I know, this is a very late post, but this Christmas I gave my sister Ragnhild a photo book of her two sons. It is based on my photos from 2008 and 2009. The book is printed at Blurb where I ordered a test book three years ago, but back in 2007 I received a book with terrible print result, so I haven’t bother to order anything more from them. However, this time I saw they had upgraded their supplies so I took a shoot, and I was happily surprised when I received the book. The print quality, the colors and the material were really fine this time.

   More pictures and information here.

Three pretty cool campaigns have recently been launched from North Kingdom (sites where myself hasn’t been involved). The first one is for Cheetos; The Battle of the Cheetos. A project made together with our friends at Goodby, Silverstein & Partners (San Fransisco).

Second one is Welcome to Avalon Class for Toyota. A site we made together with Saatchi & Saatchi (LA) who came over to work from our Stockholm office for a while. The Avalon site is today’s Site of the Day at FWA btw.

The last project (no picture) is for Auris Hybrid, Toyota. “Months before the launch of the Auris Hybrid, Toyota uses advanced augmented reality technology to send the car on a test drive across your desk.” Site of the Day at FWA, June 28. The Auris project was also made together with Saatchi & Saatchi, but this time with their Düsseldorf office.

I found a really nice post (via Twitter) on Abduzeedo about my work as design inspiration. It made my day :)

I just want to show this cool article (two double-page spreads) from the Korean trend magazine, Adobe sponsored, w.e.b (May 05) about my company; North Kingdom. I have no idea whatsoever what it says when it’s all in Korean, but as long as it look cool it´s fine by me. Great to see that they using my typeface Black Nun Bold for the headline.

However, it’s a shame for the readers that a cool magazine like m.a.p. have a web page like this… It seems to be a standard for many Asia sites to look like that so maybe it’s just me who don’t get it?

I have been invited by Ståle Gerhardsen to a design/typography conference tomorrow called hello VARSKO!. I will speak about North Kingdom, adidas, design, illustration, typography… and some other things that could be inspiring. Therefore I have spent my Friday night on my sofa, preparing my presentation. Luckily the World Cup is still running on the TV, and it will be very inspiring to hear the other designers talk tomorrow and to see what’s going on in Trondheim.

VASKO is a society that supports creative visual communication and has its focus on the artists that dare challenge and break rules. Through exhibitions and happenings the organisation wants to show the world what is going on in the design underground in Norway, especially in our region Trondheim.

Last night we received some awards at Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival. We got one Silver for Försvarsmakten together with DDB Stockholm and two bronze for adidas Teamgeist. No gold this time but a lions is always a lion.

More recent awards here.

I have just finished mine and Kenny Lindströms kitchen illustration, so tomorrow I will send it to the printhouse because instead of paint it we will print, just to save some time. The main idea was to mix our styles.

My work was concept, copy, making the lady and put everything together. The idea is also to make a black stain on the table underneath
where the coffee is pouring. When I wrote the copy I wanted to achieve a feeling that the picture is taken from a saga, a story (not final);

“Her coffee smelt nice, but it felt like somebody was watching her. It was chilly outside and the aroma of the coffee now had a touch of salt. Like a deep lake of oil, her drink now took on a new dimension. Another side of the kingdom was now presented.”

— Work in progress

The illustration is made on a Cintiq 12WX, based on a photography I took a couple of years ago. When the plan was to paint everything we wanted a clean and simple illustration, which we kept even if it now will be printed.

Kenny Lindströms beautiful octopus. Original file in illustrator above. Below after my coloring.

Earlier this week Creative Summit (a VIP event, open only for 150 delegates) took place in Skellefteå. It is an event operated by The Lodge, a creative hub consisting of prolific Skellefteå-based companies working within the field of digital media.

It was some really inspiring days with Brian Solis, Peter Espersen (Lego), Peter Engel (Zentropia) and Teenage Engineering among others. If you want to read about it, a great sum up is made here by Filmarc:

Creative Summit — Day 1
Creative Summit — Rounding up

Foto by Paulina Holmgren.

Some of the projects I was part of last year as an Interactive Art Director for North Kingdom have recently been awarded which feels really great! I know, I use to say awards is not that important, but still, when you got one it is awesome!

NEW YORK FESTIVALS — Gold World Medal for for adidas Teamgeist
ONE SHOW INTERACTIVE — 2 Silver Pencil for adidas Teamgeist & Swedish Armed Forces.
CLIO AWARDS — Bronze for adidas Teamgeist.

