SNDSvideo: The AHA Prize

Iben Philipsen was our beautiful and very capable hostess for the entire gala evening at the Copenhagen Crash seminar on May 23, 2008. In this small video, she gives the final award of the evening to Helsingn Sanomat, who was the proud winner of the "AHA Prize" – a special award that the jury can choose to give to designs that have a surprising, unexpected detail. This year the AHA Prize goes to Finland, to Helsingin Sanomat for a series of pages portraying identical twins. Congratulations!

More SNDS videos by Pryds:
- Crashing the market – and into the room
- Wrestling in the ring

SNDSvideo: Wrestling in the ring

The climax of the evening on day one of the Copenhagen Crash conference was the performance by the free style wrestling company "Dansk Wrestling". Here's a little taste of what strong guys can do to themselves. Enjoy "Kool Krede" and "Kimball" beat the shit out of one another in a man-to-man fight in the ring that previously served as a podium for the keynote speakers!

More SNDSvideo by Pryds:
- Crashing the market – and into the room
- The AHA Prize

SNDSvideo: Crashing the market - and into the room

Just when Editor-in-Chief Marianne Gram, 24timer, and President and CEO Per Mikael Jensen, Metro International, were getting started in the session entitled "Get it all free" at the Copenhagen Crash conference, they were stopped by a colourful newspaper "boy" - who passed out issues of Nyhedsavisen - the main competitor for both 24timer and MetroXpress in Denmark. Enjoy the interruption in this small viceo clip.
The moderator, Michael Jarlner from the (paid for) Politiken, tries to keep calm and explain things as Jura Dos Santos delivers his free newspapers.

More SNDSvideo by Pryds:
- Wrestling in the ring
- The AHA Prize

SNDSvideo: The Nominated Pages

This slideshow was shown on the wall of Pressen, Politiken's old printing hall, during the Copenhagen Crash seminar, May 22-24, 2008. The winners are announced on the SNDS website, www.snds.org.
This slide show was edited and designed by yours truely, Lars Pryds. On the wall, it's duration was 15 minutes 35 seconds (this version is somewhat shorter), and it shows all the winners in this year's Best of Scandinavian News Design competition. The pages were photographed by Lars Aarø – www.fokus-foto.dk

SNDS: Winners Announced: 35 Gold/Silver/Bronze Winners

The winners in the "Best of Scandinavian News Design 2008" competition have been announced. Only two Gold medals were given – to the Danish newspaper Politiken in the category "Overall Design". Politiken was redesigned last year nad was rewarded "Best of Show" in the 2007 edition of this competition, and was also named "World's Best Designed" by the international branch of SND – the highest recognition worldwide a newspaper can get in the business.

Another gold medal was won by Finnish newspaper Aamulehti, for a page 2 design using 90 words to form the blue cross in the Finnish flag, on the day Finland celebrated the 90th anniversary for Finnish independance. The words charcterise Finland and the Finnish: Saune, ski jumping, Nokia etc. "This is the only perfect page we have seen so far," was one of the spontaneous comments made by the jury. Ari Kinnari did the design for this page, awarded in the "Open Class" category.

A total of 80 awards were given in the competition – apart from the two gold, 13 Silver Awards, 20 Bronze, and 32 Awards of Excellence. The "AHA Prize" – a special reward that the jury have the choice to give out to a page that hold an unusual design detail, went to Helsingin Sanomat (Finland) for a series of articles about identical twins in the Magazine category (below). Mirka Kolehminen designed the pages that show – in straightforward photography – how identical identical twins actually are.

..
The redesign of weekly engineering newspaper Ingeniøren won a Silver award. The redesign was made by inhouse staff, graphic designers Ann-Britt Broström (Head of Design), Connie Jønsson and Lars Pryds, with the help from design consultant Koos Staal of Staal & Duiker graphic designers from the Netherlands. The new clean look of the high profiled technical newspaper was launched September 14th, 2007, with great success and massive positive feedback from the readers. Read the extensive "portayal" of Ingeniøren in SNDS Magazine 2008|1 (pdf) and in this blog post.

