A light of typography in dark folio times

In two weeks my folio will be lying on a white table in an empty classroom. In two weeks there will be no more to work on, no more stress, no more 2o something tabs in Firefox. No more eight open files in inDesign at once. No more a room filled with empty teacups staining dozens of school papers and sketches spread around my computer like yellow leafs around a tree in the streets. Yes I'm almost done. Almost gone crazy.

Before that happens, let me show you some cool stuff. Jonathan Safran Foer is one of my favourite authors. Also I love the art covers wrapping his beautiful words. My fascination for both his writing and the covers started with 'Extremely loud and incredibly close'. My dad picked it up for one of my birthdays telling me he had a feeling it would be a good match. It really was.
About the art cover, it is the playful typography that truly grabs me and makes this cover so special. Looking at some of the other art covers for Foer's books, they all have that same feel. They are all great examples of hand made typography in this loud and playful way.


They are all designed by Gray 318.
Talking about typography as an illustation artform, I can't help myself but to show you some wonders created by Sarah A. King, starting with my favourite piece.







Check out her folio online.

Can you speak silence?

Jean (Hans) Arp sculptor, painter, poet and abstract artist, once said: “Man has turned his back on silence. Day after day he invents machines and devices that increase noise and distract humanity from the essence of life, contemplation, meditation."

Mister Arp, or may I call you Jean, I would call you Hans, but I don't speak German. I just dived into your world of art today, you made some cool shit, you made some sense and you made me curious and inspired today.

"Soon silence will have passed into legend,” Arp believed.

I'm happy I don't agree with that. I guess I'm more of a dreamer and an optimist to doom the silent days. However it's become exceptional in our western society. In your daily life, when is it silent? I find it hard allowing silence. I'm aware of my need for it. Then society has this special gift of replacing one need for the other. The need to feel, or the need for shopping, eating and entertainment. Trying to fit silence into a schedule, well, if I'm not half asleep with a bit of time on my hands on either ends of the day I find it almost impossible these days. Too much is going on right now. I’m one of those who find it hard to set aside an hour to be creative, to write, to work with a brief or meditate. It's one of those things that usually just happen. They force their way in when you already have opened the window. If you’re lucky you'll have a piece of paper within your radius or even some time to collect, which again is usually sleeping time, but that I can work with. I feel pretty chocked now. In need of silence. I've always believed that things happen for a reason. That's why I'm sitting here now, why I'm not out drinking on a Friday night or at some friend’s holiday house. Maybe tomorrow morning I will have my silence.

What's your identity?

I just finished an interesting assignment in our contextual design class called identity. We were to create a piece that illustrates what identity is, with our own identity as a reference.

What I’ve tried to express with my work is that identity is an always growing result of absorbing life. By absorbing experiences and impressions our identity evolves and becomes richer and deeper. Working with this idea I’ve tried to illustrate my identity absorbed with the most important impacts on my life.

Throughout my research I’ve been reading articles, spiritual texts, talked to friends and thinking a lot about my background and how I’ve ended up here. Observing how different siblings and neighbours can be I’ve been drawn to the idea that identity doesn’t come from one place, but is a result of all the emotions, places and people you have ever met. I’ve been curious of the difference between personality and identity, and come to the conclusion that personality can change. It is fixed and can easily be communicated. Identity however doesn’t change, it’s abstract and an ongoing evolving process, that started before you were born.

The result is a metaphor of identity as a sponge. A sponge, like identity, absorbs outer impressions it’s been exposed to. The different shapes and colours of the experiences affect the total concept of the sponge. The different states of the sponge I’ve illustrated, symbolises different experiences of my life.

The thoughts behind the frames
Born in a snowstorm in Norway. Growing up with passion for colours and music. Fishes represent my love for water and animals growing up on the countryside. Moving from house to house has influenced me a lot and maybe kept me on this path of moving. Painting and creating a new space every time. Pink is my mother’s fashion sense mirroring me as a princess, green is my dad being in the special force military and the monster is my amazing brother. Flying carpet is my imagination and disappearing in the books and films I absorbed. Cheque pattern is school, friends and the slow game figuring out who I am. Red is love, black is lost and shut down, dusty and fall is moving back to my roots, moving in with my brother and coming back to life. Bubbles are freedom, support from family and good friends, and a choice to move far away. Blue is Australia. Donkey is a life-changing friend. Olive oil is living in Italy. Black/yellow is a deeper feeling of inspiration that led to another big step. Red, chillies and incense means travelling and especially India. The sum of it all is now, my identity.