GE Smartgrid from North Kingdom/Goodby won silver and bronze at One Show interactive.

Next week it’s Cannes, so I will keep my fingers crossed. I had tickets to go there but I will stay home and work instead.. Well, someone needs to do that too.

Yesterday our little digital shop turned seven years. It has been an amazing ride since 2003, from being only two the first years to 36 today. The picture with the two great posing guys ;) is from May 2005 when we did our first trip to US and New York. We had just hired our first team member and the plan was to never be more then ten and to keep the business in the north of Sweden, in Skellefteå. Today we are over 20 just in Stockholm. How life can turn…

We had a great first year 2003/2004. I had launched my portfolio, Designchapel, and we did Vodafone Future which become the worlds most awarded website 2004. That gave us a great start even the branch had some rough years back then. It also helped us that we where located in the north part of Sweden as we got some great support from the government and local community in making this all possible.

A huge thanks to all great colleagues, our partners and dared clients! Without you this journey would still only have been just a dream.

Great guidelines from Seth Godin! So simple and so true!

Word Templates — Unfortunately it has been taken a while for us to finish our corporate identity program. Right now some guys are helping us out with making templates for our Word documents. However, it’s not easy when I’m a detail perfectionist and they don’t have a clue of what kerning or spacing is. But I’m an optimist and hopefully, after a couple of weeks, we will have a front page ready :)

North Kingdom Notebook — This is going to print this week; our own designed notebooks (A5). I have also designed some personal stickers for our crew can be added on the cover.

On Monday FWA will publish our wallpaper kit to their special edition 10th Anniversary collection. We where invited by Rob Ford together with 9 other great agencies (FWA 10 top winning agencies) like Goodby, B-Reel, Big Spaceship and EVB for this special occasion. It was of course a big honor for us, but also a chance to make a quick piece of art which is always challenging and fun.

Get the wallpapers here — FWA 10th Anniversary wallpapers by North Kingdom

If you like the font I have used and made, you can download that one here.

When we had no time whatsoever we made a quick collaboration in house. We didn’t have any directions among us more then just go “bananas”, to make something we wanted to have on our own desktops, and to keep it black and white as our graphic profile.

The directive from Rob Ford was; “The wallpaper should include the FWA logo, your own logo, the number 10. I am happy for the FWA logo to be manipulated in any creative way rather than having it placed, as is, on a nice image.”

   More pictures and information here.

Last week David Eriksson (CD/CEO) and myself came back from Toronto and FITC 2010. North Kingdom where invited by Shawn Pucknell to speak at this, in my eyes, very professional managed conference with nice variation of speakers. FITC is an event for the design and technology community, which is now held for the 9th year. I where in Toronto and spoke back in 2007 and was already then very impressed by the arrangement at Hilton Hotel. This year’s theme was Playground. ”Which is all about…playing!”

All photos here below is taken from FITC’s photostream on Flickr

During Saturday, the day before everything started, FITC had a ‘Get a Job’ day where we spoke about how to apply and what you as a student should think about. If you are a designer it is pretty much about portfolio, portfolio and portfolio, and that you can work in a team, which is just as important.

   More pictures and information here.

Daniel Illics (CD North Kingdom) father in Borås have now made our fireplace. What are left now are some final touches on the surface layer and to fix the faked fire so it looks good. More to come…

Photos by Daniel Illic (on iPhone).

Check out the 3D sketch here.

This is cool! For the second time the last three years, we are on the 2010 Creative 50 list. It’s a list where Ad Age and Creativity celebrate the year’s most inspiring thinkers and innovators.

“Welcome to the fifth annual Creativity 50. Each year, we cite those people and companies that made the biggest impact across all areas of creative culture. There are advertising and marketing people on the list. There are also tech pioneers, designers, directors, entrepreneurs, and others who challenged the established way of doing things and inspired with their action.”

Read the whole article here: creativity-online.com

Creativity writes about North Kingdom;

“From GE’s Smart Grid augmented-reality site with Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, San Francisco, to Adidas Teamgeist for the German sports brand, North Kingdom has built a Swedish digital-production agency with work that can translate to any culture, anywhere in the world… The agency actually likes the challenge of working with shops in other time zones and thinks its northern location, away from the creative hotbeds of Amsterdam and New York, means its designers and developers can concentrate on one project at time, since “every single pixel needs love.”

