Random prints

During August and September 2010 I'll leave a numbered and signed edition of my pigment ink print in envelopes around Europe to random people to find and to keep. I hope that those who find them will fill in a small enquiry to tell me where the prints have ended up. The travels and whereabouts of these images will be seen at http://randomprints.blogspot.com/ this fall.

Tarinakone website & graphic design

Tarinakone is a small one person company that specializes in creating stories for products. Tarinakone is owned by my friend Anne and she wanted to have "something else": not so ordinary website with a lot of information, but something very very simple - not much words but more of those seventies graphic feeling. We had a quite long time when I found hard to catch any ideas because there were so many roads to follow, but finally we found two roads to follow: first of all the lamb and then the next one were the words.

Anne has used a red yarn for demonstrating the story telling - the whole point of her company is to find a red yarn of the basic idea and then bring something extra to it. She had a story of a very sad lamb in mind, who first would be very down with all her wool messed up, then a "waking" lamb noticing that something is happening and lastly a very cheered up lamb with all her red wool on good condition! She had first ordered the designs from another designer and they were a little more traditional comic style which made it hard to include to the seventies inspirated red, black and white design. Then, after thinking what comes to my mind of 70s and those colours (the obvious inspiration is seen on the right side - I'm not gonna even try to cover up that...), I designed three very simple lambs. And from there the whole website design started.

Only, there was not so much to design. Anne wanted to have only three pages with very little information and very strong front page, to which she wanted to put words - so I ended up making this draft for her front page.



www.tarinakone.fi

EDIT: The website has now been renewed to more "wordy" version (not my design).

Website for printmaker Aino Pajari

Aino wanted something fresh (turquoise colour was one of her wishes) and simple, so I designed this really basic site with absolutely no extra fuss aroud. The pages show image details very plainly and by clicking each image there is a introduction of work shown.

The only thing is, though, that the site is still on it's old url at personal.inet.fi/taide/aino-k.pajari, at some kind of "free" account which doesn't support for example ajax or anything like that. Aino will consider new server this autumn.

Jyväskylä Adult Education Centre

I was asked to redesign Jyväskylä Adult Education Centre's website. They wanted something very fresh and joyful - and still informative. The site is using the Jyväskylä City CMS, which itself limits a bit, and the city also has some rules of what can and can't be done. However, when I set my eyes to the logo, I got this idea of "spinning" logos rightaway. There isn't of course any kind of movement really but for me, permission to play with the logo gave a lot to the final design.

It has happened me more than once, that my bright colour scenario has been approved but then after a few meetings everything is toned more subtle or changed to something blue - so I was so glad, when my colour suggestions - all those bright colours - were ok by themselves and that decicion didn't change.

www.jyvaskyla.fi/kansalaisopisto

Exhibition at Galleria Carree, Kuopio

My new series Hiljaisia harhoja / Quiet Mirages will be first seen in the three week exhibition in Galleria Carree, in Kuopio.

This series was quite hard to make for some unknown reason. All the images didn't come out as I had first planned, but I really like the image which is also seen (partly) on the invitation and poster, called Morning Dew.

Lisää väriä

The Lisää väriä ('More colour') is an event for every colour enthusiastic... One day lecture series on Thu June 10 (only in Finnish, though) includes several lectures from colour experts with various backgrounds. The one day colour event on Sat June 12 will hold potato printing workshop + several demonstrations, for example of how to make pigments from earth.

The event is planned by Print Center of Jyväskylä together with textile artist Ulla Lapiolahti and me and at the same time, it's Coloria's 10 year anniversary event.

The poster and the flyers are designed by Meri Tuomi, who was working in Coloria as a trainee for one month.

Program + info (in Finnish) http://www.coloria.net/lisaavaria/

Saarijärvi exhibition

There will be an exhibition of my Poissa - Absent series / installation in Saarijärvi this summer, from next Thursday until the end of August.

With this exhibition everything should be already in order; exhibited images were first shown last summer (so they are already printed), all the tools for setting up are collected in one place ready for use and all details are already cleared with the exhibition place.

I'm quite looking forward to this one.

Badges ---

--- Badges are already sold in the Jyväskylä Art Museum but now they are also available at the Jyväskylä Artists' Society Gallery Becker.
My Etsy shop of colouring images is closed for a while (I haven't got time to upload images) but I'll be tuning up my Monsterium products during the summer. After clearing my desk of zillions of small undone projects.

Uno and Wolmar

Today the net exhibition telling the story of two Finnish notable men, Uno Cygnaeus and Wolmar Schildt, was opened in a very ceremonious event in Jyväskylä University - where I couldn't unfortunately participate. How ever - after a slightly rocky road and verrrrrry tight schedule, the net exhibition was finally set online successfully.

