Lower East

How to communicate your business

Last week Lower East facilitated the Climate-KIC Nordic Bootcamp: “How To Communicate Your New Business – and Build a Community Around Your Startup” in Copenhagen, Denmark. Around 30 nordic Greenhouse and Accelerator startups participated in the workshop, arranged by Climate-KIC Nordic.

The theme was: “Being able to communicate your new, and often still “un-finished” business, to the world is a vital part of starting up and growing your network of customers, community and enthusiastic fans!“

The focus and purpose of this bootcamp was to give the participants new businesses a varied set of communication tools. To learn how to use important means such as storytelling, visuals, presentations and events, as part of marketing business and building a community around it. With a mix of talks, group work, coaching, feedback and presentations, the workshop got to work on communication challenges, getting priorities straight and helped to sketch new communication strategy.

Impressions from the day at Republikken in Copenhagen:

 

Roman Ondak

The exiting exhibition ‘Roman Ondak. History Repeats Itself’ are running until September 17th at Kunsten Museum of Modern Art in Aalborg, Denmark.

We had the pleasure to design the book for the exhibition by the Slovakian artist Roman Ondak. The book is enriched by very good photos from the opening days of ‘History Repeats Itself’ and from the building of the exhibition.

Review of ‘History Repeats Itself’ from the online ‘art magazine’ kunsten.nu (in the Danish)

Find more pictures from the book – here on our website

 

 

 

work in progress – cookbook from Camillo’s Kitchen

During the next week or so we will finalize the design, the writing and the editing of the cookbook from Camillo’s Kitchen. Then we’ll send it off to the printing house – and cross what ever we have that everything will work out in the best way. Launch and tour dates to be announced very soon. The Lower East team behind and the photographer Malthe Ivarsson are looking very, very much forward.

Here’s a sneak peak from the finishing of the book; checking photos, creating illustrations, hand-drawing the last two letters (y and æ), writing, editing and proof reading.

Even a very beautiful poster with the most common fish will be produced, illustrated by the fabulous Juliana Toro – including the names of the different fish in four languages.

Please, keep hanging on here at the blog for more info.

50 Voices of Design

The Design School Kolding has 50th anniversary this year – to celebrate that they have (among a lot other activities) published a very fine book

50 designers, graduated from the school, tell their story in the book, and give an insight in the world of design and designers – Lower East’s Helle Marietta Pedersen is one of them.

She tells her story and her way to the design school – and describes her dear Lower East Lab like this; “where we express ourselves with loud music and good coffee and develop ideas and projects. Here we have workshops and co-working space. We are a training facility for interns, and we encourage our clients to come and work with us. It’s our dream to continue developing Lower East Lab as a vibrant space where design is the starting point and where play, openness and exchange of ideas are the precondition.”

Check Helle’s full story at the school’s website.

See also a review of the book on the DesignETC’s website (in the danish)

Young Glass 2017

Lower East attended the big opening of the exhibition YOUNG GLASS 2017 at Glasmuseet Ebeltoft. We met a lot of  talented glass artists from all over the world. The exhibition is amazing and playful – showing surprising new directions in glass art. On show in Ebeltoft until 29th October 2017. photo: Artwork by Sarah Gilbert. photo©lowereast

From the museum website:
“This summer the museum takes stock of the work created by the younger generation of artists working with glass in the 4th edition of YOUNG GLASS.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Beyond Icons

“Beyond Icons“, the Design School Kolding’s 50th Anniversary Exhibition at the Museum at Koldinghus in Denmark exemplifies how design creates, affects and moves our lives. Lower East paid the excellent and very interesting exhibition a summer visit.

“Beyond Icons” celebrates the anniversary “by going behind the well-known design icons and focusing on the human factor in design, on the designer’s as well as the user’s experiences, emotions and attitudes. The graduation projects submitted by this year’s new designers are presented alongside 50 user perspectives on design. The 50 “guest curators,” who are all well-known public figures, have chosen designs that make a difference either to people, to the environment or to an industry, although we are seldom aware of it.“ – tells the school’s website.

