We’ve just added a new poster to our shop - the delightful and well-known Danish fisherman in a new look inspired by President Obama’s trips to Copenhagen. It has been a postcard distributed to cafes all over Denmark and now SweetTalk’s day job – Smoke & Mirrors Studio – has made a limited edition print of their creation. Full details here.

Back in the good old days of the early 1990s my Dad would drive myself and my mate Darragh to a nearby art school every day where I began my studies in graphics and printmaking and he was doing animation. Well today my red-haired, talented mate, and his company Brown Bag Films, have just been given their SECOND Oscar nomination for the delightful Granny O’Grimm short below. Anyone with a passing knowledge of what Irish grandmothers are like will relate to this. Well done all!

Just this week I was reading ISTD’s excellent publication Typographic Writing which has a collection of essays on design from many various sources and all gathered from thirty years of their own TypoGraphic journal. Early on in the book is text from corporate identity pioneer/poster genuis F H K Henrion which was the concluding talk to the 16th International Congress on Education in Letter-forms in 1973, actually held here in Copenhagen. In the text he expands on Adrian Frutiger’s rules for creating letter-forms to all design problem solving. What he says is very simple and he considers it the sequence for designing anything. So it’s pretty useful then. Here you go:

1. State the objective to be achieved
2. Analyse the situation
3. Make a list of requirements and the criterea
4. Put the list of these requirements into a priority order and you define the rules of the game

There you go. Enjoy applying those as you work today.

This is nice, so very nice. Repeat Press of Somerville, MA created some custom coasters for the guys at Highsnobiety and Selectism to hand out for the holidays. The front of the coaster features a large impression of the logo, with a smaller version and site name on the reverse.

Check out his intricate process from beginning to end.

Letterpress Coasters from Quarter Productions on Vimeo.

Well it’s been WAY too long since we posted but the end of 2009 was like a truck reversing through a shop window. After some rest and recuperation we are back with all guns blazing for a year of nothing but the best. We have three different SweetTalk plans running in the background and we hope to confirm our first event of the year to you in the next month. In the meantime please enjoy the first animation from Jody Barton, speaker at the last SweetTalk Cph.

‘Owl Pellets’ by MC Paul Barman, animation by Jody Barton from Jody Barton on Vimeo.

Just opened in Copenhagen’s Kunstindustrimuseet (Art & Industry Museum) is an exhibition curated by the wonderful Lars Dybdahl of some of history’s finest posters. Beginning with the some of museum’s own Toulouse-Lautrec prints, there are 300 original prints on display running right up to a signed copy of Shepard Fairey’s Hope poster from last year’s US elections. It’s a damn fine way to spend a few hours and very impressive to see all these posters on display together and does point out that apart from the Poster Mafia controlled mini sites and bus shelters around Copenhagen city, we don’t get to see so many tasty posters out there on the streets. Hugely enjoyable, the exhibition is on until January 31, 2010.

One of the latest trends (also thanks to the new Macbook with aluminium case) between Mac fans is laser etching their Macbook. I dont know if I would dare to mess with the apple esthetics, but ever since they change the keyboard to black and the screen to gloss, I dont think it would make much difference.

In the video below we see a Jon Burgerman’s fan having his mac engraved with an artist’s doodle. Jon Burgerman born in 1979 in England is famous for his doodles and his cute characters. He collaborates with famous brands such as Kidrobot, Rip Curl and many more. He draws with pens and markers and then he often use computer for coloring.

Alan Ankerstjerne

The talented mr. Daniel Rossa has been working on combining graphic design, illustration and video projection for a while, and the result is defiantly worth a closer look. Daniel Rossa worked with urbanscreen to create the 555 kubik facade video projection at the Kunsthalle in Hamburg. Giant hands appear to manipulate the surface of the museum in a surreal sequence that is the result of Rossa asking the question ‘how it would be, if a house was dreaming?’. Make sure to check out the rest of Daniel’s work on ROSSA&ROSSA – you’re in for a graphic treat of the better kind.

Alan Ankerstjerne

Blu and David Ellis joined forces for this weird and beautiful animation for the 2009 Fame Festival in Italy. Blu and David teamed up after having been admirers of each others work for years. Its all done in stop motion, hand, and a whole lot of paint, it took 10 days to complete and the result is amazing.

Alan Ankerstjerne

Since this is my first post on the sweettalk blog, I’m gonna to start out with a real piece of mouth-watering design, this tasty biscuit is made by Kyouei Design for the RAIN exhibition - part of Taiwan Designer’s Week 2009. The record plays a non-stop track of falling rain, guess it’s probably very soothing. The groove of the record forms a circle which makes it play endlessly.  The thing that caught my eye is the really nice record sleeve, it’s so simple and subtle and fits absolutely perfectly with the whole rain vibe. Make sure to check out Kyouei’s site, it’s full of clever Japanese design.

Alan Ankerstjerne