This project has taken my whole spring actually - even though I had dozens of other projects planned as well.

Ellinoora

A light site design for a cultural producer friend who has helped me in many projects and in many roles.

Just an ordinary day

I'm mostly lucky to have clients (I'm quite selective, after all), but some projects make this site feel so real: Clients from Hell.

Somehow I feel a slight dejavu coming from this:

Client: “I didn’t get anything.”

Us: “Sorry, our email is down.”

Client: “Can you just fax me the animated gif so I can see how it looks?”

Us: “Well, it’s about a dozen frames. (Joking) So we’d have to fax it like a flip book.”

Client: “Okay.”

This made me reflect my projects today to the projects ten years ago. I'm getting it easy these days :D

Alvar Aalto Foundation

"Finally" n:o 2.

Grrrr---

Fighting with Aalto Foundation site... I've got some gray hair when I've tried to solve mysterious not-working website with some ajax and some javascript code... After over weeks fight with the front page looking allright and next time uploaded, after a very small code changes, it's complete mosaic - I nearly lost my nerve when the solutions is not just found. Until this day I realized that it's the poor temporary Elisa web hotel I'm using to make this. Coloriasto front page is on the same server (temporarily though, I hope) and I have some time wondered why don't the page load completely even though it's not very heavy page (177Kb). This was both a very reliefing realization but somehow I'm now more frustrated than before. I don't have the time to move the whole site to another testing server since I have so little time and I can't trust in what I see on my screen. So, I just have to go with the Force. With my eyes totally covered and just trusting myself to make this right. Wow.

But after the site is refined I have to move it anyway - I just realized that if it doesn't show itself to me, how will it work with people who want to check it first before publishing. Whoa.

Close my eyes and count to ten...

Jyväskylä Artists' Association

"Finally" n:o 1.
www.jkltaiteilijaseura.net

Jyväskylä Artists' Association site finally up and ready - but unfortunately not in English (at least not yet). This was a much more bigger mission than it probably looks like, since the site holds actually three sites: one for association itself, one for the art gallery with exhibitions and one for the art shop. Each artist of the association has a possibility to add an image/photo and some contact information next to his/her name; I've used accordion scripts to complete that one so that the site isn't too busy. Main page uses three main images: one for gallery is always reserved for on going exhibition; one is for art shop and one for the association. Images are clickable to full view with name and other information.

The update took the whole night and I got to go to bed at about 6am. What a glorious feeling it was to know that the site is up - at least until about 11 am when I went to have a meeting in Live Herring office and found out that the site didn't work at all. After waiting a while and after sending an angry email to web hotel provider I finally got information (this was already afternoon) that there were some kind of trouble with servers which were down. After some time I got a new message that everything is ok now. But it wasn't: they had replaced my new site version with old old old site. Boiling boiling boiling. Some boiling emails later the matter was fixed though.

Hey, mr. Murphy! Hope you had a nice visit here and hopefully I won't hear from you soon.

Ultravox - Thinwall

Oh, Vlad, you say things in your website that I've hoped I had said - just about a million times.

The beginning of the year has started with massive re-design of Alvar Aalto Foundation site - which is not nearly close over. Which makes me a bit anxious.

Also at the working table now are the renewing of Jyväskylä Artist Society site (closer to re-launching than I can bear to think...), english pages for print maker Kirsi Neuvonen and some smaller sites for artists and friends - including Timppa and myself.

And also, the mother of all projects: a massive web exhibition about Uno Cygnaeus and Wolmar Schildt as it is their bicentennary celebration year (from their births if I remember right). Well, not so massive exhibition in contentwise but in realization... Let's see how it will turn out.

I started making some badges already before christmas but since then the time bubble for my own projects just miraculously disappeared. I have to somehow break out from this bubble.

Riiminka product labels

Fast order: a simple two-sided product label design 50mmx90mm for Riiminka.

The new year...

...started with a slight panic. I have been sleeping and eating and sleeping and... what the good people usually do in their super holidays. And now I'm standing here with my calendar on my hand wondering: in which moment it already filled?

I really have no time to wonder endlessly: I've been working with renewing of Alvar Aalto Foundation site and that has been a sort of hell. I was first commissioned to renew only the front page and the navigational system but as the navigation changes it affects to all pages. I haven't been with in planning the navigation (or user interface) and it's a bit hard to take in and implement the whole thing wisely. We talked first about a very slight code-based renewing which would help updating the site (which is not using cms) and which would be easy to do, but somehow I ended up receiving a folder full of new documents and updated texts on the site too. I realized today that I will have to start again and re-design the whole site - even though that is not my commission. Let's see what happens. These "one part" renewings has never been my friends, at least when I haven't been on the original team myself.

Uh, and I'll have a dentist next week. Not a good start.