More info on the SNDS website: www.snds.org

All photos by Lars Aarø

SNDS: Oulo 2009 - logo by Pryds

The next SNDS annual conference and workshop will be held in Oulu, Finland, on May 14-16, 2009. The organizers presented their city and their concept for the conference Friday night at this year's gala dinner – by showing a short video introducing the legendary "Men's Choir The Shouters" (see below), originating from and still based in Oulu.

The film also introduced the logo for the Oulu conference – designed by me. That makes it three in a row, as I also did the Stockholm 2007 and Copenhagen Crash 2008 logo designs. This is what the logo looks like – the title is "24".

»The idea is of course that the news production happens 24 hours a day, and the Nordic long day might provide some means of looking at things in new light. We try to focus quite a number of presentations around future, that is the technological and mental future. We especially liked the idea of playing around with numbers in the marketing: 2+4: 6 reasons to come to Oulu; 12 months, 60 days, and so on before the event,« says Leena Kosonen from the Finnish oragnizing committee.

See you in Oulu next year!

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MIESKUORO HUUTAJAT (Men's Choir The Shouters) was formed in 1987 in Oulu, Finland, by a group of young men who clearly had nothing better to do. The idea was to dress ca. 20 men in black suits, white shirts and black rubber ties, and train them to shout some of the most beloved songs in the Finnish song heritage. On the 6th of December (the Finnish Independence Day), the choir were ready for their first performance. The choir shouted several patriotic songs and marches, the national anthem included.
Website: www.huutajat.org

SNDS: Winners' Catalogue Ready to Ship

The catalogue of winners in the "Best of Scandinavian News Design Competition 2008" is now back from the printers and ready to send to members of the organization. Additional copies of the 72 page, A4 size, fully illustrated book will be for sale from Friday night, May 23rd, 2008, after the 80 winners have been announced at the Copenhagen Crash design conference. A special edition includes a CD-Rom with images of all the winning pages in high resolution for print, as well as a low res pdf version of the catalogue.

For the third time in three years, both book and CD-rom was designed by yours truely – Lars Pryds. All pages were photographed by Lars Aarø www.fokus-foto.dk, and the book was printed by Svendborg Tryk www.svt.dk

If you want to buy your personal copy, please contact Head of the SNDS Secretariat, Lone Jürgensen, c/o Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten, Grøndalsvej 3, DK-8260 Viby J, Denmark.
Email. lone.jurgensen@jp.dk

Prices:
Book only: DKK 150,- / Euro 20,-
CD-Rom only: DKK 100,- / Euro 15,-
Book+CD-Rom: DKK 220,- / Euro 30,-

More info about SNDS at www.snds.org

Cards for the Crash

1250 postcards are packed and ready to go into the welcome goody bags for the participants in the SNDS Copenhagen Crash conference, with greetings from my studio. I hope you will use them as an alternative to the sometimes horrible tourist postcards on sale on every corner in Copenhagen. Stamps are available at any kiosk – on the same corners :-)

Copenhagen Crash closing in

We're getting closer and closer to the start of the Copenhagen Crash seminar - in less than two weeks the show will begin! A lot of people have already signed up, but there is still room for more! Especially the Swedish people have yet to sign up in large numbers – and the latest email newsletter from the organizers was targeted directly at the Swedes. Read it here (it's in Swedish, of course!)

One of the main reasons to go to Copenhagen is picking up a reward in the "Best of Scandinavian News Design" competition. A total of 80 awards will be given out on the 23rd of May. The Award Show is the climax of the conference. Prior to this, 34 speakers or moderators have shown up on stage; 12 heavily, but beautifully, built Danish freestyle wrestlers have thrown each other to the floor; eight design doctors have given first aid to newspapers in need, and 250 news people have met again or made new contacts.

So there are plenty good reasons to sign up now – even if you're Swedish! See you in Copenhagen.

Personally, I'm involved in putting together the programme – which is almost in place – and in producing all the printed materials for the conference. My own typeface "KATALOG" which is still in beta is used in combination with Myriad Pro Condensed from the SNDS design manual – and of course the warm yellow and the SNDS heavy red are the colours in the graphic identity of Copenhagen Crash.

