skellefteå, with the whole team of North Kingdom and spent one night out in nowhere. We had no electricity, no running water and definitely no internet, but lot of fun!

   More pictures and information here.

Together with Goodby, Silverstein & Partners we won two Golds Statuettes, at London International Awards with our Get the Glass project. What a great year!

Awards is not everything in the world but still, it is little sad that small creative agencies like ours never get the cred as we should have…

We also had a finalist with our Vodafone Journey.

This is a first glimpse on our upcoming fashion brand MINK / Made in North Kingdom. The logotype of a blinking deer character have I drawn in Illustrator. The hangtags (on the right side) are for the t-shirts and will be printed on canvas. From the beginning it will only be printed t-shirts with Limited Edition. I am not sure though when this project will be launched. Hopefully during 2008 or 2009.

For a couple of years ago I started an internal project at North Kingdom where our different designers made their own version of our NK symbol. It turned out pretty cool actually! Here above can you see 4 of these t-shirts prints designed by Kenny Lindström, myself, Charlotta Havh and Bjarne Melin. More to come!

We from North Kingdom is for the moment working with a microsite for Toyota Europe called Build Your IQ. This is Episode 1 of 3. I have not been so much involved myself in this project (mostly very early concept work) but it is great to follow the process. This is our fourth project for Toyota. The room was built and filmed in a studio in Skellefteå.

   More pictures and information here.

Wow! Advertising Age has listed North Kingdom as one of the “The Hottest Digital Agencies Around”.

“Despite waves of consolidation across the ad-agency business, there remains a healthy bunch of independent digital shops doing everything from search optimization to building web interfaces to simply doing damn good creative. Some of these shops are near-acquisitions for digital-hungry giants; others are adamantly opposed to becoming part of something larger, hanging onto the romantic notion of David vs. Goliath.”

I am very honored! And I can tell you that we are not Goliath!

Here is a note about it in the Swedish press: Resumé

We from North Kingdom will take care of one module at Hyper Island this winter. It is for their new one-year program called Interactive Art Director in Stockholm. We will give the student a Big Task (subject is still secret) among work shops, inspiration lectures etc. When it is finished we will gather the students work in a printed book. Can be pretty cool!

The illustration is just from a lonely night when I was bored…

   More pictures and information here.

Here is some of the pages from the my interview in the last issue of Bak09 by Ozan Karakoç. Thanks a lot of the opportunity! Bak is a great inspiration magazine so check it out!

   More pictures and information here.

Amazing!!! My company has been chosen to FWA Hall of Fame! I am very proud of all our employees! You guys are the best!!!

“North Kingdom is the first company to ever have won both a Site Of The Year award and a People’s Choice Award. The fact that they made this, so far, unique achievement is even greater seeing that they won both in the same year for their pioneering Vodafone Future Vision site. North Kingdom is one of the very few agencies who consistently produce the most creative and progressive websites and is hailed as one of the world’s best by their industry peers as well. - Rob Ford, FWA Founder.

Wow! Otroligt roligt! We don´t know what to say up here! We are very glad and very honored to be mentioned at the FWA Hall of Fame! It means a lot for us! We are a small agency but still fighting with the big bulls! Nothing is impossible in this branch! - Robert Lindström, Art & Design Director / Co-Founder, North Kingdom”

They did a pretty nice article about Get the glass at Digital Arts from UK. They have som stuff online here.

When we spoke at OFFF in Barcelona we showed these results for Get the Glass campaign (6 weeks after launch);

*Approx 6 million visitors.
*Approx 650 000 visitors has reached the Glass at Fort Fridge (takes around 15-30 minutes of playing).
*First week we gave away 4000 glasses to users that finished the game (only in US).
*Worldwide press in New York Times and Metro among others.
*The California Milk Processor Board has already sold 10 million more gallons of milk than it did the previous year.

Good result is always fun cause then you have a happy client!

A painting for my little sister Rebecca. It is basically from an illustration I did back in 2001. Gouache on canvas. Size 140 x 110 cm.

My first sketch of the painting.

For the third year in row we have our North Kingdom days up in Skellefteå just before our summer vacation. It is three days of education and internal discussion about how we can improve ourselves as a team. On the picture you see David Eriksson speaking about our visions in Rogers parents summer cottage just outside Skellefteå.

