Galleri Lisse Bruun: On June 7-30 I will be one of 30 artists exhibiting in Galleri Lisse Bruun's Summer Exhibition. I'm not quite sure what will be on show, as the gallery has a collection of my paintings in commission, and will choose from these for the exhibition. The vernissage is Thursday, June 7, at 5pm-7pm, and everybody's welcome. Oh, and it's actually one on my paintings you can see in the invitation, under the names of all the exhibiting artists...!
Solo show in August Please make another note in your calendar for August 30, 2007, which is the opening day of my second solo show in the gallery (the first one was two years ago). You can see a small video of the 2005 exhibition below.
This photo is actually a very rare one - it's showing Stephanie Grace Lim in a quiet moment..! For some reason, I had accidentially set my camera to the "sepia mode" when in the front row of Steph's presentation "Tasty Tricks to Tickle Your Creative Toes" at the SNDS conference in Stockholm, May 24. But it fits the mood perfectly. Perhaps Stephanie was just preparing herself for the explosion of energy - and the session was indeed one of the more lively ones at the conference. Stephanie had divided her presentation in two - the first giving us the methods and tools to be creative - with a little help from coaches "Thelonious Minimizer Monk" and "Siegmund the Interrogator Freud", and in the second inviting two teams (The Swedish Team and The Rest of the World Team) to compete in "The Smackdown" - a competition on stage, where she forced the teams to come up with ideas to illustrate stories. Very entertaining and educational. I even think Steph had as much fun as we did!
I have posted more photos from the conference in three sets at Flickr - have a look at the links below. I have collected my own favourites in a 2 minute slideshow here. Photos on Flickr: SNDS speakers - from the sessions SNDS attendees and gala dinner- people and prize winners SNDS Stockholm by day and night - interesting observations made in the city and in the streets... Have fun !
Took a lot of pictures in Stockholm. One or two may go down in history as being okay, but the most of them are far from fantastic. It's always great to see people again, though, and I hope you will watch this little slide show with some of the people I met. Did you meet them, too?
Thanks a bunch to Rina Kjeldgaard for being so close and looking so good in the first and the last slide :-)
Tunnel Vision is the title of a novel by one of my favourite writers, Sara Paretsky, about her female detective V.I. Warshawsky. It could also be the title for these photos, of which two are from Stockholm and one from the Monaco Grand Prix.
One good thing about having to leave the SNDS conference a day earlier (focus on the positive things in life, right) is that I'm not on a plane right now, but watching my favourite sports on the television back home in Copenhagen - the Formula 1 Grand Prix race. In Monaco the cars are going even faster than the SJ trains (which is incredible in those narrow streets). Very entertaining. Hell of a way to spend a national holiday, my wife says.
The 2008 SNDS seminar will be held in Denmark and hosted in Copenhagen by Danish newspaper Politiken. This was announced this morning in Stockholm, where 275 people from the news design community are gathered for this year's 3 day seminar. Frank Stjerne from the SNDS board asked the audience to find a Danish newspaper willing to take on the responsibility, and Editor in Chief Stig Ørskov of Politiken signed a contract on the stage. The title of the next conference, Copenhagen Crash, refers to the fact that Politiken on short notice agreed to the task, after the original host, Jydske Vestkysten, had to opt out in the spring of 2007.
The organizing committee for the Copenhagen Crash: Søren Nyeland, Head of design, Politiken (chairman) Stig Ørskov, Editor in chief, Politiken (official host) Frank Stjerne, JP/Politikens Hus (economics) Flemming Hvidtfeldt, Ringkøbing Amts Dagblad (competition) Lars Pryds, Ingeniøren (programme)
When: Copenhagen Crash will take place Thursday-Saturday, May 22.-24., 2008. Where: Locations will be Politikens Hus, Rådhuspladsen, and Hotel Scandic Copenhagen, Vester Søgade.
Logo: The logo for the Copenhagen Crash conference was designed by Lars Pryds in cooperation with the oraganizing committee, using one of Pryds' unfinished font designs called "Katalog". The font will – perhaps – be released in connection with the seminar in Copenhagen, and will be available for download at pryds.com/type.