The programme, signage, posters and banners, website, name tags, even the screen saver for the intervals between speakers, and not to mention the catalogue of winning pages, CDs, diplomas for the award winners, and labels for the packaging of the diplomas – all this will have passed through my little trusty Macbook Black before entering the world of designers in the middle of Copenhagen ...

See the final programme and sign up at www.snds.org/crash2008
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New SNDS Magazine

This year's first issue of SNDS Magazine is on it's way from the printer's to the subscribers. The magazine is packed with articles about news design – particularly about the upcoming design seminar "Copenhagen Crash" to be held in Copenhagen on the 22-24 May, 2008. The seminar will also see the winners of the annual SNDS Best of Newspaper Design competition – and the magazine brings you a report from the days of the jury's work finding the candidates.

There's also a series of articles about primarily Danish redesigns, concentrating on the tabloids – are they a dying race or are they being given new life by the redesigns? We ask some of the people involved in the process how it works. And there's a review of a new Danish magazine about and for photography – "Filter" – which you can already read here on this blog.

Find the SDNS Magazine in pdf format at www.pryds.com/sndsdownloads - or at www.snds.org

The magazine cover shows a photograph by Liv Carlé Mortensen, who is one of the speakers at the Crash seminar. The title of this marvellous, mysterious, and very personal work of art is "Amazon".

Crash! for Photographers

Photo: Jonathan Bjerg Møller

Can these young photographers change your point of view?
Charlotte Østervang goes elsewhere to find her personal photography.
Miriam Dalsgaard is the first photographer to win the most prestigious journalist award in Denmark!
Liv Carlé Mortensen uses herself in powerful amazone images.

JOIN COPENHAGEN CRASH MAY 22-24 2008
Register now at www.snds.org/crash2008
We will draw a winner of an iPod among the first 50 participants to register.

Two Design Prizes for Ingeniøren

....
Nominated for a Gold, Silver, or Bronce Award: Ingeniøren Redesign


Winner of an Award of Excellence: Inside spread from the Poly Science section

The redesign of weekly engineering newspaper Ingeniøren has been nominated for a Gold, Silver, or Bronce Award by the jury of the Scandinavian News Design 2008 competition, organized by SNDS, Society for News Design Scandinavia. The colour of the metal will be announced at the society's yearly seminar held this year in Copenhagen, May 22-24, the Copenhagen Crash Conference.

The redesign was made by inhouse staff, graphic designers Ann-Britt Broström (Head of Design), Connie Jønsson and Lars Pryds, with the help from design consultant Koos Staal of Staal & Duiker graphic designers from the Netherlands. The new clean look of the high profiled technical newspaper was launched September 14th, 2007, with great success and massive positive feedback from the readers.

Ingeniøren also won an Award of Excellence for a single spread from the Poly Science section – for an article about how our eyes make mistakes (pictured above). This spread was designed by Ann-Britt Broström and Lars Pryds in the new design, and published October 19th, 2007.

See more examples of the new Ingeniøren redesign (and other award winning Pryds news design) at pryds.com

Crash speakers announced, registration open

Quite a lot of the speakers at the SNDS seminar workshops in Copenhagen have been announced on the SNDS website. Among the speakers are Per Mikael Jensen, President and CEO, Metro International; Miriam Dalsgaard, Photographer and winner of the Cavling Prize 2007, Politiken, DK; Mark Porter, Head of Design, The Guardian, UK; Peter Leijten, Senior Editor, nrc.next, NL; and many others. New names are added as soon as they agree to come! The structure of the programme is more or less in place, and the registration page is now open for you to sign up for the conference.
So head on to snds.org/crash2008, now!

