NIKE 公式オンラインストア

YOKOLAND

PEOPLEText: Yurie Hatano

This month’s SHIFT cover is designed by Yokoland from Norway, a young design studio consisting of two people, Aslak Gurholt Ronsen and Espen Friberg. Their book “Yokoland” was just released from Die Gestalten Verlag on February 2006. The warm design reminds us the Norwegian feeling with some refined humor. Not sticking to the fields, they have created their original world using various materials including photography and drawing.

First of all, could you tell us a bit about yourself?

Yokoland is a small design studio consisting of two people, Aslak Gurholt Ronsen and Espen Friberg. Both of us have just finished a BA in visual communication at the National Academy of the Arts in Oslo, Norway. For the last four-five years we’ve been doing small (and sometimes big) projects together. We’ve tried to be openminded, and not think too much about the boundaries between the fields we’ve been working. Sometimes our projects have been conceptual, sometimes esthetical, sometimes it’s been design, sometimes illustration, sometimes, photography, sometimes, drawing, sometimes video, and sometimes it’s been closer to fine art than design. In this period we’ve tried to have as much fun as possible, and to learn as we’ve went on.

How did you two meet together? And what made you team up Yokoland?

We grew up close to each other in the suburbs outside Oslo. When we were sixteen we started at the same high school. This must have been around 1997. We were in the same art class for three years, and the last year we started working more closely together. A year after we graduated (just before we started our design education) we decided to start up something like a design/art collective. It wasn’t like a professional design studio just a name to work under.

We heard the name of Yokoland came from Japanese girl’s name. Could you tell us the story?

We thought it would be great to have a name for our collaboration instead of just using our own names like all other design studios that have more than one person. In the end we decided that it would be “Yokoland”. It sounded like a poetic country far away like it was taken from a fairytale. We even made a slogan: “Yoko, but not Ono”. Later Aslak had a Japanese girl in his class named Yoko. We asked her if the name made any sense at all and she said that it didn’t. That it was just really silly, and that it was just a normal Japanese girl’s name. It was like calling it “Annland” (in English of course).

What kind of works or projects are you spending most of your time these days?

At the moment we’re spending most of the time fixing our new studio. Earlier we’ve just been working from home, so it will be nice to finally have a proper place to work from. We’re also working on four-five new record covers for our own music label Metronomicon Audio and doing some store windows. Hopefully we’ll soon have time to make a new website for ourselves.

Could you tell us about the book “Yokoland” released from Die Gestalten Verlag?

The book is about how we have collaborated from the first time we met until today. It shows the best of our work from the last couple of years, and tells you some of the stories behind them. A great deal of our work is for our own record label Metronomicon Audio, so that is of course a major part of it. There are also some different texts included in the book to explain the way we work and think, as well as the environment and ideology behind Metronomicon Audio. But most of all, the book is about inspiration ・how we’ve been inspired by others, and how we maybe can inspire other people again.

Read more ...

[Help wanted] Inviting volunteer staff / pro bono for contribution and translation. Please e-mail to us.
MoMA STORE