I’m not so fond that they only have the co-founders presented thou, when it is an award for the whole team; from Gothenburg, through Klaverström and Stockholm up to Skellefteå.

However, keep up the good work folks, it’s the third time that is the hardest ;)

Cool also to see Lady Gaga on the same list! She is doing some crazy stuff out there! However, I would rather do a project with her then be on the same list… :)

TOP 50 Creative People
(These are not presented in any specific rank order)

Roger Stighall, Robert Lindstrom, David Eriksson, Co-founders, North Kingdom
Sachin Agarwal and Garry Tan, Founders, Posterous
Blaise Aguera y Arcas, Architect, Microsoft Live Labs
Craig Allen, Art Director, and Eric Kallman, Copywriter, Wieden and Kennedy Portland
Karin Dreijer Andersson (aka Fever Ray), Musical Artist
Marco Arment, Lead Developer, Tumblr; Creator, Instapaper
Kathryn Bigelow, Director
Neill Blomkamp, Director, RSA
Alex Bogusky, Chief Creative Insurgent, MDC
James Cameron, Director
Roy Choi, Mark Manguera, Founders, Kogi
Damon Collins, ECD RKCR/Y&R
Dennis Crowley and Naveen Selvedurai, Co-founders, Foursquare
Andreas Dahlqvist, ECD DDB Stockholm
Bart Decrem, CEO Tapulous
David Droga, Founder, Creative Chairman, Droga5
Dave Eggers, Author, Founder, McSweeney’s
Daniel Ek, Co-founder/CEO, Spotify
James Farley, Group VP Global Marketing, Ford
Cindy Gallop, Entrepreneur, Founder IfWeRanTheWorld.com
Lady Gaga, Musical Artist
Christian Haas, Creative Director/Associate Partner, Goodby, Silverstein & Partners
James Hilton, Co-founder/CCO and Rei Inamoto CCO, AKQA
Damon Horowitz, Co-founder, Chief Technology Officer, Aardvark
Mike Hughes, President, Martin Agency
Jonathan Ive, Senior VP Industrial Design, Apple
Jan Jacobs and Leo Premutico, Co-founders, Creative Directors, Johannes Leonardo
Matt Jones, Director of Design, Berg
Spike Jonze, Director, MJZ
Linus Karlsson and Paul Malmstrom, co-founders/CCOs, Mother New York
Ashton Kutcher, Founder, Katalyst Media
Tom Kuntz, Director, MJZ
Michael Lebowitz, Founder/CEO, Big Spaceship
Carol Lim and Humberto Leon, Co-Founders, Opening Ceremony
Pranav Mistry, PhD Candidate, MIT Media Lab
Ty Montague, Co-president, CCO North America, JWT
Tor Myhren, CCO, Grey New York
Filip Nilsson, Creative Director/Chairman, Forsman & Bodenfors
David “Nobby” Nobay, Creative Chairman, Droga5 Sydney
Rob Reilly, Andrew Keller, Jeff Benjamin, ECDs, Crispin Porter Bogusky
Eric Rodenbeck, Founder/Creative Director, Stamen Design
Vivian Rosenthal, Jesse Seppi, Co-founders/Designers/Directors, Tronic
Matt Ross, Creative Director; Matt Oxley, Head of Tech, Tribal DDB London
Keith Schofield, Director, Caviar/El Nino
KR Sridhar, CEO, Bloom Energy
Matthew Szymczyk, Hans Forsman, Creative Directors, Zugara
Iain Tait, Global Interactive ECD, Wieden and Kennedy
Andrey Ternovskiy, Founder of Chatroulette
Ray Tintori, Director, Partizan
Ge Wang, Co-Founder, CTO, CCO, Smule

It took us seven years to get an Golden Egg but finally we got one! We’ve been very lucky and quite spoiled with international awards so we are really happy to receive the biggest award here in Sweden. I think we haven’t succeed in Sweden earlier because we have been working mostly with international clients/agencies and with projects that has been to little “commercial”. I think the Golden Egg have more been focusing on the idea instead of execution which is good. The motivation from the jury also talking about these big flashproductions, questioning if we will see them in the future (an interesting question). And not to forget; the Swedish agencies are doing really good stuff so the competing have been really hard.

