Clogs’ album
We just returned from an amazing Roskilde Festival! It has been 4 days of fantastic music, friends, fun times, sunshine, camping and dancing. Both Efterklang and Turboweekend played at the festival, both were brilliant as usual, and the audience loved them. We also got to spend some time with the National, who played an amazing show too – and it was very nice to meet Bryce and Padma again, who are also members of the band Clogs, that we have recently created artwork for.
It’s July, the sun is shining, and our basement studio is far too dark to spend time in right now. So we have decided to take the month off, which means we will be away until the beginning of August. This also means that there probably won’t be much activity on the blog until we are back.
Have a great summer!
Efterklang
Turboweekend
The National
1 Comment Clogs, Efterklang, Roskilde Festival, The National, Turboweekend
The day before yesterday we had a guest talk at CAFA, Central Academy of Fine Arts – our last one on this trip. Our Chinese friend, Been had been so kind as to arrange everything for us. We also got to meet Professor Xiaoyong, a famous designer and professor of graphic design at CAFA. We didn’t have much time to see the school, but hopefully we’ll be able to go back one day and see more.
After our guest talk, we had a cup of coffee with our Danish friend Sidsel Tuxen who is studying at the architecture department at CAFA this semester. She had made two new Chinese friends with really cool Western names – Highway and Oxygen. Later Oxygen, Been and a bunch of her friends then joined us for dinner at a nearby restaurant. We ended the day with Jessica on a roof top bar with a magnificent view of the forbidden city. Beijing is a magical city.
Yesterday we did some regular tourist business, and we also visited our friend Jessica at the architect office where she works, called Dada.
And now our trip is nearly coming to an end! It has been an absolutely amazing experience for us to visit China. Tomorrow we are flying back to Denmark, back to our little basement studio. We are looking forward to seeing our friends, family and most of all our (other) better halves…
Sculptures at CAFA
Tourist business included visiting the galleries of 798. This photo is from Olafur Eliasson and Ma Yansong’s collaboration at UCCA. It’s a giant room filled with colored lights and smoke, an amazing experience.
2 Comments 798, Been Design, Beijing, CAFA, Ma Yansong, Olafur Eliasson, Sidsel Tuxen, UCCA, Xiaoyong
Yesterday was the first day of our workshop with the students of LAFA. A lot of details got lost in translation but we’ll see tomorrow if they understood what the homework was about. We’ve asked the students to fold a plate of food out of paper, so hopefully we’ll see lots of nice paperwork tomorrow. After the workshop we just walked around on campus and did some shopping in the students’ supermarket, where there’s a special sale on chicken feet.
Today we went on a sightseeing tour of Dalian with Mr. Lu (one of the teachers at LAFA), Mu and one of the founding sisters of Dalian based design company, Aissen. They took us out to the shore and it was very nice to see some more natural and picturesque surroundings, without skyscrapers or construction sites. It seems like the Chinese never sleep, and are always keen to build new buildings all over the place.
After another fabulous lunch, we went to meet the founders and designers of Aissen. We gave them a short introduction to our work, and they showed us some of theirs in return. After that we shared our experiences of Danish and Chinese design culture and traditions. It seems like it’s a tough world out here, and we felt very privileged to have the freedom that we have in our work. The two sisters of Aissen started their company 8 years ago and it has now grown to a staff of 15 people. Maybe we’ll also have 15 employees in 4 years… but probably not!
We can’t get over how extremely friendly and hospitable the people we meet out here are. They drive us around, pay for our food and give us gifts and make us feel very special and welcome.
Students sketches for our workshop
Amazing painting skills in the textile studio
Thread and yarn in the tapestry studio
The LAFA basketball court
View of Dalian from a hill
A kite over Renmin Square
Meeting with Aissen: once again Mu is translating our words to the staff and to the two sisters and managers to the right
The design team at Aissen
View of Dalian from the Aissen office on the 27th floor. Before we came, we had never even heard of Dalian, and it turns out that there are more inhabitants in this city than in the whole of Denmark! Not so surprising maybe…
We are very nearly ready to fly off to China, and we are so very exited! We will be flying directly to Shenyang where we will give a guest talk, lecture and a 3 day workshop at LAFA, Luxun Academy of Fine arts. And we have prepared some fun stuff and can’t wait to meet the students, and see how it all turns out. We’ll be posting news about our journey along the way, so check in to see what we are up to…
Drawing by Trine Natskår, who just moved into our office.
There are a couple of newcomers to our little office in Copenhagen. Sofie’s brother Frederik Hannibal moved in about a month ago, and a few weeks Trine Natskår joined us as well. Frederik is a programmer, you can see what he does here. Trine is a designer and illustrator, and you can visit her flickr page to see more of her work.
Today we had a visit from Jo Davies, co-founder of the British magazine Varoom. She is currently working on a book called ‘Making great illustration’ and is flying around the world visiting illustrators of all ages and nationalities. We had a talk with her about our work and she brought us our favourite tea from England, the darkest and most delicious of them all: Yorkshire Tea. Thanks Jo!
Not too many updates from us lately… But we are working hard on some very special projects, even in the weekends (like right now for instance). Fortunately this little fellow came by for a visit, his name is Tao and he came all the way from Berlin.
We are happy to announce that we are going to China! We have been invited to Luxun Academy of Fine Arts (LAFA) in Shenyang to do a guest talk and a workshop, and we will probably also be visiting some other schools in the area. LAFA is one of the top art academies in China with varieties of specialties and departments and excellent academic staff, according to Saatchi Gallery’s website. We are very honoured to have received this invitation and also exited to finally have settled on a date, as we’ve been planning this trip for nearly a year now, since we were first contacted by LAFA student Mu Xulong.
We will be traveling end of May 2010, and after staying at the school for one week, we will spend a few days in Beijing. If anyone knows some interesting places we should go and see in Beijing, please leave a comment!
You can read a little more about the school on Saatchi Gallery’s website or visit the school’s own website here, but you won’t get very far if you don’t read Chinese.
Apparently that’s how Picasso felt about copying people’s work. These examples below are from some Danish designers who have been a little more than inspired by our work without linking to us or indicating where the inspiration came from.
Don’t get us wrong: We are more than happy that people can be inspired by our work! But instead of making a copy, why not add a twist, give it something new – in which case it would be both fun and interesting to have people contact us and show us new results that draw on the same ideas as we have worked with. But to stumble upon copies displayed on other designers’ websites, as if they were their own with no credit whatsoever, is not fun at all. And in these two examples the designers haven’t even bothered to at least change the format. In fact some details are so similar, that we find it is beyond doubt what’s going on…
What do you think? Is it ok to copy, and where do you draw the line? It would be great to get some responses on this topic.
Ledig kontorplads i Mit Nye Hjem
Posted by HvassHannibal on March 19th 2010 in Other, Things we like
(Sorry, this is for the Danes)
I en hyggelig lille kælder midt i Pisserenden ligger Mit Nye Hjem. Kontorfællesskabet i Sankt Peders Stræde beboes af designere og andre kreative. Lige nu er vi 5 og vi mangler en 6. person til at leje en plads.
Som navnet tilsiger, bruger vi meget tid på kontoret, og det er vigtig for os at det er et sted hvor man både kan arbejde hårdt og have det hyggeligt og sjovt. Også når arbejdsdagen er over!
Pladsen er ledig fra 1. april. For priser og spørgsmål, samt en kort ansøgning, skriv til info [at] hvasshannibal [dot] dk