   More pictures and information here.

I almost forgot that I where interviewed by Veerle´s Blog this spring. It is really great to hear that I have inspired some of you out there. The picture is one of my illustrations from DesignChapel 2002 which is showned in the interview.

YES! We at North Kingdom won gold at Cannes this year as well! Two years in a row! Get the Glass won a Cyber Gold Lion at Cannes. Great news! Too bad that I didn´t went to the festival this year but I will definitely go next year! Thanks Goodby, Silverstein & Partners for a good collaboration!

Kenny Lindström and I went to the final exhibitions of Stockholm design schools this spring. We visited Forsbergs, Beckmans, Berghs and Konstfack.

It was very inspiring and it was also very surprising to see how big different it was between the quality of the four exhibitions. Beckmans was in my eyes the absolute top school this spring! Both the exhibition itself and the work of the students were very professional!

WOW! What a town! Lovely Barcelona! We took a weekend off the whole company (North Kingdom) and went to Barcelona to get some inspiration! Me and David Eriksson also did some speaking at the OFFF conference which took place the same weekend. We were invited to OFFF together with Jorge Calleja, who we did the Get the Glass project with (when he was working for Goodby). Our speaking was about just that project! We had a great time in Barcelona! Met lot of cool people and I had a chance to met Scott Hansen who I have know through email during a couple of years.

   More pictures and information here.

Forgot I did this one.. a showreel of Skellefteå from last year for The Lodge, a creative digital group in Skellefteå for the agencies there. Mathias Lindgren did the 3D and Dreamfield helped us out with some film & postproduction.

This is just picture from my living room from this morning. I have printed the illustration I did for D-Mode from my Blaugallery.com project. Size 160 x 103 cm. The chair is a redesigned present from my girlfriend.

D-Mode magazine from Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Some other prints I have done lately. Photo from my office.

Allan was a lovely friend, a big expert and the one I always looked up to! He was absolute brilliant within photography, painting, sculpturing and poetry. He was a perfectionist and could talk about a grey scale in his photography for hours. Allan died the summer of 2005, only 58 years old. A very big tragedy for us all. You will always be a big part of our lives! We will always remember you!

Allan Lundström, 46.12.08 - 05.07.16

Here is some behind the scene peaks from when we made “Get the Glass” for Goodby, Silverstein & Partners in San Fransisco, US. The client was The California Milkboard inc.

Me and David Eriksson (CD/CEO, North Kingdom) had for a long time wanted a project where we could build something physical, something you have not seen earlier, and when we first heard about the new Got Milk? project we understood that this would be the project! I guess Goodby thought we where a little bit crazy in the beginning but when we described the idea they loved the idea.
   More pictures and information here.

Project: Website from North Kingdom. My work: Art Director & Lead Designer. Client: Goodby, Silverstein & Partner.
Information: A new “Got Milk?” campaign together with GSP. This time we did a boardgame where we actually built a real board as a ground for the site. The model was around 2,5 x 3 meters. Art Director from GSP was Jorge Calleja.

Awards: Gold & Silver Clio 2008, Black Pencil & Gold Pencel D&AD 2008

   More pictures and information here.

I did get the honor to join the judge at the Art Director Club as one of 26 in New York this year. It was a great opportunity to see some god work and met colleagues from other companies. ADC is actually the oldest competition of advertising art in the world. Founded in New York in 1920.

Paul Lavoie, ADC President; “The ADC’s most important mission is to inspire not only this generation of practitioners but also the next, which it has been doing for 85 years now. I’m proud to be part of this organization.”

   More pictures and information here.

During the last period of making “Get the Glass” we had Jorge Calleja and Paul Charney from Goodby, Silverstein & Partners (San Fransisco) visiting us in Skellefteå. Lot of work but we had time to have some fun as well! They thought we had a pretty cold climate though.

Date: Micro Website. My work: Art Director, designer & illustrator. Client: Awa Manneh.
Information: A micro site for the Swedish music artist Awa.

Check her out at AwaOnline.se

Right now we at North Kingdom are building a miniature landscape for another “Got Milk?” campaign from Goodby, Silverstein & Partners (San Fransico). The result will be an online game where we will combine filmed material with 3D graphic. Ted Kjellson in the red t-shirt is leading the building of the model here in Skellefteå. These pictures are showing the status 7 days before filmday.