Info: Stay updated by visiting snds.org regularly, or sign up for the SNDS newsletter, also at snds.org
Danish newspaper Politikenwas the great triumphant when the awards in the Best of Scandinavian News Design 2007 were announced Friday evening in Stockholm. Of a total of 83 awards, eight were given to Politiken: 2 Gold, 2 Bronze, 3 Awards of Excellence, and the most prestigious of all: The Best of Show. Best of Show - which actually is a Gold Award converted to the top prize of the competition - was given in the Design category and the two (other) Golds in the Redesign category and for a Section Front Page (above right). The headline in the section front page reads: "This is how it goes, when you take women to a bicycle race". Politiken was given a thorough redesign in 2006, and was one of four newspapers titled "World's Best Designed" by the international SND earlier this year. The fact that one of the Gold awards was given for a page that dates before the redesign, testifies that Politiken's flair and tradition for design awareness is not a new one. Impressive.
In this, the Scandinavian competition, Aamulehti of Finland was a clear runner-up with seven awards (2 Silver, 2 Bronze, 3 Excellence), and Norwegian Dagbladet a close number three, also taking home 7 awards (1 Silver, 2 Bronze, 4 Excellence). A third Gold Award was given to Helsingin Sanomat in the Magazine category, for a highly original series of pages with illustrations and headlines made with a plain, blue ball pen. (left)
73 newspapers or media organisations submitted 956 entries in the competition, 37 won awards - 5 from Denmark, 10 from Finland, Norway, and Sweden respectively, and 1 Bulgarian and 1 Irish newspaper won in the Eurropean cateegories for Front and Feature Pages. See the complete list of winners and jury members at snds.org - or get your hands on the 72-page, full colour catalogue, also available through snds.org. See a preview and how to get the catalogue here.
Chief editor Stig Ørskov says thank you for the Best of Show Award on stage in the "Nalen" theatre in Stockholm.
Robb Montgomery, Editor and CEO of visualeditors.com, at the Mac lab blogging station of the Stockholm SNDS 2007 conference and workshop (near the bar!). Get your hands on those keyboards, and start blogging! and see the results on the Stockholm Blog. Below, Stephanie Grace Lim points you in the right direction...
If this posting was a brief in a newspaper, I just increased its likelihood of being read with 34%, by adding the small illustration here on the left. This was one of the very interesting and useful conclusions of the Poynter Eyetrack07 report, which today's first speaker, Sara Quinn of the Poynter Institute told us all about. A sequel to the first Poynter eyetrack report from 1999, this one was made on the basis of 600 readers, the largest ever. Another interesting result of the report was that readers were inclined to read more of online stories, than in the printed paper. This goes for both short and long stories. A third one: Big photos also attract readers, especially documentary news photos - i.e. photos of real people doing things in real time. So here's a picture of the real Sara Quinn doing a real presentation :-) See more of the Eytrack07 report or download it as a pdf at eyetrack.poynter.org
On the first day of the SNDS2007 conference, I took some photos in or near the Clarion Hotel, where the conference is taking place. Among others a handful that all have typography or lettering in them. Here they are.
There's something really fascinating going on on the web. Or at least, this website is really cool - or at least, that's what Kristofer Pasanen of Finland thinks. He's probably right. He was showing a few links to websites that make great use of user forums and discussion groups to the editors of the SNDS Magazine and snds.org website, after being enlisted as one of the editorial group members for the SNDS. Kristofer met over a huge burger with members of the SNDS board and the editors of the Magazine and the website before the official opening of the Stockholm seminar, and discussed how to make both publications (the printed and the online organ of the SNDS) a better place to be. The main idea is to have at least one person in each Scandinavian country feeding the editors of both magazine and website with information, and keeping an eye on what is going on, design-wise, in each country. Benjamin Peetre has agreed to be the Swedish contact; but there seems to be a vacancy for a Norwegian. For Denmark, it may not be relevant, as both web and print publications are edited by Danes.
Arne Lysne from Tønsbergs Blad recieved the ticket to Boston on behalf of the winners. Here between John Hällström, Anders Tapola and Anna Östlund.
