Visuelt days in Oslo 6-7 May 2010

For two days, a bunch of graphic designers and illustrators and other interested people met in Oslo for the annual Visuelt event offered by Grafill (association for graphic designers and illustrators in Norway). The seminar was arranged in Vika Cinema and included welcome speeches, several visual screenings and a range of interesting presenters, many from international agencies and collectives. On Friday evening, it was time for the annual Visuelt Award Ceremony in Christiania Theatre. A number of awards (so many subcategories!) and much praise was shared with an enthusiastic audience as also the after-awards party time got closer.

You can see more here: ............(links to come)

http://bit.ly/9qfRoD

The Girl and The Robot

Nominated for the annual Spellemann in the category Music Videos. To be decided tonight in Oslo Spectrum, 6 March 2010.

The Girl And The Robot from Röyksopp on Vimeo.

Norwegian Form's Jacob prize 2009: Egil Haraldsen

Credit images/photos:
to the left - Roberto Di Trani, Norsk Form
in the middle and right - Egil Haraldsen, Norsk Form

Do you have a Dag Solstad book or another "October" book near you? Then it probably is Egil Haraldsen and Ellen Lindeberg in Exil design who designed its bookcover.

JACOB PRIZE. This week graphic designer Egil Haraldsen (b. 1952) received Norway's highest award for design and architecture, the Jacob prize, for his long achievements in visual design fields. Haraldsen has created and cocreated numerous book covers and cinema posters and served many clients well through creative collaboration over decades. He has also contributed to expressions beyond the brief and conventions.

EXAMPLE. Working recurrently with Solstad, a distinguished, contemporary writer, Egil Haraldsen is given considerable freedom, he tells Oslo's newspaper Aftenposten after the prize ceremony. It is worth noticing that Haraldsen for instance came up with the idea himself to put 'Dag Solstad', the author's name in parenthesis on the book cover, an interesting angle to Solstad's excellent and self-reflective authorship. See book cover above, from Eleventh novel, book eighteen.

Excerpt from interview with Norsk Form (in Norwegian):
- Hva er et godt bokomslag?
- Det må ville noe. Ikke være et forventet tapet, et gjesp. Det må skille seg ut, ha en idé, tanke, innfallsvinkel.

Det er ikke alltid lett. Haraldsen forteller at på slutten av 80-tallet ble designet temmet. Da begynte markedsavdelingene og forfatterne å ta mer kontroll.

- Forfattere er blitt opphøyd til guder. Noen ganger kan de komme med bilde og fonttype.
- Det er deprimerende at yrket designer ikke nyter mer respekt. Folk finner aldri på å krangle med en rørlegger eller skomaker. Men de krangler med en designer.
See full interview text in Norsk Form's website (see link below) by Katharina Dale Håkonsen.

JURY STATEMENT. Here is the jury statement (in NORWEGIAN):
Egil Haraldsen debuterte i 1983 etter utdannelse fra Grafisk avdeling/SHKS, og han har i et kvart århundre vært en av de virkelig toneangivende innen norsk bokdesign. Han driver eget
designstudio i Oslo – Exil design – og arbeider med grafisk design for kulturfeltet, hovedsaklig med bøker, filmplakater og tidsskrifter.
De fleste hjem har et utvalg av hans arbeider. Haraldsen har designet omslag for forfattere som
Dag Solstad, Kjell Askildsen, Tove Nielsen, Knut Faldbakken og Edvard Hoem. Han har definert
den visuelle profilen til forlaget Oktober og har også arbeidet med bokdesign og omslag for en
rekke andre forlag som Pax, Gyldendal, Cappelen, Aschehoug, Tiden, Kolon og Humanist.
Egil Haraldsens solide produksjon representerer en konvensjonell typografisk tradisjon og
presisjon. Samtidig søker han det ukonvensjonelle ved sin eksperimentering og reflekterte relasjon til samtid og subkultur. Hans repertoar er fra det sublime og rent typografiske til det fotografisk- illustrative og koloristisk eksessive. Egil representerer selvsikkerhet og distinkt egenart kombinert med respekt for det unike i tekst og kontekst for hvert prosjekt. Bøkene for Oktober og filmplakatene til Arthaus er utmerkede eksempler på organiske visuelle identiteter som vokser fram på grunn av langvarig, nært og respektfullt forhold mellom designer og oppdragsgiver. Kulturprodukter trenger ikke merkevarestrategi, men kvalitetsbevisst, kløktig og variert innholdsformidling som trigger sanser og nysgjerrighet.
Haraldsen er faglig fundamentalist, en vakthund for typografihåndverket, for viktigheten av
bokstavenes billedlegging av språket og en streng kritiker av faglig slapphet og selvtilfredshet. I hans debatterende og kverulerende ærlighet og satiriske humor ligger det en blod-alvorlig insistering på faglig kvalitet, kompetanse, meningsfylde, ærlighet og arbeidsmoral.
Egil Haraldsen øker tilgjengeligheten og livskvaliteten for et lesende, seende og tenkende
publikum, inspirerer kunder og samarbeidspartnere og er et utfordrende forbilde for grafiske
designere i alle aldre.

