Glasmästeriet Mariestad
Web Design & Development
What
Web Design & Development
Where
Glasmästeriet Mariestad
When
2022
Glasmästeriet Mariestad is a glazier offering services within glass, including glazier and carglass repair, while also housing a frame- and art supply shop. The website was developed focused on a minimal design that immediately would share necessary information such as the services provided, opening hours and contact information.
When scrolling further down on the page, or by clicking the links taking you to each section on the page, the page visitor can then get an in-depth informatoin about the different parts of Glasmästeriet Mariestad. The page was intentionally made as one landing page with different sections, to reduce clicks from one page to another. The page was coded from scratch in HTML, CSS and JavaScript.
Visit glasmast.se to see the page live.
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A New Wiki
Web Design
What
Web Design & Coding
Where
FHNW/UIC
When
2019
Just as the title reveals, this is an alternative redesign of Wikipedia – a task that has been on the agenda many times but is complicated thanks to the site's many users and contributors.
To start with, three potential enhancements were identified – the table of contents, the different menus and tabs surrounding the page, and the page’s references shown at the very bottom.
With these potential enhancements in mind, the page was redesigned, firstly, with a table of contents always visible to the left of the text, letting the reader reach the wanted part of the text quickly.
Second, the former, long menu to the left, as well as the tabs and links at the top, were hidden behind two side menus at each side of the page, but still at an easy reach through a simple click. The more frequently used features, such as the search bar, user log in and the change of language, were also still visible through icons and easily accessible for the user.
Regarding the page references, an overview of the number of references was first introduced on top of the page, since that might say something about the trustworthiness of the text. Then, the different sources were also presented right at the side of the body text, based on where they are used in the text. That way, the reader can avoid jumping up and down between the text and the bottom of the page, where the references are located today.
The references were also given icons to quickly reveal the source type, which also might tell something about the trustworthiness of the specific reference.
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How will we be remembered?
Master thesis
What
Master Thesis
Where
FHNW/UIC
When
2020
How will we be remembered examines the challenges and opportunities posed by images shared on social media platforms today.
Based on the question "How can graphic design be used as a tool to navigate, manage and preserve images from collective databases?", a variety of experiments were performed, focusing on creating a possible process for how to deal with all our shared and saved images.
The background of the project was based on the growing collection of photos we have today. Since, in 2020 alone, the total collection of photos online is estimated to grow to 7.4 trillion. How should we be able to take care of all that image material? Especially when digital file formats, software, and hardware are evolving and changing rapidly. What is the standard today may be obsolete tomorrow.
The idea was born somewhere between the fear that important documentation of our time may disappear in the masses, and the unique possibility of being able to curate our present, and how we would want to be remembered.
To collect image material for the project, the social media platform Instagram was used,
as it is a widely used platform where people from all over the world share photos. Sometimes these images revolve around the same topic and motif, but with different personal and/or cultural perspectives.
The Instagram images were navigated through a tool called InstaLooter. Via InstaLooter, images could be automatically downloaded based on e.g. hashtag they were grouped under, and the time they were posted.
As a delimitation for the research, three hashtags were chosen for the conducted experiments. These were selected based on their ability to represent a time-typical phenomenon or event. Something that could reflect the present, and thereby also could be of value to preserve for the future.
The selected images from each hashtag then underwent a process aiming to make the motifs more similar, as a first step towards managing the many images. First, all individual images were automatically cropped to the same size, and their background was masked out through machine learning. The masked motifs were then automatically centered in the image, manually adjusted so that they all were aligned (for example, the eyes were moved to the same level), and finally, the images were manually resized (e.g. all eyes were then made into the same size).
The, now processed, images then went through a procedure where they were merged together into one image through overlap and transparency. This happened automatically through programming, and the new, merged motif still displayed details from the many different individual images it was built from. Merging the many individual images could be seen as one way to manage them, by creating a representable overview.
The process then shifted from navigating and managing the images to examining how they could be preserved for the future. Based on how objects have been preserved historically, in their physical, material form, it seemed natural to investigate if the merged digital images could become a tangible object. Therefore, the merged image was automatically turned into a digital three-dimensional model. Just like automation was an important part of the process earlier, it was also crucial to try to find an automated process here too. With a digital model achieved, the digital object could then be materialized through 3D printing.
With the printed object, a monument had been created. A tangible form, based on many people’s perspective of a contemporary phenomenon, that could represent parts of our existing digital collections, and be preserved for the future.
An article about the Master Thesis is also published on Zürich-based publisher Hochparterre’s website. Read it here.
