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If you have been in Helsinki last summer or during the New Year’s celebrations, you wouldn’t have missed Santtu Mustonen’s illustrations for Flow Festival and Helsinki Design Capital 2012 launch party at the senate square. Santtu is also one of Agent Pekka’s illustrators – known for having gathered some of the most inspiring artists in this field and also awarded The Finnish Graphic Designer of the Year in 2011.
  
When I look at your work, it‘s like it has been divided into chapters that are quite different from each other. Do you also see it that way?
Of course, I’m constantly searching myself as an artist and designer. In a way, you do one thing to be able to do another and I don’t know where I’m going. Actually, I’m not even interested to know where I’m going, but for sure it is good for me. I like exploring things. Out of what I see, I make a lot of tryouts on many different fields.
Three years ago when I moved for the second time to Amsterdam, I did a lot of thinking about what is it that I want to do. Should I do product design, industrial design, or what? I studied industrial design at the School of Art and Design in Helsinki but when I started doing my Masters, it did not feel like it was my biggest ambition, though still tempting. I wanted to find something that I was a bit more interested in, that I could spend the whole day doing it and it wouldn’t feel that I’m working – rather that, I’m on a trip to somewhere. I felt that I wanted to paint and make illustrations, try to make obscure pictures. So, I decided that I will only do illustrations for a while. And, I’m really happy for that because I feel that I’m finally on my way to somewhere. I would illustrate even if it wasn’t my work.
So, when did you initially start doing illustrations?
Since when I was a little kid, drawing was one of the best things I could do. It was a hobby all the time. Though, at some point, during elementary school I started doing a lot of sports and I didn’t draw so much, but then, I found graffiti. It made a big impact on me. I met a lot people who are now good friends and artists. At the time, I felt ‘this is the most important thing now in my life’. As a teenager, painting graffiti gave me a new direction. And it is a great hobby as well for every kid and grown up. You’re in front of this wall and you need to think about the color combinations, the lines, the shapes, the composition, body coordination, spatial aspects, dimensions, everything. Then you just spend minutes or even days working on it and so you learn quite a lot about how to put ideas on walls, on paper, on anything.
And now, as a grown up, you’re still painting buildings. Helsinki’s cathedral for example?
Helsinki Design Capital 2012 asked four Agent Pekka illustrators and Mural Media to create 3D projections of animated and still images over the Helsinki Cathedral and surrounding buildings on the turn of the year.
Tell us something about your creative process.
It’s funny because when I say I’m an illustrator, people tend to think that I’m just drawing. I feel that nowadays it can mean much more. And when I work, I am more like building pictures. That is how I see it and usually I’m using 3D programs, which might have impact on that. It is like a three dimensional space. So, when I start doing something, it feels that I’m in a garage where there’s all kinds of tools – welding machine, angle grinder, hammer, paint and unlimited amounts of different materials - only that I’m on my computer, with some paint, paper and scanner. The mindset and the workflow are though the same as if I was building something in a garage. But the process itself varies a lot. Sometimes I just bang the hammer for fun.
How did you come about to create that exploded bicycle? At least it looks to me as a bicycle that has just dispersed into thin air and you’ve managed to capture that moment with detail.
That is one of the earliest illustrations. I wanted to try out some stereo effect. Something between illustration and animation. I’ve been always building bicycles from tubes, parts, trash and broken bicycles. I used to go to flee markets, junk yards, abandoned places and collect all kinds of junk. Then I’d cut and bend tubes to build bicycles from scratch.
When I moved to Amsterdam from Helsinki, I took my bike I had built with me but it got completely destroyed in the airplane because it was placed under a metal container. When they gave it to me it looked more or less like that bike on the picture. At first I thought – Oh, no! It is completely useless piece of trash again – but then I thought it was quite beautiful as well.
What else inspires you?
Black humor. Effects, mistakes, twisted things make me laugh. Usually in design everything is really neat, fuctional and clean and I really enjoy it. But sometimes there is no randomness into it, which might come out a bit boring. So, I dont want to think about those things in my illustration work. When I see something where things are misplaced or going wrong it feels good to look at it. Beauty of imperfection.
