Jens Risom 1916 - 2016

I just learned that the distinguished Danish furniture designer, Jens Risom, died peacefully in his Connecticut home, aged a 100 years. 

He was truly one of the giants, and instead of a long text by me, go study the wikipedia article here.

To honor his memory, I will post some images from a stunning article Dwell made in 2012, about his modest Rhode Island summer house.

This house is really a gem - and it is something else as well: it is so incredibly Danish. Let's bear in mind that Jens Risom lived in the United States almost all his life, and is - by the way - much more acclaimed and well known in the USA. But this house shows just how deeply rooted he was in Danish design tradition and the whole Scandinavian mindset.

The house was built in 1967 from cheap prefab modules he found in a mail order catalogue, and was so ingeniously and beautifully carried out, that LIFE magazine dedicated a whole photo article to this crazy cheap house, built by the rich and famous furniture architect.

I will let the images speak.

(credits and a few more links at the end) 

All images are from Dwell, except the last one, which is by Tony Loung.

Dwell also did a little film (just five minutes) there, it is directed by Gary Nadeau, and it's just great!
Check it out, here on Vimeo - and imagine how lovely those summers on Block Island must have been. And listen to Jens Risom (aged 97 when they made the film) and his thoughtful words about design and about how to plan a perfect, little no-nonsense house.

Just for fun, I'll add this photo I found, from that LIFE article, back from when the house was new!

Sharp Looking Snowflakes

Here is my second paper project for this Christmas season.

These crisp and sharp looking snowflakes are very 3D and almost architectural - and, as usual, far simpler to make than they look. They are made from six slitted and folded strips of heavy paper or card stock - I had to experiment a bit before they became okay, meaning sturdy and stiff enough to stay in shape.

I made a couple of attempts in regular printing paper, and they got all saggy and floppy. You'll need 200 or 220 gram card stock, the kind you can use in the printer (= hobbykarton). You also need to use a knife and a cutting mat - but that's as complicated as it gets. The rest is super simple. See instructions further down...

I love the intricate three dimensional quality of these - and all they really are, are some folded strips of paper and a bit of glue! They look great in a window, where they can twirl around a bit.

Get the template right here - one print, six strips, will make one rather large snowflake. 

Please make sure to print these on heavy paper or card stock, and follow my advice about scoring or tracing the dotted lines in the design, something I often explain and mark out on my templates.

The idea of tracing the folding lines is simple: make a slight dent in the paper, and it will fold easily, in sharp lines and precisely. And taking a minute to trace or score these lines, will really help you in the folding.

Do like this:

Cut out your six strips very precisely, cut the slits as marked, and score / trace the dotted lines a bit - use the tip of a needle or (careful not to cut) use your knife. 

Start working the slits upwards and downwards like shown - a bit like a pop-up-card.

 The six strips should eventually look like this......

As you can see, the snowflake is beginning to happen... 

Glue the bits together, two and two, let them dry for a second, and then finish up, by assembling the three units. 

Punch a hole and hang your festive flake!

Color Explosion (Marrakech part one)

I had a lovely trip to Marrakech last week.

I'm back in business, but with a nasty cold, and a lot of deadlines. While I pull myself together and try to get better, I dream of this crazy, colorful labyrinth of a city. I close my eyes and smell the thé á la menthe, the gasoline fumes, the heavy perfumes and the incense. And I think of the orange blossom crème brûlée, the yummy breakfast pancakes and the tajine de poulet aux figues.

Marrakech is sensory overload in so many ways - most of them nice!

Here is a handful of snapshots (yes, too many. I know. I found it very hard to select a small batch, and hope they might inspire you). 

I'll be back later in the week with a nice Christmas project, so see you then.

The start of Advent with Finn's Lanterns

These little diamond shaped lanterns will be my first Christmas gift for all the faithful paper DIY enthusiasts, who will be expecting at least a little project for the weekends, in the weeks to come. 

They are easy and fun to make, and I have named them after a friend of my son, who will sometimes get up very early in the morning, pick up a phone from his still sleeping parents, and find origami instruction videos on YouTube, and while away some quiet morning hours, folding and folding. Just my kind of kid! So thank you, Finn - I had never seen these before, and they look great. 

I made them into hanging ornaments, but they could be little gift boxes as well. And they could be hanging both ways - I just like the Chinese vibe they get in this version, with a little tassel. The string and tassel you could pull through with a needle, before you actually glue and close the form, that's a bit easier. I tied the little knots, after I had put the string in place. But check out the instructions. 

Get the PDF with the four different prints, and the folding instructions, right here.

 

2021: I have a new location for my downloads, go here for the four variants with tutorial (in Danish, but with easy-to-follow drawings)
Design 1  /  Design 2  /  Design 3  /  Design 4 

Happy first of Advent!

A few days in a parallel universe. Can't wait!

I will be ignoring the fact that December is just around the corner, for a little while longer. And I will be doing it in Marrakech, which should be very well suited for this kind of procrastination. Me and my two friends will hit the hammams and the souks and get back in a week or so, with soft, rosy feet and languid minds!!

I love Marrakech. The top photo (by Takashi Nakagawa / National Geographic) is from the Ben Yussuf Medersa (a sort of dorm and study hall for religous scholars), a place I will re-visit, certainly. Probably one of the most beautiful buildings I have ever seen!

Oh, and the food. And the colours, the smells, the slender palms and the really nice locals! And the shopping - an event in itself. Everyone in my family can anticipate sticky, black soap and loads of aromatic spices for Christmas, this year.

FindersKeepers

I'll be at FindersKeepers on the weekend 19-20 November - a really nice designers market. This time it's held in the old green grocers market hall in Valby, and it's much worth visiting: lots and lots to see (and buy) - and great food stalls too!