We recommend to go experience the exhibition – on show until October 22th, 2017.
Find more info at the Design School Kolding’s website and at the Koldinghus website.

 

 

Museum für Gestaltung, Zürich

A short Lower East visit at Museum für Gestalting, the design museum in Zürich. Switzerland’s leading design and visual communication museum. While the main building are being renovated, all activities are placed in the Schaudepot.

The museum is always worth a visit! Next very interesting exhibition will be “Stefan Sagmeister. My Collection“. Opening in October 2017.

Check out the design museum here.

Words from the intern

Hello, my name is Manne. I am 30 years old and from Copenhagen, Denmark. I am studying my master degree in co-design and visual communication, at The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen. As a part of my education, I have been doing an internship at the Lower East Lab, a creative workspace in Kreuzberg, Berlin.

I have enjoyed living in crazy and wonderful Berlin, where I’ve been living in Kreuzberg, 15. min bike trip to the Lab. I have learned a lot about myself during this time. I have had the chance to develop my working skills and gotten closer to what I want to do in the future. I have experienced different cultures, and I am so happy that I have taken the possibility to go abroad.

It has been a really good experience to be an intern at Lower East. The agency has this nice and relaxed atmosphere, Helle and Jørgen cares about their interns, and they have taken me and my work very serious. Which has contributed to a very good working environment, where I have learned a lot.

The Lower East Lab is never boring. Often music is playing, we make good coffee and food and conversations flow easy and naturally. Especially at lunchtime, where we all meet around the kitchen table, and Jørgen has cooked his tasty food for us all. The lab is an amazing place and it makes you think creative. The projects have been interesting, and it has been an important lesson for me, as a graphic design student, to get insights in the workflow of a professional communication agency. I will miss working there!

 

Camillo’s Kitchen

We are working on the cookbook Camillo’s Kitchen; writing, developing, cooking, designing, illustrating, and now also doing the photos for the book, that’s gonna be published in September later this year.

We have teamed up with the talented photographer Malthe Ivarsson from Copenhagen. He is doing all the photos of the dishes for the book. In a fantastic team work with us and our creative interns Juliana Toro and Manne Mortensen we have created almost 100 photos already – one, little photo session is still missing here in June in the lab, and then we are done.

During summer we will finish the work, and then go to print in August. Exiting times!!!

Here’s a sneak peak; photos from behind the scenes. We have a lot of fun while shooting and are all of us enjoying the process a lot.

Sigmar Polke

We had the chance to visit the exhibition “Sigmar Polke – The Editions“ at me Collectors Room in Berlin recently. Polke, one of the most important contemporary German artists, experimented with a wide range of styles, subject matters and materials. In periods he concentrated on photography, then returning to paint, where he produced abstract works created by chance through chemical reactions between paint and other products. In the last 20 years of his life, he produced paintings focused on historical events and perceptions of them. In this exhibition in the me Collectors Room around 200 works, editions, are on show.

The me Collectors Room in Auguststrasse, Mitte, Berlin is “a platform for international private art collections to present themselves in Berlin. Commanding 1300 square metres of exhibition space, the Olbricht Collection, which features works from the Renaissance up to the present day, has had its permanent home here since May 2010”. The me Collectors Room often share the space with other international collectors and collections in special exhibitions or group shows.

The Editions runs until August 27th 2017.

More info on the gallery’s website.

Vilhelm Lundstrøm

A quick reportage from the excellent and beautiful exhibition “Vilhelm Lundstrøm – The Epitome of Good Taste“ (Vilhelm Lundstrøm og den gode smag). Lower East designed the book for the exhibition, a damn fine book, and almost 300 pages. Go, check out  the ‘epitome of good taste’ yourself, and buy the book of course.

From the museums website: “Vilhelm Lundstrøm (1893-1950) is one of the most famous and beloved Danish painters of the 20th century. He began by shaking up bourgeois taste with his expressive, flamboyant style. Later, Lundstrøm captured the modern spirit with his simple still lifes of jugs and fruit, and female models on blue backgrounds. Designers such as Poul Henningsen and Finn Juhl were inspired by Lundstrøm. They all dreamed of a better world through simple lines and functional forms. The exhibition tells a story of Lundstrøm and Danish design.“

The exhibition is collaboration between Brandts, Museum for Art & Visual Culture in Odense and Kunsten, Museum of Modern Art in Aalborg, Denmark.