A first concept drawing of Father Robot. A character which will be built in 3D and added to the pictures with the new Designchapel nun.

“The 10th annual .net awards are upon us. Who’s won, who’s lost, who’s the hottest property on the internet?”
North Kigndom was given the Interactive Site of the Year by the international .net magazine.

The award was again for our “Get the Glass” campaign! Awesome! Sometimes it is easy to forget all late hours you have spent in a project. If it was worth it? Well, that is another question…

But still, it is always great to get recognition like that! Thank you .net!

We visited ADAPT 06 in Montreal this autumn with some of the best digital artist in the world. I had the chance to see some of Hollywood´s best digital artists showcase the techniques behind their works in 2D & 3D.
The main reason of why I was in Montreal that week was because I where speaker at Journée Grafika, a web/design conference. At the conference we met Sid Lee (also speakers) who invited us to there office. They are the guys behind the magnificent MGM Grand site. Cloudraker was another nice agency we met and visited.

At ADAPT 06 I met a legend; my new topp favourite artist; Syd Maed! He has been designing futuristic concepts for corporations and the movies (including Blade Runner, Tron and Mission Impossible 3) since the ’60s. He is making “retro future” in a way I have not seen anywhere else, and he does not even use the computer!

Another great artist I had the chance to see was Mark Goerner! Stunning work from one who has make concept drawings for Minority Report, X-Men 2 and Superman Returns. Mark is currently working on James Cameron´s Battle Angel to be released in 2009.

Thierry Doizon gave a lecture in speed painting and I can just say “WOW!”. His team was demonstrating the use of custom brushes and team work. Just f***ing amazing what they could make by drawing for 1,5 hour.

Some other really great artists I had the chance to see; Dylan Cole, Christian Lorenz Scheurer, James Clyne and Sebastien Larroude.

Project: Website from North Kingdom. My work: Art Director. Client: BRIO.
Information: BRIO is a piece of Swedish history. BRIO, who is making toys by wood, have changed their profile and therefor wanted a new face on the web.

Project: Illustration. My work: Illustration. Client: Two Faces.
Information: Two Faced was a book project I was invited to last year. At WIWP site you can read that the book “approached a large variety of creative people ranging from Toy Designers to Art Directors, Photographers to illustrators, Musicians to Designers. The Artists were paired off and given the task of creating a portrait of the person they had been teamed with, using their own style for which they have become renowned.” I was teamed together with the talented design group Vasava from Barcelona.

This illustration is based of a photo I have got from Vasava (Barcelona, Spain). First I draw all nodes in Photoshop (I like the speed better there) by hand and then colored in Illustrator and finally back in Photoshop for final coloring.

   More pictures and information here.

Project: Website from North Kingdom. My work: Art Director & Lead Designer, Creative. Client: Vodafone Group, London.
Information: A presentation of who Vodafone really are. We made a long movie where the visitor can interrupt the film and interact with the content in different layers.

Project: Illustration for Fashion Magazine. My work: Illustrator. Client: D-Mode Magazine, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Information: A project where chosen illustrators and photographers work where combined. Photographer: Pablo Franco. Production: Christian Bernay. Model: Josefina Valente.

Project: Website from North Kingdom. My work: Art Director & Lead Designer. Client: Goodby, Silverstein & Partners.
Information: Got Milk? is a milk campaign for the American market from Californa Milk Dep. Art Director from GSP was Will McGinness.

Awards: 2 Gold at Cannes Cyber Lion 2006.

Project: Photography. My work: Photographer. Client: Ki, Skellefteå.
Information: Photos for a hair competition. Concept & Styling by Charlotta Havh. Hair by Therese, Ki. Fashion by Designchapel.

Project: Corporate Identity. My work: Art Director & Designer. Client: Arctic Gourmét, Station Åtta and Matfestivalen, Skellefteå.
Information: Some logotypes made during 2005.

Project: Festival Identity. My work: Art & Creative Directions, Graphic Design and Photography. Client: Ur-Kraft, Skellefteå.
Information: A festival with 10 years of history needed a new identity. These picture showed how the posters would look like.