Proud to be included in this really great company and looking much forward to it. In my little stall, I will be selling my 24 Days Advent Calendar Gift Wrap, of course, and I hope to see you there!

Read all about it right here - and take a peak at all the great potential Christmas shopping you could do there.

FindersKeepers on Instagram (images above are from here)

Fingers crossed

Update, later on Tuesday: This is very disturbing.

Now, I will put my whole trust in the common sense and optimism that made so many people work so hard for the better option. May they - no, we - have the guts to keep on going.

November first with these babies

November first kind of marks the point where this blog begins to think about Christmas coming up, and to consider which various projects from the desk drawer, that might turn into this years fun paper DIY's. I never plan too much ahead of time, I gather a lot of ideas all year round, and sometimes work a bit on one or two. And I almost always end up doing something different than what I planned in the first place, anyway.

The paper balls from last year were a spur-of-the-moment idea that took me a few hours to make, from making my first prototype (I have not invented the principle - I saw that somewhere), trying out a whole lot of patterns, and deciding on the ones I liked the most. Then I made the finished design for the download, and a photo tutorial, just as quickly. 

Other times I have spend several evenings of experimenting with some idea, that ends up in the trash. Just so you know!

But the plopping baubles were a great hit, they have more than a thousand downloads, and have been pinned on Pinterest an unusual number of times, for this blog! So I guess I'll try not to think too hard about this years Christmas gifts for you, and just let them happen. And they will.

In November I am also working on setting up shop in some way, for my Advent Calendar Gift Wrap! Right now my Tictail shop is closed, alas, since shipping via mail from DK have has become so unreasonably expensive. But do contact me, if you want to buy some, we'll figure it out!

Autumn Leaves - as lanterns

These fragile lanterns I made the other day turned out quite pretty, so I'll share them here, and maybe inspire you to make some for your own Autumnal party, Halloween get-together or such. 

They are not long lived, but quickly and easily made. 

It started with a walk in our next door little park, which is in itself interesting as leaves go, because it is a university botanical garden, so rare, unusual and colorful leaves are abundant! But any leaves will do, and most leaves are beautiful, somehow. 

Rather blurry photos, I know, but they were taken in near darkness. 

But they were so pretty, and the shadows and silhouettes were most poetic.You need to decide to make them for a party, or something like that, because they will loose color and stability rather fast! So enjoy them while they last...

I made the lanterns the day after I gathered the leaves, while they still had some life in them (= not too dry), so I used actual tea lights in small glass jars, but already next day they were so dry and withered, that I didn't want to light the candles again. But I have some LED tea lights from IKEA that are actually quite nice, and they went in instead. They still look nice, all dried up!

Here is what I did:

I gathered a lot of different sizes and shapes of leaves that were still fresh with some color and sap - and flattened them a bit between the pages of a newspaper with a stack of books on top. 

Next day I made the lanterns like this: organized the leaves a bit according to size, and lined them up nicely, overlapping a bit like this: 

I dotted a bit of hot glue, not too tidily, between the leaves (lifting them one by one) and pressed the row flat with my hand, and let it dry for a short while....

Then I cut a neat, sharp line with my steel ruler and knife, and to close the loop in the back, I simply used my office stapler. 

PLEASE be careful with the real tea lights - these things can become a bit of a fire hazard, but not so if the leaves are freshly gathered, and have just fallen off the trees. Otherwise use battery powered mini LED lights!

//

While you enjoy the flickering light and the dancing shadows on the wall, I suggest you listen to this lovely, lovely song, performed by the unforgettable Eva Cassidy.

 

Welcome back in color

Without further ado, I'll just say welcome back to my visitors, after a long summer break! Autumn is a time of color and at the moment I have a slight obsession with so called gradients.

Gradients are a particular color effect known to all Adobe users, it is a way of making colors slide and melt seamlessly into each other, and create interesting, sometimes very 3D, effects. And sometimes they just look horrible, I must admit. When I started working with graphic design, particularly Adobe Illustrator, color gradients were considered in the worst possible taste, and could only be justified if you had to make natural looking glass or metal surfaces on, say, a technical/architectural illustration. Otherwise they were just no go. 

But I can't have been the only one who have loved to play with the little color swatch slider tools, forever getting lost in more and more weird looking blends and fadings.

I find it great, that they are no more on the graphic design black list!

They can be quite complicated to work with, and not only because you have to be really good at isolating certain areas in an illustration from others, to make them technically work, but also because they tend to get quite overwhelming.

I've come across Sara Andreasson on Instagram, she's a funky Swedish graphic artist, who did the popsicles above, and also does these fat, lovely slobs of pastel color that kind of pops out from the screen!

They kind of remind me of Roy Lichtenstein's brush stroke paintings, even though these paintings are the very opposite thing: three dimensionality made with flat color, quite amazing, in fact. I've always loved those!

But I've saved the most elegant use of gradients I've seen for a long time, for last.

Danish graphic designer Torsten Lindsø Andersen, have made this series of proposed designs for Jack Kerouac's novels, and they have deservedly been spotted by many book design enthusiasts. They look like nothing else I've seen, and they are quite stunning. And they add a metaphysical and yet really appealing vibe to litterature, that's probably not easy to make covers for, without rolling around in clichés. 

I really like them, and they made me want to read the books again!

You can read a bit about the designer, and see some more of his work here.

This is a student project of his, from 2012, but looks super fresh, and if I was Penguin Books, I'd certainly give him a call. 

I did actually read both On The Road and Dharma Bums (not Lonesome Traveller, though) when I was around twenty, but I didn't like them much, I remember struggling to actually finish them. I don't exactly remember why. Maybe it would be an entirely different experience now, some thirty years later?

Don't say we don't judge books by their covers.