Vilhelm Lundstrøm – The Epitome of Good Taste is on show at Brandts until August 27th, 2017 and then at Kunsten from September 15th, 2017.

More info at the museums websites brandts & kunsten.

 

 

tough little big city

Aalborg is not the Aalborg it was before. This, lower east designed, prospect tells the story of a transformation of a city. Aalborg has developed from an industrial center to a city for knowledge-based high tech businesses within IT, software, biotech and a lot more. The former ‘tough’ city has changed into an open and lively city, with more residents, students, jobs and houses. Welcome to Aalborg!

 

18 incredible design museums

We just stumbled over this blog; Creative Bloq, with a blog post where they have collected “18 incredible design museum trips“. Go check the museums out, there’s a lot of interesting places to visit. We at Lower East have managed to visit five of them so far – still 13 to go!

The list includes Museum of Modern Art, New York, Design Museum, London, The V&A, London, Bauhaus Archive, Berlin, Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Design Museum, Copenhagen, Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris, Museum of Design, Zürich and nine more.

See the blog post here.

Photo from our visits at Centre Pompidou in Paris, Design Museum Danmark, MoMA, New York and Bauhaus Archive, Berlin.

 

Website Butcher’s Manifesto

Q&D DONE!! We designed a quick & dirty visual identity around a fine logo already designed for Butcher’s Manifesto. We also created the website for the organisation, it’s here, it’s up and running!

Butcher’s Manifesto is a newly established international NGO aiming to collect, preserve and pass on traditional butchery methods and knowledge. Since the founding in august, 2016, Butcher’s Manifesto has become an international movement. At the founding event, 25 participating butchers agreed on five basic principles, which formed a manifesto that lays the foundation for the survival of the butcher’s trade. The five principles are guidelines for butchers to follow in order to bring back professional pride and ensure the survival and growth of the butcher’s craft.

Here some examples from the website – check it out on butchersmanifesto.com

 

History Repeats Itself

Lower East were at the opening of the exhibition Roman Ondak – History Repeats Itself, at Kunsten Museum of Modern Art, Aalborg.

Here are some of our impressions from our tour into the interesting and beautiful space the artist have created at the museum – it is a very rich and engaging, thoughtful and playful exhibition, really worth a visit (or two!).

Later on this month we will do the graphic design of the book for History Repeats Itself – we are looking very much forward to again work together with Kunsten, and with Roman Ondak on creating the book.

About the exhibition – from the museums website:

“A collision between the past and present, adolescence and adulthood is a central theme of the exhibition titled History Repeats Itself. Exploring themes relevant for today’s political development, the exhibition strives to inspire critical thinking, dealing with topics the artist tracked from his memory of the period when he grew up during communism in former Czechoslovakia, and which similarly, as if in a loop, a new generation of young people might be confronted with at present.

The exhibition History Repeats Itself invites the viewer to participate in a suggestive staged show, laid out as clues tracing both the passage of time and our capacity to learn from history. The audience visiting is engaged in a sort of archaeological field work, imitating the artist’s own method, where objects are carefully collected and laid out as hidden messages.“

History Repeats Itself will be on the show until September – go, run, drive or fly to Aalborg, Denmark to dig into the world of Roman Ondak!

Find more info at kunsten.dk

 

“Sloth” at the Glass Museum Ebeltoft

Lower East visited the Glass Museum in Ebeltoft for the opening of the wild and fabulous exhibition SLOTH. The two mexican brothers Jamex and Einar de la Torre have turned the museum upside down with glass, fur, crazy founds from the local vintage shops in Ebeltoft, lenticular prints. etc. They interpret the prejudice of the “lazy mexican” by filling a pillar with a pattern of mexicans sleeping on fur clouds and installing a mexican figure – sleeping under his big sombrero – on a robot vacuum cleaner, moving around in the exhibition. It is wild, crazy and surprising. You haven’t seen glass like that before – go to Ebeltoft and have a new view on glass art…

The exhibition is part of Aarhus 2017 European Capital of Culture. Seven Museums work together on the theme of the Seven Deadly Sins – and the Glass Museum Ebeltoft got the sin SLOTH.

