Some photos I took on our new North Kingdom floor in Skellefteå. We have take over a really cool apartment (180 m2) above our existing one. Our designer Charlotta Havh have worked with the interior design and her dad have done much of the carpenter’s work, as the table here in the new conference room. It is a pretty small world btw; the owner of the apartment was Göran Eriksson, CEO at my old work, Paregos. His son, Marcus Ericsson (Subdisc), who also worked at Paregos, is now living in Vancover and running his own famous studio; Academy.

Reindeer lamp.

   More pictures and information here.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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

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…

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.

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?

This week is our first week in our new Stockholm office. We have moved from Gamla Stan, where we have been located the last four years, to Kungsholmen. These pictures are from December during the restoration which still is running. The office are hopefully finish in the beginning of March. Here are some cool pictures during the first day by Jakob Nylund.

I will post some work in progress later on. Architect Fabian Wanqvist and Charlotta Havh (North Kingdom) is helping me out with the interior design.

   More pictures and information here.

James Robinson, Project Manager. Some great picture by Jakob Nylund from the last days at Gamla Stan. North Kingdom will soon have a new Stockholm office.

   More pictures and information here.

“2009 saw a move away from destination websites as brands sought to integrate themselves into social networks and engage in real time media. However, there were still a fair few URLs that rocked our world.”

Cool! North Kingdom is mentioned twice in Contagious issue “Most Contagious 2009″; Adidas (Teamgeist) and Swedish Armed Forces (Recruitment). I worked as Lead AD for both, which was pretty cool too!

adidas — Teamgeist
“Sporting giant adidas used a stylish online game inspire by the graphic novel genre to allow fans to explore the true value of the adidas jersey worn by the German national football team. Through Stockholmbased agency North Kingdom, the Teamgeist site placed captain Michael Ballack and star players in an augmented reality, interactive comic book. Visitors helped the team win back its identity after players became lost in ‘blank’ jerseys. The game was played 500,000 times in the first three weeks. Contagious 21.”

Swedish Armed Forces — Recruitment
“In order to recruit exactly the right calibre of candidate amongst the country’s 18-25 year-olds, the Swedish Armed Forces used a dark, complex website that sent users through a series of psychological tests assessing intelligence and motor abilities. Direct mail provided personal feedback on the online tests, resulting in a response rate of 72.6%. The average dwell time was almost nine minutes and the site (www. mil.se) received record breaking figures during the campaign. Via DDB Stockholm, with North Kingdom, Skelleftea, Teenage Engineering and Stopp, Stockholm all contributing. See Contagious 20.”

“The tiny city of Skellefteå in the extreme north of Sweden is an unlikely place to find one of the world’s foremost web design agencies, and yet it is the spiritual home for the award-winning North Kingdom.” Cool interview by Computer Arts. Read more here; The online version.

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.

Ofcourse we had a big party in Stockholm as well at our great office at Skeppsbron in Gamla Stan (The Old Town of Stockholm). It was a great evening where we offered our guests lot of drinks and meat from beer, reindeer and moose. The invitation site is made with my Designchapel font and an old illustration I felt matched perfectly.
(Photo by David Grehn)

More pictures to come…

Mathias Lindgren and I went to Los Angeles and Siggraph 2008 (short for Special Interest Group on GRAPHics and Interactive Techniques) to check out the worlds leading computer graphics (CG) conference. As an Art Director I think it is very important to know what is going on out there, and Mathias, who are our 3D artist, to find new techniques and methods. Great inspiration when you need to find cutting edge solutions for different projects!

One of the best speakers was Tippet Studios who talked about how they did “Cloverfield”. We was amazed by their engagement and how they have used their creativity in the technical level. We also saw lot of great Behind-The-Scene speakers showing stuff from movies like ”The Mummy”, ”Indiana Jones, ”The Hulk”, ”Speed Racer”, ”Iron Man”, ”Narnia”, ”Wall-E”, The X-Files_ I Want to Belive” and ”The Golden Compass”.

   More pictures and information here.

.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.

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.

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 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.

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.