What's awesome?

Beside the veggie garden, there are heaps of awesome things happening. Just being able to put heaps in every other sentence again is pretty cool. Back down under. Meeting friends, getting to know new friends. Sun, also after 4 pm. Not being stuck in an office to 4 anyway. School. Learning shit. Shit being interesting. Vanilla candles from IKEA. IKEA. Quilt with actual feathers in it, making this lovely sweet noise when you role around in the morning. Morning rituals. At the moment, after rolling around making conversation with my quilt in my new second hand bed, it is coffee, computer, breakfast, mad men 4, magazines, school journal, making notes and then a bit of stretching. Awesome is knitting a yellow scarf while browsing ideas. Awesome is my new orange lipstick, my new Acne boots and receiving a box of Osho books, Tarots and drum music from India. Awesome is what you make around yourself. It is up to you. Home, love and freedom is in you. You let it out, let it move, let it sing and most of all, let it dance. Awesome is there, you feel it, you make it. And how awesome isn’t putting a soundtrack on it all? PJ Harvey’s latest, Zero 7 is making tram riding mysterious, Lykke Li makes me want to kick ass and latest Bonobo seduces me into the most peaceful and colourful forest. That’s pretty awesome..

The thing I learned today, and will remember

Put bay leafs open in your pantry. The Turkish leafs looks like a random little leaf from any garden bush, which it could be if you plant it there. You can put bay leafs in such as your tea, soups, stews, lasagnas and rice to flavour it. Love it! The reason to put it open in your pantry though is to keep the moths away, and it really does according to Frankie, that's a magazin. So this is what I learned, and will remember from today. If you got moths flying uninvited around and you don’t want to touch these not so fortunate as butterflies creatures, because if you do, they die and you’re ending up with dust on your hands, you reach for the bay leaves.

What I love, is that the house I've just moved into already got some dry bay leafs in a jar. Even more exciting is the fact that I can use them whenever I want. The house is a little commune, we travel far to get real good and cheap fruits and veggies. Cooking for each other, making pots of tea every day, going all Turkish just now with Turkish apple tea, and did I mention the veggie patch outside? We'r growing all sorts of tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, basil, eggplants and three different sorts of chilli! Taking me back to Tuscany, taking me back to nature.

Expect nothing

What has happened? What have I learned? It is more about what have I felt. Understood and also remembered. I’m not writing this for you. I’m not writing this for me. I don’t have any expectations of this text, nor this blog. I don’t have any expectations of you reading it, understanding, accepting it or even liking it. I don’t expect anything from you, then you can read in peace.

So don’t expect anything from me.

This is life. In me, really deep in me, two fingers below my navel point, I feel life. Something undying is living in there. Wanting to be free, to be remembered and accepted. In Zen it’s called the Hara, Osho calls it your Buddha nature.

Osho’s presence, even though he left the body 21 years ago, leads me to go inside. I will not find answers outside. I can never become because I already am. What you are, everything, your dreams, strengths, weaknesses, skills, your love, sadness, hate and compassion, it is all inside of you. It is your identity. The personality is different, this you find outside of your body. You take on layers and layers of protection, of unnatural expectations, of fear, of joy, of guided pleasures and guided guilt. Your personality is conditioned. It is unreal. It is a safety net, and I know, it feels good to choose to be. You think, “this is me”. How you want to be. How you became, after all these years.

Lets try something different. Go inside. Really look.

Close your eyes. Take a deep breath and sink into your body.

Let the body remember who you are. Let yourself feel.

How does your shoulders feel today?

How does your legs want to move?

How is the heart? How is your belly?

Can you feel your solar plexus? Your strength and identity pushing out?

Which sadness’s are lying underneath your heart? Which guilty joys?

What memories are popping up in your mind?

What are your needs? Can you reach them? Allow yourself to feel them? Or do they get stuck in your throat?

The throat holds many secrets. It has swallowed an ocean of needs, thoughts and reactions. This energy field, also called the fifth chakra is the energy of creativity. Expression is exposing. Exposing is also an opening. It is for you. Nobody else. Let it flow out, and trust the energy, which will fill the empty space inside with laughter and joy.

From inside out I am and will be. It is a transformation. The body will guide me. Time will show. Now, it is just now. And I will have breakfast.

Here I am

One month with Osho is like a lifetime of experiences. It brings me inside. Osho gave us meditation and therapy. Embracing this gift, challenging myself to open it up and dare to use it, is the greatest thing I've ever experienced.