I heard that, in Islamic art for example, every geometric pattern has a mistake in it. They have a rule about it. I like that idea, because that is the thing that makes the picture a bit more intriguing to look at. In a way, in some of my pictures, everything is wrong – like this bicycle where everything is broken. Effect turns a bit into something else though.
Who is your hero, if you have one?
I am not really a person who has some real life heroes. I like more of the chapters of time when people did things with specific touch. Actually I really enjoy what I see people doing right now. If I have to mention some artist, one guy pops in my mind – it is Escher. My dad gave me his book when I was around six and I started copying and making my own versions of all these pictures that Escher had drawn. Just a couple of years ago in Helsinki, I saw his exhibition and I was really inspired again – because of his work I got quite confused when I were a kid.
Oh, well, yeah, I have to name Donald Duck and Garfield too, I needed to draw them on the same paper (laughs!).
To see more of Santtu’s work visit his website: www.santtumustonen.com.
Tonight, just before the year turns, the Helsinki Cathedral is brought to life by a three-dimensional video work by Mural Media and Agent Pekka illustrators Janine Rewell, Santtu Mustonen, Antti Uotila and Eero Johannes.This will be the biggest three-dimensional architectural projection in terms of scale ever performed in Finland. Works by Agent Pekka illustrators will also be seen throughout the evening on the buildings surrounding Senate Square. More info from WDC Helsinki 2012.
Happy New Year’s Eve!
Some say that Simo Heikkilä is one of the driving forces in keeping the tradition of Scandinavian design alive. The concepts of ergonomics, visible structures and purity of materials are all constants of his designs. The comfy, beautiful, eco-friendly ‘Tupa’ chair for example, looks like a usual, traditional armchair but has a small twist in it – recycled wood shavings as cushions. Or ’Asku & Isko’ bench is made from recycled components of second hand chairs.
“The switch from a collector to a consumer culture has taken place almost unnoticed and, almost by mistake, we have brought our children up to be slaves to things. Each object we own ties up emotional energy and burdens the visual memory, so that emptiness has become a desired commodity and turned into a product,” Heikkilä writes in his Periferia design pages. “If we cannot use our intelligence in any other way than to maximize our greed, will the archaeologists who come after the next Ice Age be left to ponder what kind of culture it was that created the plastic grape?”
Those, perfectly shaped, shiny plastic grapes that never expire. I can see why some of us might like them. After all, I’m too, a product of this culture and I do get the plastic grapes. There’s only thing they lack. That is taste – they’re neither sweet, nor juicy. So, as long as the eatable variety of grapes still exists, I’ll go for the later ones.
About the prize
The Kaj Franck Design Prize was awarded this year for the 20th time and it has gained vast popularity among design professionals, the media, and the public. Established in 1992, it maintains the legacy of highly esteemed designer Kaj Franck (1911–1989), who is known as the “Conscience of Finnish Design”. The winners of the prize represent many areas of top Finnish design, such as furniture, fashion, textiles, ceramics, glass, and industrial design. The prize exhibition is open during November 2011 at the Design Museum, Helsinki.
We started Ilomieli Ekodesign together with Jenni as a joined final degree work for Mikkeli University on Applied Arts in 2007. It was a very typical thursday afternoon.Two young women were “healing the world” over a few cups of coffee ranting on about how the world was drowning in it´s own crap and nothing really made any sense! In our minds people were greedy, self-absorbed and short-sighted. There was already too much clutter in the world and here we were expected to produce more in our future occupation.
The thought of us having a brand of our own based on ecological values started as a joke really. And us as entrepeneurs? No way!
Well, it turned out our final degreework was a success. It included creating a brand, designing our first collection and test marketing. The writing process took six painful months but during that time something changed. Somehow enthusiasm towards entrepreneurship sneaked into our suspicious minds. The freedom, using your own creativity but most of all working for your own values became all very appealing to us. First of March 2011 Ilomieli Ekodesign turned 3 years and we haven´t looked back since. The same idealism is carrying us still.
