38 39
PROFILE PROFILE
ThEY cOULD PRODUcE cOVERS
wITh MORE cREATIVE ART
wORK OR DIFFERENT FORMATS
ThAT cOULD BE cOLLEcTORS’
ITEMS. BUT SOMEhOw IT SEEMS
LIKE ThE GENERAL REcORD
INDUSTRY IS MORE INTERESTED IN
MAKING PROFIT AND STOPPING
FILEShARING ThAN MAKING
INTERESTING PRODUcTS.
01 02
The bright sunlight of summer has drenched Oslo in that particularly
clear Nordic light and I’m standing on the pavement of Grunerløkka,
looking across the road at an early twentieth-century red-brick
building—in this light, even these workers’ flats look good. In recent
years this area has transformed itself from a run-down district into
the trendy centre of the Norwegian design world thanks to the
lure of cheap rents and the availability of space. I am about to
visit Yokoland’s studio, the up-and-coming graphic design and
illustration studio, which was founded by friends Espen Friberg
and Aslak Gurholt Rønsen while still at school, which subsequently
03
got into full swing after their graduation from the Oslo National
Academy of the Arts.
Yokoland has been blazing a trail across the Norwegian design scene.
Its book, published in 2006, showcased the studio’s work of the last six years
and recently it has been grabbing press attention, as well as a number of
clients from both sides of the Atlantic. Yokoland is a print-based design studio,
though it does not shy away from anything much—its website lists an interest
in everything from signage to title sequences, and every now and then an
exhibition of its own work.
01, 02
Gurholt Rønsen had warned me that “last week we bumped into
CD cover for Let’s Eat a junkie asleep outside our studio door”. I ring the doorbell cautiously,
Crazyroom!! It’s Time to Be
and a voice tells me to come up to the second floor. As I run upstairs
Cool Like a Boy!! by Koppen,
Metronomicon Audio (Norway),
I wonder if they mean an English second floor or a European second
artwork and design by Yokoland
floor, and after a bit of shouting up and down the stairwell, I end up
(Thomas Tengesdal Nordby and
being ushered into their studio. A number of heads force themselves
Aslak Gurholt Rønsen), 2007
away from the hypnotic power of the screen, and I meet the
03
current working cohort of the studio: Aslak Gurholt Rønsen, Thomas
Invitation / silkscreen poster Tengesdal Nordby and Martin Lundell. Gurholt Rønsen explains that
for launch of architecture firm
Espen (the other founding member) moved about a year ago to
Arkitekturverkstedet i Oslo, design
Baton Rouge, Louisiana. They still work together on certain projects,
and illustration by Yokoland
(Thomas Tengesdal Nordby,
but for the last two years Tengesdal and now Lundell—who is back
Martin Lundell and Aslak Gurholt in town after his graduation from Konstfack in Stockholm—have
Rønsen), 2008
been part of the studio.
We launch straight into a Yokoland favourite, which is music. Examples of
older CD covers made for Metronomicon Audio are paraded. The work tends
to be heavily collaged, photocopied and type is thrown at the design, and
much of it has a handmade and immediate quality to it. I wonder aloud
how production levels could have been maintained with such a handmade
aesthetic. Gurholt Rønsen explains with a grin that this was no problem, since
they never made more than a run of thirty or forty CDs in total. In fact, I discover
that almost all the members of Metronomicon Audio (besides the musician
Jørgen Skjulstad) were the founding members of Yokoland. They are our ideal
client, says Gurholt Rønsen, in a matter-of-fact sort of way. I ask about CD cover
work for other musicians and everyone joins in on this one.
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