48 49
PROFILE PROFILE
IN ThE LAST FEw YEARS wE hAVE
The range of materials in the studio’s work is certainly invigorating. One of
the first spreads in its book displays type made out of green leaves and plants
BEEN cONTAcTED BY MANY
(leeks were particularly good for this task, apparently). Then there’s a mosaic
AD AGENcIES FROM ALL OVER
made out of thousands of bathroom tiles for the Center of the Universe
album cover, Bellydance Nation CD cover, or Lego bricks or letters from the
ThE wORLD, BUT wE hAVE hAD
game Scrabble, or cut-out letters made out of wood… The list just goes on.
VERY FEw cALLS FROM AGENcIES
The use of challenging material seems to impel the designers to engage with
form and “think out ideas in detail before we execute them”. This seems one of
hERE IN NORwAY. wE LIVE IN A
their strengths as a group, and is also a natural bridge to the conceptual
approach in their work. They dig out the latest edition of Carl’s Cars which
cULTURE ThAT LOOKS TO OThER they have guest art-directed, and talk me through the levels of the layout; from
cOUNTRIES FOR AFFIRMATION.
a header font, Number Plate, that was drawn by Stephan Müller and takes us
on a “typographic road trip through Europe”, changing countries for every
new article, to the timeline running across the bottom of the page which gives
factual information (often made up of whimsical statistics derived from
Yokoland’s own imagination bank).
“ Much of our work includes references, both to other people’s
work and our own,” Gurholt Rønsen comments. The use of happy
Opposite
coincidences in Yokoland’s work has become the source for process
Bak et Sort Hull (“Behind a
or narratives for new projects. For instance, an installation of trees
Black Hole”), catalogue for an made specifically for the studio’s first exhibition was later reused
exhibition of Yokoland collages
when Täppas Strepens asked it to do the cover for his album The
and drawings, Tegnerforbundet
gallery, Oslo, 2008
Great America Brainkiller. Since then the idea has progressed, and
a variation on the same theme has appeared on the cover of the
www.yokoland.com
designers’ book or most recently on the cover of Carl’s Cars, for
which they drove a red Citroën 2CV into the middle of a pine forest.
“Like nature taking the car as a hostage,” Martin chimes in. He then
shows me the last page of the magazine, which is a photograph
of a tree that has grown up through the centre of an abandoned
car tyre. The tree and the tyre were there, quite by accident, in the
very same woods where they photographed the Citroën 2CV.
“We are very conscious about repeating ourselves,” says Tengesdal Nordby,
“but this is more about concepts, references and process than repetition of
old ideas.” Lundell finishes the thought: “Talking about method, it’s important
to keep your eyes and mind open to these sorts of things.” “Our work is
somewhere in between design and art and we do not mind being in that
position,” says Gurholt Rønsen. In this sense, Yokoland is more attuned to
the current movements in design taking place in the rest of Europe than its
contemporaries in Norway. The studio’s members see that design draws
on its relational nature, and how meaning is elaborated collectively, along
with their audience. This form of relational aesthetics has been propagated
throughout Sweden by the fine art curator Maria Lind in the exhibition
What If: Art on the Verge of Architecture and Design, for instance. However,
there is very little acknowledgment of this approach in the advertising-based
work coming up in the Norwegian market.
“In the last few years we have been contacted by many ad
agencies from all over the world, but we have had very few calls
from agencies here in Norway.” Here there is consensus, as they all
express their frustration with the conservative nature of their home
turf. “We live in a culture that looks to other countries for affirmation.”
However, this is a design studio that is going places—a prolific team with a
huge drive to produce work that is lively and imagination by the bucketful. At
the moment they are producing a children’s book with the children’s musician
Knutsen (of Knutsen og Ludvigsen fame), and have recently designed a
cover for the acclaimed German band The Notwist and developed brand
identities for a small book publisher and an architectural company, as well as
half a dozen other jobs. Above all, they are challenging the concept of cool,
detached and minimalist Nordic design. I have a feeling that we are going to
hear much more from our friends here in the north.
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