Henrik Ulrichsen and Vegar Vatn from Tønsbergs Blad, Norway, have created the new Swedish National Symbol! - or at least the best, new version of the existing one - the Dalahorse. The jury of the Xtreme Dalahorse Makeover competition chose the winner among 31 candidates on show at the SNDS conference in Stockholm. Henrik and Vegar win a trip to the SND workshop and conference in Boston, 11-13 October this year, three days hotel, conference fee and flight ticket all paid for. The jury gave this statement for the IKEA-style winner (which you can see here among all the other horses as entry no. 21): "Less is more. Purity of essence. A Swedish national symbol has become even more Swedish. Everyone can buy and build their own Dala horse and we don't understand why the global Swedish Furniture Company hasn't come up with this idea. The graphic instruction can't possibly be more easy than this." The same horse was also the most popular among the audience this evening, so Henrik and Vegar also win a free participation in next year's SNDS conference. This is really a winner takes all!
The jury were so overwhelmed by the quality and originality of the entries, that they decided to give a "silver medal" to three other horses (no. 5 made by Agnete Holk (DK), no.6 by Solvag Luckhurst (S) and no. 30 by Jacob Nordström (S), and an "award of excellence" to seven others: John Sherlock (no. 1), Kicki Sjösteen (9), Michael Werge (10), Ann-Britt Broström (16), Lars Refn (18), Lars Pryds (19) and Rickard Frank (31). A note of interest here might be that out of five entries from Danish weekly Ingeniøren, three won an award of excellence (16, 18, 19). How's that for a percentage? 3 of 5? - not bad.
My personal favourite - and I did vote for it! - was no. 18 (see below), designed and performed by my collegue at Ingeniøren, Lars Refn. Both because of the beautiful and very personal artwork, but also because of the built-in story, which could almost fill a whole page in a cartoon book. In Lars's own words: "I wanted to transform the shape into something else, so my horse is: A Swedish member of the SNDS in yellow t-shirt and blue jeans, giving a great hug to a Danish sailor, who has a wooden leg and a parrot on his shoulder. The Swedish guy is wathing the time on his wristwatch, while the sailor is just trying to steal money from the Swede's back pocket"
. This is Lars Refn's comic book story on a horse...
My own version of the Dalahorse? On my blog here. It's a yellow thing, with an SNDS logo for an eye, called "I'm Being Followed by a Blue Shadow" - you know, shadows fall in contrasting colours. The 31 candidates are here.
Is this the great Shakespearian question for the Swedes this Saturday - "Rock or Sports"? Well, most of us are here at 8am Saturday, so let's find out. How to to do that, I have no idea at all.... Just another glimpse of the city signs. There's a bit of great lettering going on here and there...
A long warm ride by taxa from the airport, a quick bath in the hotel, and Stockholm - here I come. Of course, for a Dane, it's great to see all the enourmous rocks blending in with the townscape, instead of the flat land we are used to in Danmark, but there are also other good things to look at. Here are some examples. More will come!
The Catalogue with reproductions of ALL winning entries in the SNDS Best of Scandinavian News Design 2007 competition is now back from the printers. A special version of the catalogue comes bundled with a cd-rom, containing: The catalogue in pdf format in three versions (low res, medium res, high res); all official versions of the SNDS logo(s), ready for print and web; a slideshow of the winning pages in Quicktime .mov format; and pdf versions of 2006-2007 issues of SNDS Magazine.
You can buy catalogue and/or cd-rom at the conference in Stockholm on Saturday, May 26, and afterwards by contacting the SNDS secretariat: Lone Jürgensen, by email: lone.jurgensen@jp.dk; phone: +45 87 38 38 38; or fax: +45 87 38 31 99.
72 pages, 224 illustrations, full colour Format: 21x29,7 cm Design: Lars Pryds, pryds.com Print: Svendborg Tryk, svt.dk ISBN: 87-987443-9-9 / ISSN: 1397-8012
Hey - did you notice? I just updated my website - pryds.com. Well, the opening page, anyway, the rest of the pages are updated little by little on a regular basis. Thought the old look was beginning to look, well, a bit old. The new design is based on hand drawings, stencil lettering, and spray paint, with a few image maps to navigate from. I'm a great fan of image mapping - kinda old school, I guess, but it works! (I hope). Take a look: pryds.com
Here's one of the great things about living in the centre of Copenhagen: This Sunday we could actually see the Copenhagen Maraton from our window on the third floor! And as our home and studio faces south-west, we had a perfect place in the sun, relaxing and watching the runners in the street. Great fun - for us. The third time they passed our window, they all began looking a little tired... :-)
The SNDS seminar is only 3 days away now, and the deadline for voting for your favourite design in the Xtreme Dalahorse Makeover is getting closer, too. 31 candidates for a new version of the Swedish national symbol compete; you can see them all and vote at snds.org The winner is found on Thursday, May 24, at 6pm. So hurry! Click here to vote!