SNDS Magazine 2|2007

The SNDS Magazine issue no. 2|2007 is at the printer's and will be on its way to the nearly 600 members of SNDS Friday. It's packed with info and articles: Eight pages related to the recent design conference in Stockholm, including lots of photos; a (very relevant) discussion article by Kristofer Pasanen on what we - the members - really want from SNDS; a great article by Anders Enström about the 2-3-5 layout grid that revolutionized most of the Swedish newspapers - and a "Q&A for A&A" - the new and past presidents of SNDS: Anders and Anna.
There's also an aggressive ad for next conference, which will be in Copenhagen next year. [more]

Apart from doing the layout of the magazine (including the Copenhagen Crash ad), I wrote a single article for this issue - about the typographic one-day seminar at DGH (The Graphic Arts Institute of Denmark) in April. The text is below in this post, below a preview of the article, and I even published a Danish version some time ago also on this blog.


Type summit Copenhagen
On April 26th, six stars on the typographic sky met in Copenhagen to speak to 100 people from Danish design companies, media and design schools. The Graphic Arts Institute of Denmark hosted the TYPO:07 seminar.
By Lars Pryds

German designer Verena Gerlach was the first speaker, taking us on a fascinating trip through the city of Berlin, where she had studied the street signs in both East and West Berlin.
The East German signs were characterized by very narrow typography, in order to make room for the long names of the communist members who the streets were named after. Gerlach’s study had resulted in the font families FF Citystreet Types East and FF City­street Types West.

Another Gerlach font, FF Karbid, was inspired by the lettering of store signs and advertising, painted directly onto the wall. Most of the East Berlin signs disappeared when the Berlin wall fell in ‘89, but fortunately “Frau Gerlach” managed to photograph many of them before that.

Gerlach’s last project was Blinkenlights, in which the façade of an empty building were transformed into a large matrix, with a powerful lamp behind each window. The lamps were turned on or off by the public’s email or sms, controlled by a website and a large computer setup. With the right timing, anyone could actually send a message to one’s loved one and have it displayed in the windows, when “coincidentially” crossing the Alexander Platz next to the building. Gerlach was not the initiator of the project itself, but designed a font that took the name from (and based its design on) the Project Blinkenlights by the Chaos Computer Club

To read or to see, that’s the question
Dino dos Santos from Portugal gave a short introduction to his new typeface Leitura, which is the Portuguese word for reading. One of Dino dos Santos’ main concerns is that the font itself should be invisible, or at least – the type design should not shout louder than the content itself.

“What is invisible? If you use [the type], it is not invisible anymore.To read or to see the type, that’s the question. And Leitura was designed to be read, not seen”, Dino dos Santos said.

Fred Smeijers from Holland is well known for classic fonts like FF Quadraat and FF Arnhem. The latter is a.o. used in the Danish Book of Psalms, used in all churches in Denmark. Smeijers showed his very first hand drawn sketches for letterforms, and told us how – many years later – he only designed the sans version of Quadraat because a good friend teased him by saying that he “probably couldn’t do it”. That got him going…

The title of his presentation was “Why do we design and need new typefaces?”, but the answer to this question drowned somewhat in his walking us through interesting design examples. One suggestion could be: “Designers always look for new typefaces to make their work easier”.

When QUOTE – a modern lifestyle magazine – asked Smeijers to update his own design for their logo to match the content of a special luxury issue, he simply told them to “build” the logo in caviar, instead of having him redesign the very recently redesigned logo. That was his way of making his work easier!

Smeijers’ website www.ourtype.be is one of the advanced and elegant type websites this writer has seen in a very long time. In a user interface that mimics the look and feel of QuarkXpress or Indesign, it is possible to try out the company’s typefaces in a text field, capable even of holding different weights and/or fonts at the same time. An extremely useful “try-before-you-buy”-feature.

The Guardian – in many weights
Over the last few years, British newspaper The Guardian has won all possible design awards for the redesign carried out in 2005. One of the reasons for its success is – without a doubt – the very thorough typographic work, done by the American type designer Christian Schwartz in cooperation with Paul Barnes. Schwartz told us how.

What was originally meant as a simple format change, including a minor update of existing fonts, turned out very different. The project saw the birth of possibly the most extensive and most varied single typeface family ever commissioned by a newspaper, when old time work horses like Miller og Helvetica were replaced by Schwartz’ and Barnes’ 200 variations of Guardian Egyptian and Guardian Sans.

