We at North Kingdom are really happy to announce that we received some very fine international recognition this winter and spring. A great start to the award season and huge congrats to the teams and clients involved. We are always really proud when hard teamwork is recognized.

ONE SHOW INTERACTIVE —

Build With Chrome
— Gold (Websites, Services)
— Silver (Integrated Branding Campaign)

Paranorman
— Gold (Websites, Consumer Goods)

THE WEBBYS —

Build With Chrome
— Public Choice for Best Online Campaign
— Nominee (Best Use of Online Media)
— Nominee (Best Visual Design)

Only The Liberation
— Nominee (Best Use of Video or Moving Image)

Finding Fantasyland
— Honoree (Travel)

CLIOS —

Only The Liberation
— Gold (Sound Design)
— Bronze (Graphic Design)

Build With Chrome
— Silver (Microsite)
— Bronze (User Experience)

Paranorman
— Silver, Integrated Campaign

ANDY AWARDS —

Paranorman
— Silver

Finding Fantasyland
— Bronze

Daybreak
— Bronze

D&AD —

Build With Chrome
— 1 nominee

Only The Liberation
— 3 nominees

ROY AWARD (SWEDISH FILM PRODUCTION) —

Only The Liberation
— Best Interactive Film 2012

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Today we are super happy and extremely proud! We won our 50th FWA Award since our first SOTD in October 2003! More to come!

Read more — FWA Top 100 Most Awarded

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We won incredible 6 Cyber Cannes Lions last week for our work with Google and ONLY! An all-time-high for us at North Kingdom, now with a totally amount of 18 Lions! I wasn’t there personally this year, but it must been totally amazing! Last year when I actually was there we only had one nomination, which felt like going to a party uninvited.

Google ROME got 1 Gold, 1 Silver and 1 Bronze, while ONLY Liberation project won 1 Gold and 2 Silvers. Super big thanks to all great partners for making this happen!!

ROME has btw won a lot lately (read more here) and ONLY was recently FWA Site of the month!

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Our Google ROME & “3 Dreams of Black” project has got some great awards lately;

A — 1 Golden Egg in Stockholm
B — 2 Golden Pencils from The One Show
C — 1 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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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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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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This year we had one project in the FWA’s big final; Best site of the Year. Myself wasn’t involved in this one when Nils Arvidsson (North Kingdom) was our interactive art director. Actually, I haven’t done so many cases at all during 2010 when I had been involved in other stuff/roles within North Kingdom. However, I hope to do lot more work during 2011 when I’m back on the drawing table full time.

From North Kingdom blog;

“Battle of the Cheetos made it all the way to the third spot in 2010 FWA People’s Choice Awards – Website of the Year. Thanks to all of you who voted for our piece that we developed together with our old friends at Goodby, Silverstein & Partners.” (Case movie by GPS)

View the project here — Battle of the Cheetos

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For a couple of days ago I got my test prints for the FWA award certificates from a local print house, just to check the design. All new winners will receive these from FWA via post, starting January 2011, except for SOTD winners who will just get a pdf.

Old winners will also get these certificates. Rob Ford; “Initially, I think the certificates might be printed for all SOTY and PCA winners I can still get in touch with. For previous SOTM winners, I think it makes sense to send them a PDF which they can print from themselves.”

The famous FWA digital award ribbons are vectorized and placed in the lower right corner.

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WORK IN PROGRESS — This autumn I got an amazing assignment from Rob Ford at FWA; to design four prints for their awards.

The basic idea was to make something that would look good on your wall, and even better if you would have a collection. Rob Ford wanted to have a different award certificate for FWA, a vision I liked very much. However, the design have to be simple in a way, when it still is an award. You should be proud of it, and not feeling that you have a piece of art on the wall you maybe don’t like. The typeface and the design are taken from the FWA digital award ribbons, which made me start thinking of knitting, which also looks like pixel art in a way. Both knitting and pixelart are just handcraft, which matched the idea perfect when the projects you see on FWA are filled with that

Some lines from the brief;

“They could all be the same format but with a slightly different colour style to resemble the level of award. I’ve attached all of the award ribbons in case they help in any way and I have also attached the FWA logo in eps format.”

“I have thought in the past how it might be cool to have a 3D trophy image on the award certificate but I really have no requirements on the design style or idea. Of course, FWA is all about being progressive, original and innovative so I’m sure you will have that in mind anyway.”

(The award would not come with a wooden frame btw, I just wanted to see how it would look like.)

The four certificates — SOTM (Site Of the Month, SOTY (Sity Of The Year), PC (People’s Choice) and SOTD (Site Of The Day). I added some awards from us at North Kingdom to see how it could look like.

SOTM, SOTY and PC will be printed and sent over. SOTD will be available for downloading. Some test prints will be made next week.

— This post will shortly be updated.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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 :)

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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?

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.net magazine (one of the UK’s leading magazine for web designers and developers) and Rob Ford (from one of the worlds biggest flashcommunity; FWA) have gone through the best websites since 1997 to make a top 20.

“When the first version of Flash was launched in 1996, little did we know how it would revolutionise website design over the ensuing decade. The FWA’s Rob Ford counts down the Top 20 Flash sites of all time”.

Rob Ford; “Through my work at leading web award site FWA I’ve pre-screened over 200,000 Flash websites over the years, and seen both the best of the best and the worst of the worst.” “Please note that some of these sites are old now and may seem very dated, but in their heyday they were making people’s jaws.”

#1. Vodafone Future Vision.
“Roll the music … “Straight in at number one!” Okay, here we go … the best Flash site ever is Vodafone Future Vision, made by North Kingdom (www.NorthKingdom.com). When this site launched in January 2004 it was way before its time. The funny thing is, its aim was to promote what Vodafone saw as the future of technology. The fact that they managed to create a site that was so progressive and innovative as well is quite amazing. It would go on to be one of the most highly awarded sites of all time, as well as being the only one ever to pick up both FWA Site of the Year and FWA People’s Choice Award in the same year. Lots of original techniques were used and influences from it were even spotted in TV adverts shortly after. Hands down, this is the website that all designers and developers wish they’d been a part of and which, at the time of launch, totally blew away its audience. A very worthy winner and a site that must be kept live for all eternity.
Launch date: 2003
Claim to fame: The best Flash site ever!”

We was very amazed and happy when we also saw another site from North Kingdom on the top 10:

#5. Get The Glass!
“North Kingdom is one of my top three favourite agencies and this site, which promotes milk, is a great example of why. When I first saw it, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I thought to myself that this was the best site I’d seen since… well, the one you’ll see in a minute at number one (no peeking!). The site is based on a board game that you have to play to help the milk-deprived Adachi family break into Fort Fridge to get the Glass. Roll the dice and experience some of the highest quality production, built from the ground up, that you’ll ever see. Oh … make sure that you don’t get caught by the cops and end up in Milkatraz!
Launch date: 2007
Claim to fame: Taking production levels to new heights.”

I was also really glad to see my old favorite Gabocorp from 1997. It was that website that make me to chose the web industry before the advertising industry (which was my big plan). And yeah, Gabocorp has never been a strong design site, but in my eyes (and many others) the first site that actually showed what internet would become to be.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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”

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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!

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“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!

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