We at North Kingdom where invited to the APTM4 conference in Tokyo recently (big thanks to Yosuke Kurita). Therefor David Eriksson and I went to Japan for a week. It was very inspiring meeting guys like Even Roth from Graffiti Research Lab, the cool guys at SemiTransparent Design, Abe-san & CO at Ogilvy Tokyo among others. We also visited the “Now Updating…” exhibition by Yugo Nakamura and Tha Ltd. Amazing stuff! I love Tokyo!

David and I where also interviewed by the Japanese magazine “Web Designers” as you can see on the other picture here above.

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.

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.

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.