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How to Visualize the Internet
Booklet Design and Essay
What
Booklet Design and Essay
Where
FHNW/UIC
When
2019
The Internet as we know it has been around since the early 1990’s, when it started to take a more commercial route and open up to the bigger mass. 30 years later, one can question if this, now seemingly ever-growing, machine is yet explainable. Or has it simply become too complicated for anyone to understand? Something as widely used, taking up such a big part of so many people’s lives, is something that there should be a better understanding of.
Because, if the Internet cannot be defined – how could it then ever be understood? How can something be defined, that has no shape, no form, or no face, but only a name that describes everything and nothing at the same time?
As a means to better understand the Internet, and thereby get a clearer view of how to shape it in the future, there lies an importance in visualizing this huge topic. To visualize something, is to give it attention and enable conversations about it. Visualizations can also function as a window into the future, addressing possible problems or opportunities that have not been faced up until now, and that cannot be put into words yet. Visualizations also has the potential of being understood without language barriers and cultural conditions.
Therefore, the research question for this essay and design research was composed as follows; How can the Internet be visualized to represent its current state, but also open up for questions about how its everyday users might be able to shape it towards their interests, and not only that of big companies’, in the future?
With the given theme From Line to Image, the starting point for the visual experiments were based on the line. After some tryouts, a decision was made to also keep the experiments analogue instead of digital, to give it a more tangible impression in contradiction to the sometimes intangible perception of the Internet.
The theory was mainly collected from the book The Internet Does Not Exist, published by e-flux journal in 2015. The book is a collection of 15 texts authored by contemporary artists and thinkers.
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Trump & Truth
Creative Coding & Book Design
What
Programming & Book Design
Where
FHNW/UIC
When
2019
Trump and Truth is an experiment in visualizing how the truth might be distorted in a world full of fake news. The project was part of the course New Media at The Basel School of Design, where we programmed in InDesign using the program basil.js.
Initially, a source was chosen, an API from which data could be downloaded and used as the basis for the project. The data for Trump & Truth was selected from politifact.com, a fact-checking service that reviewed statements by politicians in the United States. Based on the truthfulness in the statements they were rated on a six-point scale ranging from true to mostly true, half-true, mostly false, false, and pants on fire.
To limit the project, statements from then-US president Donald Trump were chosen, whose comments were included in all grades of the scale.
Through basil.js, the text could be automated to gradually become distorted, as the statements went further from the truth. The text became increasingly illegible, as to comment that we should not have to hear or read untruths from politicians who are responsible for governing an entire country and taking care of an entire population.
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Poster Evolution
Poster Series
What
Poster Workshop
Where
FHNW/UIC
When
2020
During a workshop held by Chicago-based graphic designer Pouya Ahmadi, the challenge was to 1) design a poster based on a selected article from e-flux journal, and 2) pass on your own poster, receive someone else's, and create a new interpretation of it.
Every day for a week, we received a new poster, and every day came with new challenges that would be added to the interpretation of the new poster. These could be, for example, that three different colors and three different fonts had to be used or to apply a rule assigned via oblique strategies. On the last day, all four posters created so far would be merged into one, using one element from each poster in the fifth and final poster.
The first poster is based on an article about how art collection has become increasingly abstract, to the extent that we no longer collect objects – the collectibles are now the stories about the objects. We are collecting the collection itself, or the act of collecting. The poster is therefore based on the principle of a frame, where the lines are increasingly blurred, just like the lines for what is collectible are blurring, and in this change from tangible to intangible, the negative meets the positive (in text form) in the middle of the poster.
The second poster is based on an article in which the format and facilities of museums and exhibitions are questioned. How does the white box affect our image and perception of the artifacts on display? To connect to the article, a grid was used to visualize white squares, both to symbolize the museum’s format, and the limited view it can emit. As a protest against this, a large part of the text in the picture goes against the rules, it does not follow the grid but floats freely through the landscape of the poster.
The third poster would communicate a counter-argument to the first article. Thus, art objects came into focus again. By taking one of our most famous historical art pieces, the Mona Lisa, and blurring her, the question of what history would have looked like without historical objects was posed. How would we have received ourselves, and looked upon history, without these objects that we now possess?
The last poster collected elements from all of the other posters created during the week. The typographic frame, grid, and three-dimensional objects symbolize the concoction of elements that had been used. A little like a cabinet filled with mixed curiosities from the past week’s intense hours.
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Democratic Design
Booklet Design and Essay
What
Booklet Design and Essay
Where
FHNW/UIC
When
2018
In 1970, the first edition of Victor Papanek’s book Design for the Real World - Human Ecology and Social Change was published. There, he freely shares his opinions of what design could- and should do, as well as how a more democratically driven design could be created.