The values and opinions of sustainable development is shown not only in our choice of materials but in all the areas involving our work and life. Our decor comes from second hand shops, the detergents we use are eco approved, all leftover material goes to an energy incinerator. We use wind power and move around either by foot or with a bike. It´s these little actions that make a big difference.
What makes me happy in being a part of Design Finland contributors is interacting with people that share the same values than me. Maybe, just maybe there´s hope in the world after all!
Jonna
Jonna Perälä works as a cloth designer for Ilomieli, a label she co-founded with Jenni Pylvänäinen in 2007. She is interested in an ecological way of life, countryside living and the silence. Jonna earned a degree in Applied Arts from University of Mikkeli, Finland and now is studying crafts science at the University of Eastern Finland. She is a new contributor for Design Finland.
This post is as much about design as it is about information and its interpretation. The initial idea for this came from an Infodesign class I took this spring at Aalto University, School of Art and Design. Among other topics we worked on, one of them was to show information on the phenomena of global warming. Obviously, there is a lot of data on this really very complex topic. So, the easiest way to present, I thought, is to start from me: ‘What am I doing now and what else can I do about it?’
A world-wide average carbon dioxide (CO2) emission per person per year is about 4 tons. This needs to be reduced by half for a sustainable future. Here, in the industrialized countries, however, the challenge is multiple times bigger. In average, we produce about 11 tons CO2 per person per year. Coincidentally, this is how much an adult African elephant weights. Thinking of the elephant made me feel quite helpless, especially since together with six fashion designers, I’ve recently started Postfabric – a website that promotes and sells upcycled (made new out of recycled material) goods. What we possess, our clothes etc, are only roughly 8 – 11 % of our problem.
But then, an optimist that I am, I started thinking of the concept of aiming big – aim the elephant; but start small – for example, your t-shirt. So here are the slides of my class presentation. Please, do comment:
When Katja Tukiainen painted the largest of her cute pink girls, a painting of 11 meters high, she had to use a sky lift which made her feel sea sick for a week or so. But, she told me she just loves doing what she does. Indeed, all of her work shows her braveness as an artist, not boldly, but with such a passion that makes forget, well, at least her fear of heights. Meeting Katja for the interview made me discover that she’s not only a very talented artist but also a great personality. One could spent hours listening to what she has to say. While interviewing her, often, I forget my role as the interviewer and simply indulged into the conversation.
Katja, tell us something about your current exhibition at EMMA
Good Heavens it a painting installation with large oil paintings that cover all four walls and smaller oil paintings on top. I also have a moving image in the middle. It is all about telling us how life in a box can be. At least mentally, for everybody, women, men, kids, there is some kind of a box people are trying to put you into. I’m trying to say that, that kind of world is not possible. So, that’s why I have painted the magician box where the lady goes in and is ‘sawed’ into two pieces. Also, I wanted to question whether the artist him or herself can be made to fit into a white cube. Or, is it too small? And, it seems to be too small at EMMA. The girl doesn’t fit in the box. She doesn’t take the role she’s given.
Despite of the strong message, the exhibition is quite cheerful. I was there the other day and a group of young boys came in and said: ‘Oh, this is the pisis room.’ Do you know what is ‘pisis’?
There’s no English word for it. Young boys, especially teens use this word ‘pisis’ to refer to young giggling girls who are dressed very femininely, or maybe even exaggerating it a little bit. So, wow! That’s exactly the way I want to challenge the people in my exhibitions. The room is completely pink, even the ceiling. They go in there and they get something which is not normally shown in the museums. If we start from the color, pink, is not seen as a very serious color. It’s very hard to be serious in a pink color. So, I love the challenge that it’s very hard to be serious if you paint cute young girls in pink in a pink room.
There’s something of a fairy tail going on in your shows. Is it intentional?
I love it that my works are giving the pleasure and they are kind of escapistic. In a way you go inside a fairy tail but, you know, the fairy tails are not totally sweet. There’s something under. So, they are reflecting the world but, like in ‘Alice in Wonderland’ – things are from the real world but they are somehow twisted. I want the audience to feel they are entering into a different world and they can forget the real world for that time being.