From the museum website:
“With Mexican roots and current residency in San Diego near the border between USA and Mexico the two acclaimed Mexican artists, Jamex and Einar de la Torre are well aware of the cliché of “the lazy Mexican” – Pancho asleep under the cactus. But paradoxically Mexicans are handling practically all manual and physically demanding work in the Southern part of USA.

A fresh view on Sloth from a Mexican and a global viewpoint thus opens a number of new opportunities for rethinking the historical deadly sin in today’s society. In the exhibition Jamex and Einar de la Torres present a new installation, which comments on the subject  in a characteristic baroque style using a variety of elements; blown glass, resin castings and lenticular prints.”

See more on the museum website

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Butcher’s Manifesto

We just designed a new series of postcards for Butcher’s Manifesto – a growing professional network of representatives of the butcher’s craft. The main goal of the movement is to preserve traditional butchery methods and techniques and to pass this knowledge and know-how on to future generations. A Butcher’s Manifesto Summit will be taking place in August 2017 in Copenhagen, Denmark.

We are working on the website, it will be up’n’runnin within the next weeks. Stay tuned!
PS: Very fine photos by Hendrik Haase.

Chaotische Überflieger

A fine reportage from our friends KaosPilots Switzerland. Published in the Austrian version of Forbes Magazine. Also showing up in the article is “Der vom dänischen Kommunikationsdesigner und externen Lektor Jørgen Smidstrup“ from Lower East.

Enjoy reading if your German is not too bad…
Attached as a pdf here Kaospiloten_01_17.

Bauen mit Holz

Still some days to experience a wonderful exhibition at Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin “Bauen mit Holz“! In english: “Building with Timber – Paths into the Future“.

It is a very inspiring and fascinating exhibition about the current state of building culture with focus on timber. “Bauen mit Holz“ runs until January 15th – better hurry up, if you want to join a very inspiring tour de force into creating dream places, building viable and beautiful houses, establishing environments where life can unfold in better and more harmonic ways, thinking big and a lot more.

From the museums website: “The narrative of the exhibition begins in the woods. Its importance for our environment and society will be explained and the reasons as to why it is sensible to use this fascinating material will be explored. The circle is completed by the portrayal of the increasing significance of alternative varieties of wood, such as hardwoods which will become more relevant in the industry’s future.

The fascination for a material which grows – so to speak – next door and which is uniquely useful in so many ways will be shown in the exhibition. A material which has demonstrated for centuries its suitability for use in huge structures as well as for furniture and which is still associated with feelings of comfort by many people.“

You are not really allowed to take pictures…. so here is a few secret shots….

For more info and more pictures check the museums website – and a special website for the exhibition here

Cy Twombly in Paris

Lower East went to Paris for a first meeting about a new exiting book project. During our stay in Paris we visited the Centre Pompidou, who is presenting a major retrospective of the work of American artist Cy Twombly.

From the museum website:
“Organized around three major cycles – Nine Discourses on Commodus (1963), Fifty Days at Iliam (1978) and Coronation of Sesostris (2000) – this retrospective covers the artist’s entire career in a chronological circuit of some 140 paintings, sculptures, drawings and photographs, providing a clear picture of an extraordinarily rich body of work which is both intellectual and sensual. The selection includes many of Twombly’s iconic works, several of them never previously exhibited in France.”

“Rich and complex, the work of Cy Twombly, who passed away in 2011, spans a period of some sixty years without ever losing any of its force, even in the very last years of the artist’s life. One of the most productive in recent history, Twombly’s career links the culture of post-war America, dominated artistically by Abstract Expressionism, and the Classical Mediterranean culture that he discovered as a young man and made his own.”

A very beautiful and overwhelming experience. Highly recommendable. On show until 24 April 2017.
read more on the museum website.