Sebastian Lester of Monotype Imaging in England also showed us examples from his early days of designing letters, some of which had the pure joy and optimism only student work can have. In adult life, Lester has worked at Monotype with far more precise designs – among these the Expert Sans and Serif, developed for the British bank Barclays. A TV commercial for the bank was especially dear to Sebastian Lester – as Jennifer Aniston played the leading part in the video – together with Lester’s typeface, of course!

Typographic overview
Two speakers finished a long day in the company of fontaholic nerds by giving the audience two versions of typographic overview.

Vítor Quelhas from the Porto Polytechnic Institute in Portugal revealed his project dyntypo.com – a research heavy website with a large collection of works in the category “Moving type” – or interactiv typography. One example could be letterforms projected to the wall, but “sticking” to the silhuetto of a person walking by, others exercises to make type come to life on screen. All possible by intricate technology. Oddly, all of Vítor Quelhas’ presen­tation was in the form of very static slides, not one letter moved anywhere on the screen.

From Italy, Alessio Leonardi told the 120 year old story of Linotype, taken from his recently published book “A Line of Type”. The story of the inventor of the Linotype setting machine, Ottmar Mergenthaler, who revolutionized book printing in the 1880ies, told in the language of a cartoonist can be very entertaining, especially if you knew just a tiny bit about the history beforehand. If not, this was indeed a history lesson that never experienced a dull moment.

Links:
Verena Gerlach: www.fraugerlach.de
Project Blinkenlights: www.blinkenlights.de
Dino dos Santos: www.dstype.com
Fred Smeijers: www.ourtype.be
Christian Schwartz: www.christianschwartz.com
Sebastian Lester: www.seblester.co.uk - www.monotypefonts.com
Vítor Quelhas: www.dyntypo.com
Alessio Leonardi: www.buymyfonts.com
Den Grafiske Højskole (The Graphic Arts Institute of Denmark): www.dgh.dk

Note: Læs artiklen om TYPO:07 på dansk her:
http://tolleone.blogspot.com/2007/04/typo07-dgh.html

SNDS - New members of the board

This year's SNDS conference, held in Stockholm, May 24-26, 2007, marked a change in the organization of the society. Anna Östlund, President for the last four years (member of the board for the last eight years), decided to step down - because:
"It is time for me to do so. All organizations should have a certain amount of rotation in order to get new ideas. Having the same people in charge too long, things may stagnate. And I don't want this to happen to the SNDS", Anna says.
The General Assembly in Stockholm unanimously elected the candidate of the election committee, Anders Tapola of Swedish newspaper Smålandsposten, as the new President of the SNDS. Congratulations, Anders!
New members of the board are Lars Andersson, Upsala Nya Tidning (Sweden) who will be in charge of the SNDS seminars, and Sissel Bigset Leira, Sunnmørsposten (Norway) who will be the organization's secretary. Remaining in their seats from last year are Vice President and Marita Granroth of HBL, Finland, tressurer Frank Stjerne of JP/Politikens Hus, Denmark. Auditor is still Knud Refsing Andersen, and the secretariat is still headed by Lone Jürgensen, both of Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten, Denmark, and deputy members of the board are: Lars Pryds (Denmark), Elin Madsen (Norway), Petri Salmén (Finland), and Anna Tjurfell (Sweden).
The photo (above) shows the new and the past president of SNDS. Anna is dressed in a traditional Swedish dress, sewn by her mother in cloth woven by her grandmother. The dress was given to Anna 25 years ago, and she wears it at very special occasions. This was indeed one!
Anders is in a t-shirt that was made for the Xtreme Dalahorse Makeover competition!


The Annual General Assembly is not a session that attracts many people (this year about 20) - but the spirits are high! And the real power lies in the right to elect the board. Think about that! In this photo, Ole Munk, Chairman of the Election Committee, presents the proposals of the committee.

SNDS Seminar 2008 announced

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

See you in Copenhagen!