Actually, all my works are about pleasure. I want to offer something that is the opposite of turning on the TV and watching the news. We are living in a really, really hard world. If you read the news, it makes you really sad and you would do anything you can to make a better world but it is still there. So, I think it is nice to offer something where you can escape for a little while. Like you said earlier about my Korjaamo exhibition…
  
Yes, it was a joyful experience and then I noticed somethings I wouldn’t usually except for that kind of setting that made me think.
I love that. I call my girls (the paintings), ‘Girl Army’ because it is very provocating. They are like army members. They are very strong but they are also very cure and they look very innocent but they have a very strong idea about what is right. And they will fight for that, not with the guns but maybe with the candy canes.
So, yes, I am an idealist. This might sound a bit cheesy but, there’s sometime this moment when you feel you’re inside of a beautiful snow globe. In that way I think I’m an escapistic person who thinks you need a moment when we are in this kind of a fairy tail world. I also like it that people find my paintings a bit irritating because they are so sweet and for some that’s too much. But with art, you can also irritate and I’m satisfied with my work when people either love it or hate it. The worst would be if they felt nothing towards it.
How does it make you feel as an artist when people make tattoos out of your drawings? It is going to be there on their arm or chest forever.
It makes me cry in a good way. I think it was in 2004 when Elsbeth from Amsterdam phoned me and asked if she could make a tattoo out of my drawing. I said, of course, but bring me a picture. So, when I saw the picture I just thought this is too much, I almost couldn’t believe it. Anybody who has some money can buy my painting but a tattoo is the biggest honor.
There are a lot of people who have made tattoos out of your ‘girl army’. Do you keep any track how many?
I don’t know. There’s a lot of people who email and ask me if they can use my drawings for tattoos. I always say yes and ask if they could send me a picture. Some of them do but others don’t and I never hear from them again. Then, there must be people who never ask. Last summer we had an exhibition with Jani Leinonen and Anssi Kasitonni in Tampere and we had the tattoos as a part of it where people would have unique drawings for their tattoos. The first tattoo was painted on the arm of a rather big guy and when he came to show it to me it was very beautiful but still bleeding. I was almost crying because it was such a big honor but at the same time I was almost vomiting because it was bleeding.
When I was an art student and people were asking: ‘Is this is what you’re doing? The cute girls? Well, it’s ok but it’s quite strange’, I could never think that one day people would carry them on their arms like that.
Espoo Museum of Modern Art, EMMA, has a very exiting program this fall with a wide range of exhibitions. Most of these are of Finnish artists:
The exhibition of Juba Tuomola’s famous Viivi and Wagner comic strip looks at Viivi and Wagner cartoons from five different themes. Viivi and Wagner comics are followed daily by wide audiences of all ages and its album sales total more than half a million.
 Source: EMMA One of Finland’s most famous photographers, Jorma Puranen, is presenting a collection of his work from year 1992 to today. On show are more than 50 photographs from five different series using chromogenic colour and black and white photography.
 Source: EMMA In the Fall the Good Heavens! A project by Katja Tukiainen with Haloo Helsinki band takes over thoughts and feelings by asking “when are we too big to enjoy art?”
 Source: EMMA Last, but not least, upcoming on November 4th, Ari Pelkonen’s Forest Falls. A theme that refers to the unknown and the works that combine traditional woodcut and painting.
Hi Annukka, it is quite unusual for an art student to design planes. It’s seen to be a large agency’s type of work. So, I’m sure, our readers would like to learn how did you get to design the new Blue1 planes?
It was a school project that started as part of a corporate identity course at Aalto University, ran by Marjatta Itkonen. Though, it was not the usual identity redesign project where we would design the logo and create guidelines but rather a new application of identity. The planes. The unusual thing about this project was the approach, not so much that is was done by a design student. Blue1 wanted something truly different and that fact already took the project out of the everyday category. One could imagine that it would have been a project for a large agency, but Johanna Jäkälä from Blue1 had the idea of teaming up with the students. We were eleven students that produced five concepts and out of those they chose the one I had designed together with Magali Abraham.
Did this application change the identity of Blue1?