Many times, Papanek’s words sound almost utopian, and therefore, the article How To Implement Democratic Design questions the concept of democratic design, as interpreted from the book.
To further investigate the term, Papanek’s words are compared with a real-world example, where a for-profit company uses the same words in their brand strategy. The furniture giant IKEA. Is democratic design doable, or is it rather a way to create goodwill around the brand?
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Becoming You
Book Design
What
Web Design & Coding
Where
FHNW/UIC
When
2019
Becoming you is an archive of an archive, visualizing parts of notebooks and diaries written during several years. With the feelings and reflections imprinted with ink, Becoming you is also an archive of thoughts.
Dealing with thoughts, the concept is built around how a diary or notebook can be the object with whom we share our inner thoughts. Things we might not tell anyone else. Therefore, the design reveals only parts of the many thoughts and feelings written. Chosen highlights that create an almost poetic story in themselves, as the reader flip through the pages.
Although, one might be triggered or frustrated by the many more words available on the pages that remain secret to the non-Swedish speaker. Again, a comment to what we choose to show and hide from others.
The book also includes an index of the original notebooks and diaries the texts came from, as well as several images accompanying the text.
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Front Matter
Typography & Layout
What
Redesign of book front matter
Where
FHNW/UIC
When
2019
Front Matter is a redesign of the front matter of Wolfang Weingart’s classic book Typography – My Way To Typography. The front matter of a book consists of a preface, information about the publisher, printer and partners, table of contents, etc. It is often a slightly forgotten part of book design.
Where Weingart experimented widely with layout, typography, and graphic elements, the redesign takes a step back in time, to the school Weingart somewhat distanced himself from.
The redesign is inspired by Emil Ruder’s ambitions to let the material and shape of the book interact with the typography, and uses a classic grotesque, Univers LT, as well as a grid allowing the possibilities of using two, three, or four columns on one page.
The concept of the redesign is based on several principles to play with the many possibilities of the typography within the grid. Throughout the design, a hanging principle is seen where the content hangs from the top.
Besides hanging from the top, the content is also going from vertical, towards horizontal, introduced on the page with printing and partner information.
Furthermore, the content displayed is also going from light to dark, with an increased amount of text towards the end, creating a darker impression of the page and spread.
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Switzerland 2019
Layout & Book Design
What
Photo Book
Where
Individual Project
When
2019
Schweiz 2019 documents two trips within Switzerland during 2019. Since the photographs we take today often end up on a hard drive somewhere, not very frequently visited, the aim was to create a kind of souvenir and collection of memories from these two trips, in book form.
The cover includes a debossed photo, to remind us of the imprints memories create within us. With its surrounding frame, it is almost like looking through a window, seeing what once was – what happened during these two trips within Switzerland in 2019.
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Sans Soleil
Poster Design
What
Poster Design
Where
FHNW/UIC
When
2019
The poster Sans Soleil was part of a recurring exhibition called Poster Slam at The Basel School of Design. It was created as a reaction to the documentary Sans Soleil, directed by Chris Marker and released in 1983.
Where the film comments on human memory, and what significance it has for our perception of our surroundings, the poster is a comment directed towards both the film title (literally), as well as the inevitable consequences of our fading memories.
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Graphic designer based in Stockholm, Sweden. With experience in layout, typography and digital design, as well as brand management and content creation. Holds an International Master of Design from The Basel School of Design in Switzerland, and University of Illinois at Chicago, U.S. Passionate about printed matter in general, and publications in particular. With a weakness for strong coffee and eye-opening design theory.
EDUCATION
MAS
Master of Advanced Studies, Graphic Design
The Basel School
of Design, HGK FHNW
Basel,
Switzerland
2018–2020
MDES
International Master of Design, Graphic Design
University of Illinois
at Chicago
Chicago,
U.S.
2018–2020
Type Design and
Lettering
Schule für Gestaltung
Basel,
Switzerland
2019–2020
Graphic Design and
Communication
Linköping University
Norrköping,
Sweden
2013–2016
Graphic Communications
Management
Ryerson University
Toronto,
Canada
2015
EXPERIENCE
Kurppa Hosk Communications
Graphic Designer
Stockholm,
Sweden
2022-ongoing
Johannes Norlander Arkitekter
Graphic Designer
Stockholm,
Sweden
2021
Truestory Sweden
Graphic Designer and Content Manager
Stockholm,
Sweden
2020–2021
Go Dream
Graphic Designer and Content Manager
Copenhagen,
Denmark
2017–2018
Smartbox
Graphic Designer
and Copywriter
Copenhagen,
Denmark
2016–2017
Lúgh Studios
Graphic Designer
Internship
New York
U.S.
2015