Hjalti: Yeah, right! So, after we finished working on the “Sagmeister - Made You Look” book, I started
looking for an office space, while Jan was trying to sell his pathetic belongings back in Germany. (Jan is from Germany.)
Jan: Hjalti is from Iceland.
Hjalti: So, we started our company without any detailed planning nor specific preparation. Never did one of us come up with a
business plan (how on earth can you come up with something you’ve never heard of?). So, we simply bought computers, tables, a fridge etc.
Our first project was the trio live CD for Pat Metheny. So, he would come by, we would talk. After 2 months, the job was done. It then took
us 2 more months to realize that if the phone didn’t start to ring soon, we would eventually have to close this enterprise down. So, we had
to learn all these business-related things very quickly — acquiring clients, improving our meeting and selling skills, talking, mingling,
bookkeeping, and lots and lots of other things. But here we are alive and happy.
When a client approaches you for a project, are there ever times when you will turn it down based on the
client’s philosophy/ethics, or if they just aren’t the right fit for you?
Jan: We never came into a situation like this, and we think the reason for this is our self promotion. In it,
we do whatever we like at that specific time. We have no others but ourselves and our tiny little world in mind. And naïve as we were,
with our very first thing — the opening announcement — we were, unintentionally, able to attract clients, and they were on similar
lines with us. Nobody who hated our announcement would ever call.
You seem to have an irreverent, tongue-in-cheek aesthetic to your self-promotional work. Does this find
its way into your client work easily?
Hjalti: Somehow yes, even if it’s almost invisible. We put in little
things in every project that make us happy and laugh.
Where did the idea for your logo come from and how did your typeface choice work into that?
Jan: The happening of our logo is similar to the happening of our company. Both took on their own course.
All we had was a name in the beginning and we had no intention of doing a logo. Just the attempt to think about an appropriate way of writing our
name on paper made us leave the room.
Though we didn’t have a logo, we wanted to say hello to people that we wanted to be known by — to let them be aware that we were
open and new, and somewhere out there. We did an opening announcement, treating our name just like the rest of the copy, and there it was:
type in a box — our logo.
One thing I noticed between some of your work and Stefan Sagmeister’s is the physicality of it.
How important is this in expressing your ideas? In other words, do you look at a project and try to find a physical, conceptual direction before
anything else?
Hjalti: No. No. No. We just try to do something, and that includes just everything physical, psychological,
conceptual, subliminal, digital, analogue, nice, shitty, able, unable, etc. There is a little more than what the computer can help you do.
Hjalti, what was the most important thing(s) you took from working with Sagmeister Inc.?
Hjalti: The passion and the never-ending process of pushing things.
Can you tell us a little about the concept for “THE END — catalogue”? Who created the sculptures?
(See figure 01.)
Hjalti: We were very pleased when Constantine Boym asked us to do
this catalogue for him. Constantine is a product and
industrial designer here in New York. These miniature buildings may seem like souvenirs, but are more profound and intellectual than that. He transferred
the idea of a little item that reminds you of somewhere you went, to something that reminds you of something that happened. The O.J. car chase is a very
popular example, although it’s obviously not a building.
He called them buildings of disaster, so we had this idea of creating this messed up 3D type floating in space with wrong perspectives in it.
After we went all the way, we really liked what we saw.
Me too.
How long did it take you to come up with the concept for the German Association of Psychology Conference
and what was the client’s initial reaction? (See figure 02.)
Jan: It was pretty easy and quick. As a child I saw these goggles that researchers used to trace the eye movement
and I just remembered this. Back in those days they had IBM machines, monochrome displays…the client almost didn’t get it.
Last question, can you give me one object that makes your lives better and how important its design is to its function?
Jan: Computers makes my life better and when their color matches my suit, even better.
Hjalti: A telephone, and as long as I can press the buttons and I can hold it easily in my hand, it works for me.
Thank you both+
Karlssonwilker Inc. |