It took their identity to another level. It clarified their brand. Especially in Europe, all the airplanes tend to look quite the same. There is even an expression for that: ‘euro-white livery’. Blue1 was expanding their fleet with Boeings and they thought that since they had to paint the planes anyway, why not paint them a bit differently?
Tell us what is the concept behind your design?
I teamed up with Magali Abraham, an exchange student from Belgium. We found out that we were both interested in optical art which was a starting point for the design. So, we started developing the concept and spent days brainstorming and sketching. The initial design was quite harsh but it became softer as we moved on. We connected it with Blue1’s pre-existing concept of naming the planes after the Finnish lakes. We combined op-art patterns with the idea of moving water but in a more contemporary manner. The visual concept is called ‘Flowing’ and the individual airplanes are named after various water phenomena.
 Summer Spring  Spring Rain  Sky Trickle  Pearl Mist  Forrest Pond  Blue Flow These planes are huge. I’m thinking, how do you get to implement the design from paper to the real object? What is the process for that?
The process in this scale was new to everyone in the team. Not even the painting company in Miami had done anything like this before. We designed the patterns with Magali, sent it to production and flew to Miami to supervise the masking and painting of the first design together with Blue1 project managers and our tutor Marjatta. Still there was a lot of small details to be checked. The painters were amazing though. They worked so fast and were truly interested in making it perfect. From this experience with the first airplane, we have now developed an instruction sheet for the rest of the planes though there still is much to do because every plane has an a unique design with unique concerns.
What inspires you?
I was listening to a talk the other day about a really interesting research from MIT. They proved through field tests that money does not motivate excellent creative work. Rather, the contrary. If you are doing creative work for money the results proved to be worse. In our Blue1 project, the students were given space for their creativity and results were really good. So, I think it was a very smart move from Blue1. They gave us a very good brief to start with but other than that they gave us free hands. We were able to do whatever we felt suited best their needs. So, I do not mean that you need to pay little for good design (laughs!) but to get excellent results you have to add some freedom. It is the combination of a good brief and space to move that sets me in an inspired working mood.
Apart from this project, what other kind of creative work do you enjoy doing? What interests you?
That kind of work where the designer is not only asked to decorate the surface but involved already in the content creation phase of the process. Other than that, I enjoy making beautiful objects, like books that have nice paper.
What is your dream?
To define the dreams because they keep on changing. One that stays is to live this life not only for myself.
You’re only 24. Where does your work go from here?
Besides my Masters’ studies, I am starting up a collective with my two former class mates, Matti Uronen and Mikko Luotonen. I look forward to cooperate with clients who realise the benefit of working closely with designers in the early stages of the projects, and see the value that good design can add to their business. In a way I enjoy drifting, tight five year plans are not for me, so let’s see what happens.
Satu Maaranen has a unique take on texture and proportion using rare fabric combinations, raw texture and knots on her designs. This August, she won the Nordic Designers’ Nest Award with her women’s wear collection.
She was recognized for the strong concept behind the collection and her Scandinavian touch by the international panel. Satu is a student of Fashion and Clothing Design at Helsinki School of Art and Design, Aalto University.
Designers’ Nest is one of the major Nordic competitions for fashion students and is organized biannually by invitation. Five graduate students from each school are selected to exhibit and present their exam project. Designers’ Nest aims to expose and promote up-and-coming Nordic designers to the global buyers, designers, press and trendsetters who visit the biannual fashion fair.
Designers’ Nest is also part of CPH Vision that are Denmark’s most visited fashion fairs. Established in 1998 by Jan Busch Carlsen.
 Source: DESIGNERS' NEST AUG. 2010  Source: DESIGNERS' NEST AUG. 2010  Source: DESIGNERS' NEST AUG. 2010
Tapio Anttila is an experienced designer with strong background in furniture design. Thanks to a recommendation by one of our Facebook page readers, we went to visit Pedro stand at Habitare.
Some of the interesting parts was a sofa that transforms easily between three different positions. From a modern corner sofa to to a double bed in 5 seconds is a great achievement.
Other nice new products for the wide selection were stools to the Triple range and a sofa with transparent acrylic back to On range. The whole selection is truly worth considering for home and office use.
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