The Golden Egg was given to The Swedish Armed Forces project which was a pretty fast production which we made last spring. The motivation is (in Swedish);

“Personlighetstestet / DDB Stockholm / North Kingdom
2009 var inte de stora Flash-produktionernas år. Det var året då alla skulle gå åt det sociala, mobila eller det virala hållet. Men med en ordentlig dos kreativitet och ett gediget hantverk lyckades ett gäng duktiga människor skapa en helhet som ingen annan kom i närheten av. De skapade en lockande upplevelse som var lika smart som den var snygg. Kanske är detta den sista stora flashproduktionen av sitt slag. Men om så är fallet, kunde vi inte fått en bättre avslutning.”

Big big thanks to Försvarsmakten, DDB, Jesper Kouthoofd, Illianced, Dinahmoe and Stopp!

More about the project here.

Air France did I finish last week on my flight from Paris to Miami. I have again used the Brush application which have been updated with layer function since last time I used it. You can also import photos from your photo library. That´s how I did the copy; I took a photo on a page at the airplane, imported it to Brushes and painted Air Fran(ce) on the top layer. The color & contrast correction is made with the Mill Color application.

It was a while ago since my last post of inspiration, but here are some of the best links lately with focus on new technology:

MeBot — MIT’s most expressive telepresence robot yet.
Xbox Project Natal Painting Demo — Xbox are for sure doing some interesting stuff with their Natal Project!
The Mill’s “Apples” — Amazing use of an iPhone and a custom tracking rig together with CGI

The Wired Tablet App — A video demonstration from Wired and their thoughts.
Mag+ — Nice research project from Bonnier R&D. And great move to launch it a week before iPad :)

Nitendo Facetracking — This is cool. 3D combined with facetracking on a DS. I think we will see lot of this in the future.
3D Face Technology — Little old footage taken from Japanese TV. But still very good!

“And Then There Was Salsa” — Very cool Vimeo takeover!
Macro Kingdom — 5DmarkII and a MP-E 65mm lens. Amazing!
Rhonda — A new cool way to draw stuff in 3D.

OK Go “This Too Shall Pass” — A really cool music video by James Frost.
Three reasons why storytelling is the key to success — Great and simple article about storytelling online.
10 Big Marketing Predictions For 2010 — Let us see how much will be true!

Some sketches from a concept I’m working on right now. The characters had to be very simple so I continue to work with the style I made for The Lodge showreel a couple of years ago. I have no idea if we will use these small fellows but they where really fun to do :) Next step will be to build them in 3D if choose to continue. The project will be launched first after the summer so it is a very early sneak peek.

Another drawing I made on my iPhone with the Brush application. I made it when I spent some nice days at the Stockholm archipelago this summer.

For the moment I’m working with our corporate identity which is very important for companies in our branch. The idea behind our clean, sophisticated black & white style is to make an identity that don’t take focus from our projects and that we can keep for a while. Ok, we have already kept the logotype and style for a while but we have never had a complete package which I trying to finish now. My study was actually focused on print so it is fun to do that kind of job now and then…

I have always enjoyed listen to music meanwhile I work creative, specially when I’m sitting at the office or at coffee shops. For me it’s so important that I can shut down everything around me to find my creative mood, my creative “capsule”.

Here is my playlist on Spotify for you who also like to work with easy listening music: Designchapel — A creative day at work

When we did our showreel for North Kingdom last year we also made our own soundtrack together with Andreas Lundmark. I have used his music before when he was a part of Elodie, a great group from Skellefteå with a original style. The last thing I wanted for our showreel was a high tempo pop/rock/techno tune which almost every showreel uses today. Instead we wanted to give our reel an odd story with a calm pleasant feeling.

The soundtrack turned out so good so I wanted to give it a proper record cover with our Dear Deer Lady. I tried a new, quite fast, technique where I painted (with Wacom Cintiq 12wx) on top of a photo I took a few years ago. To fit the graphic profile of North Kingdom I made it black & white.

Download wallpapers — Dear Deer Black, 1920×1200 px (zip)

Download soundtrack — Creatvt (North Kingdom) (mp3)
Download typeface — Black Nun Bold (Illustration file) (.zip)

I have to recommend the latest issue of Computer Arts Projects, “A decade of design”. It’s about how the design industry has changed since 2000. A decade where myself have been most inspired by Büro Destruct, The Designers Republic and Attik. It’s sad though that I have not seen so much from these agencies the last 5 years, and the worst is that 2009, after 23 years in operation, TDR closed for business.