«Design oder nicht sein!»

(Source: via Norsk Form 19.11.2009. http://www.norskform.no/

See also a good interview in Aftenposten, by Thorleif Andreassen,
http://www.aftenposten.no/kul_und/article3382354.ece
Accessed 21.11.2009

Prize for 'Sun in the box' cooker

Jon Bøhmer, the entrepreneur behind the Kyoto box get media attention via e.g. BBC and Richard Black
Environment correspondent, BBC News website

"A cheap solar cooker has won first prize in a contest for green ideas.

The Kyoto Box is made from cardboard and can be used for sterilising water or boiling or baking food.

The Kenyan-based inventor hopes it can make solar cooking widespread in the developing world, supplanting the use of wood which is driving deforestation."

Source: http://twurl.nl/l153sa

Heia Jon! Who is from Hedmark, Norway.

PETER OPSVIK and ULLA BRANTENBERG - awarded Anders Jahre Cultural Prize 2008

Anders Jahre Winners 2008.
Courtesy photos Anders Jahres Humanitære Stiftelse

Yesterday, designer Peter Opsvik and glass artist Ulla-Mari Brantenberg received the Anders Jahre's Cultural Prize 2008, together with two young talents (Daniel Rybakken and Tuva Gonsholt) the prize winners had helped selecting.
Because I have a special research interest for designing, I will focus on the designers here. According to the press releases, this is the first time a designer receives this prize.
In collaboration with the prize winner, a young designer was also awarded, as already introduced this was Daniel Rybakken, educated from Industrial Design, AHO.
Congratulations to both designers Peter and Daniel!
The award ceremony was in Oslo's Gamle Logen, and the prize winners surprised the audience with a shared music performance - Peter Opsvik is a good sax player but few had expected Ulla to sing. It was terrific my brother told! Sadly I was not there but Princess Astrid was! (see link below to Kongehuset).
See more on the prize and prize winners here http://www.ajhs.no/scripts/ingress/read.pl?id=080630103026-95
http://www.kongehuset.no/c26939/nyhet/vis.html?tid=73195

Sitting with movement and variation. Opsvik is known in design milieus and beyond because of his contribution to innovating sitting. Among his commonly used designed products is his Tripp Trapp chair that "grows with the child" (produced by STOKKE). He has also designed a variety of human-centered chairs or "sitting tools" for people to sit actively at home, in the studio or elsewhere (including the balans and rocking-wise chairs codeveloped with STOKKE, now sold through Varier). Further, Opsvik has codesigned a range of office chairs and conference chairs for work settings aiming for "movement and variation" (codeveloped with HÅG, cf. especially the HAG CREDO and the HAG Capisco, the latter is a sadle-like chair. I sit in it at BI everyday, it feels very good for my back and whole body!).

Rethinking sitting. There are of course many sources of inspiration behind what has crystallized as "Rethinking sitting" (Opsvik's new book, 2008). Among the fundamental inspirational sources was the Danish dr. Mandal working on improving school children's seating possibilities, and Opsvik met Mandal and other specialists involved in ergonomics at HAG.
Furthermore, another critical source is the Norwegian Balans design group with its alternative sitting conception and models brought forward by a group of four in the late 1970s, i.e. three designers one of them was Peter Opsvik, the others were Svein Gusrud, and Oddvin Rykken and all of them worked with Hans Christian Mengshoel, an inventor who has been attributed for the concept. At the time all of them interacted in various ways to create an alternative sitting, which eventually contributed to the new thinking. Also a few companies became involved in this co-creation and further development such as HAG, STOKKE and RYBO).
Although complex design work often involves team work, it is a significant contribution over a life-time by Opsvik (who also is a musician and designs artistic cupboards). No doubt, his efforts have been crossing disciplinary and other borders, and this was explicitly acknowledged by the prize committee headed by Åse Kleveland.
For more elaboration on Peter Opsvik, Stokke and HAG and their design collaborations, see research articles and reports on my website:
http://www.bi.no/Content/AcademicProfile____37600.aspx?ansattid=FGL98006&siteid=2D93E6C6062086B2C12571C4005B9DF5&type=pages