Sidste år var vi i Finland. Lisbeth var inviteret gæstekunstner i Rauman Pitsiviikko - eller på dansk: Knipleugen i Rauma, en gammel tradition i Rauma, der er Finlands centrum for knipling. Her omdannende hun en lille park i byen til et tekstilt kunstværk. Vi boede i en gæstelejlighed ved byens lærerseminarium, og på badeværelset stod denne vægt. JEG turde ikke stige op på den. For hvad betød den lille håndskrevne seddel? En advarsel om at vægten viste 20 kg for meget? Eller at den ville eksplodere hvis man trådte op på vægten? Eller at man SKULLE tage badesandaler på, for ikke at smitte den næste med fodsvamp? Vi fik aldrig spurgt nogen hvad det betød. Måske var det for pinligt. Måske glemte vi det bare. Men her næsten et år senere har jeg fået teksten afkodet, ved hjælp af en god venindes ven i Finland. Denne svenske forklaring er jo lige så banal som den er oplagt: "Anvisning: tryck med tån ner det vänstra hörnet. när det står 0,0 i sifferfältet: stig upp på vågen, och bli stående där en stund." Men det var nu meget rart med 14 dage uden at vide hvad vægten viste... PS. Tak Birgitte!
The SNDS - Society for News Design Scandinavia - conference in Stockholm is getting closer every day - and May 14th will be the closing day for registration. The speakers are many and include names like Stephanie Grace Lim, Rickard Frank, Cristóbal Edwards, Markus Frey, Jacqueline Wu, Svenåke Boström & Carina Ihlström Eriksson, Søren Nyeland, Robb Montgomery, Sara Quinn. Take a closer look and sign up today at snds.org See you in Stockholm on May 24-26 !
Den 2. maj kl. 12:11 meldte Susan Jakobsen sig ind i Ingeniørens Kunstforening. 4 timer og 25 minutter senere var hun en glad vinder af ferniseringspræmien ved åbningen af Svend Bruuns udstilling i kantinen på Ingeniøren. Det kan man da kalde en hurtig succes! Velkommen i foreningen, og tillykke med maleriet til Susan, der herover er fotograferet sammen med kunstneren. Dagen var i det hele taget en af de gode. En pæn (og pænt stor) flok nåede forbi kantinen til ferniseringen, og i løbet af dagen fik kunstforeningen yderligere fire nye medlemmer. Velkommen også til Kristoffer, Casper, Jan og Torben.
Svend Bruun fortalte løst og fast om sine billeder - der "først er helt færdige, når de er solgt, for så har jeg ikke mulighed for at male videre på dem". Han har kaldt sine billeder for "Myter". På spørgsmålet (for selvfølgelig var der en nysgerrig ingeniør til stede) om, hvad det var for nogle myter, svarede Svend, at det såmænd kunne være en hvilkensomhelst myte eller historie, det må gerne være op til beskueren at danne sin egen historie ud fra maleriet.
"Hvor lang tid tager det at male et maleri?" blev Svend også spurgt. Svaret kom prompte: "70 år!" Hvilket naturligvis hentyder til, at Svend fylder 70 i juni måned. Det fejres med en stor jubilæumsudstilling (nogle vil kalde det en fødselsdagsudstilling, men er man en rigtig kunstner, er man det jo helt fra fødslen. Derfor: et jubilæum) i Galleri Lisse Bruun i Store Kongensgade her i København. Der er fernisering torsdag den 10. maj kl. 17-19. Se mere på www.gallerilissebruun.dk
Herunder lidt stemningsbilleder fra ferniseringen. Udstillingen på Ingeniøren hænger til den 15. juni.
Galleri Lisse Bruun: On June 7-30 I will be one of 30 artists exhibiting in Galleri Lisse Bruun's Summer Exhibition. I'm not quite sure what will be on show, as the gallery has a collection of my paintings in commission, and will choose from these for the exhibition.