I started to work as an Interactive Art Director back in 1998, so the section “Decade of web design” gave me some reel nostalgia because Computer Arts have chosen one site/project/agency from each year that they thought woiuld represented that years internet evolution best. Who didn’t remember when 2Advanced entered the scene 2001 or Praystation back at 2003? Facebook represented 2006 and 2007 by Wordpress.

The coolest thing was to see our own Vodafone Future from North Kingdom represented 2004! If you would told me that back in 2003, I would think you where insane! I mean, we where just a tiny tiny agency up in the north, doing our job.

“When this website launched, it portrayed the future of technology through a progressive and innovative design that went on to be one of the most highly awarded sites of all time. It was also the only site ever to pick up both the FWA Site of the Year and FWA People’s Choice Award in the same year.”

And to correct CA; it’s not true that Vodafone is the only site ever to pick up both SOTY and PCA the same year. Our “Get the Glass” did the same 2008, not to forget :)

Yes we have moved into our new Stockholm office but it’s still a looot of work to do before it’s all set. One thing I’m looking at right now is a fireplace we will build in the foyer. We talk lot about storytelling within NK, the work we do and what we want to accomplish with our projects. The picture here below did I take in Svansele, where we had some teamdays 2008. This picture gave us the idea to actually build a fireplace in our office (with gel fire ofcourse), where we in a near future, hopefully, will gather around for storytelling and to create new great ideas.

Svansele 2008. North Kingdom tell stories…. Hans Eklund, Daniel Illlic, Klas Kroon, Mikael Forsgren, David Eriksson, Mathis Lindgren, Daniel Wallström and Lucian Trofin.

Inspiration for the design have been found from old fireplaces in north and from the lovely “Zero” from Ak47 in Italy.

I spent this Sunday at “String” on Söder, Stockholm, with a thermos of coffee and my sketchbook because I needed to come up with some ideas for some wall paints to our new North Kingdom office. Damn nice day btw, “String” is a really great place. This is a first concept drawing for the kitchen. I will make the paintings with Kenny Lindström, who will work on the jellyfishes (or whatever we do there) on this one. The idea behind it? Well, I just wanted to continue to work with our strange, odd nature, which we presented in our showreel from last year.

” TED is a small nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design.”

During my last vacation I brought my iPhone loaded with movies from TED.com. These short talks (3-10 min) had a big variaty of both quality but most of them are very interested listen at. Here are a few that caught my mind so far:

Stefan Sagmeister — The power of time off
”Every seven years, designer Stefan Sagmeister closes his New York studio for a yearlong sabbatical to rejuvenate and refresh their creative outlook. He explains the often overlooked value of time off and shows the innovative projects inspired by his time in Bali.”
— Very interested so hear about how they are doing at Sagmeister Inc. to keep up the creativity. I love to see people finding their own way to work because good creativity isn’t, and have never been, something you can get from a line production. Just sitting in front of your computer will never make you very successful.
From the sabbatical year Stefan found out that “Everything we designed in the seven years following the first sabbatical, had originated in that year” Of course, it is hard to do as Sagmeister Inc. if you not are very economical independent, but we can learn a lot from their thinking.

Richard St. John — 8 secrets of success
“Why do people succeed? Is it because they’re smart? Or are they just lucky? Neither. Analyst Richard St. John condenses years of interviews into an unmissable 3-minute slideshow on the real secrets of success.”
— This is a very short movie about how to success in your business. Lot of humor but so so true! Check it out!

Imogen Heap — “Wait It Out”
“Imogen Heap plays a powerful stripped-down version of “Wait It Out,” from her new record, Ellipse.”
— I just love her!

We had two sites shortlisted (out of 12) for this years FWA Site Of The Year. We did not win this year but finished on second place with Adidas Teamgeist, which is really fantastic! We Choose The Moon took the first place. Not my favourite site but it is nice and it’s great to see something from the lunar landing, cause I love space research.

It has been great to follow Rob Ford´s FWA since it started 2000. I remember the first version cause I had my own Designchapel presented there. Who could foresee that this little yellow site would be “The Oscars for Flash sites” a couple of years later?

I spent last week in Val d’Isère, France, where I have had a great time skiing with some friends! Everything was actually perfect; the weather, the snow, the queues, the food… everything! Ok, the afterski in Åre, and also Kittelfjäll, is much better, but who cares? I can warmly recommend both Val d’Isère and Langley Travel.

   More pictures and information here.