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.

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.

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.

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.

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…

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.