Contact
For work and related inquiries : erik — erikjonsson.se
I typically work as acting Art Director or Designer with a studio vendor and/or their team taking on most type of design related projects with a few exceptions in regards to timing and business type. Generally based in my studio situated in Malmö, Sweden but it's not uncommon for me to join teams on location.
If you came here looking for photography that particular portfolio can be found here.
The story so far
It all started for real mid 90s when someone put Neuromancer in my hands. I had read a lot of sci-fi literature but this was something else. Computers could be cool, stylish and whatever you wanted them to be and suddenly it was like a door opened in my head. A few years later Playstation dropped and along with Wipeout I knew there was a world out there for me much richer and illustrious than the mundane reality of growing up in Sweden at the end of the century.
The most important aspect of discovering a secret future around you, still in the making and not yet mainstream was that it required a lot of input from me personally and in that I became a designer. Here were multitudes of surfaces that had yet to get a visual layer and so I felt like I had found my place and got started practicing.
My first real job came in the spring of 2000 with the dotcom boom right around the corner. As a 19 year old with visions of cyberspace on my retinas I lasted about a year before I resigned to try this freelance thing I had heard about. It was a classic graphic designers homeschooling for me. I got my hands dirty with all the usual suspects like club promoters, small business owners, friends and family. Anyone who needed design work and was willing to pay for whatever came out of the bag. It’s a hard life financially but it made me appreciate creative freedom and taking time to explore. A few years later after having done both my own thing and toured the local studios I applied to Hyper Island to study in digital media program.
HYPER ISLAND I guess i wanted to tap into whatever art school vibe I felt I missed out on going straight into doing corporate design. Finding found a lot of what I had hoped for at that school it felt like time well spent after all. A respite from the regular work in being able to spend time with design untethered to making a living as well as like minded escapists that was looking for a setting to really indulge in the profession. While the year in school gave me time to pick up general and adjacent skill sets on a mental level, my profession had gone from a profession into a vocation.
YOUR MAJESTY In the summer of 2008 I left school for New York City and an internship at Your Majesty. Having been rather obsessed with the webdesign scene, flash animation and the minutia of its various styles and originators the agency headed by James Widegren and Jens Karlsson had been on my radar for some years already. Very fortunate as I was to be taken in by a shop like theirs in the intense and formative period as your internship is and as such I now owe them a lot of what I now know about tonality, and detailing with brand impression in mind. It was not until a few years later i realised that more than anything YM and the creative leadership instilled in me a great respect for what branding can do to the user experience. How design research and understanding what's appropriate, what's tradition and whats purposeful design all works to strengthen both your own character in the work you do and how design becomes a two way energy where you get as much back as you give to your output. These learnings and general attitudes towards my vocation turned out to be fundamental in how I now approach work, both in work ethics, moral but also in how I value the time I decide to invest in what I do.
STINK STUDIOS We left New York in 2011 and moved to London. I started an Art Director position at Stink Studios and while it only lasted about a year it was one of my most productive periods yet. At stink I had the great pleasure of working with an EP+CD duo that got an amazing amount of high calibre briefs and together with them I churned out treatments like never before. I had a lot of first hand experience in shaping relevant brand experiences for a digital landscape that was just coming to grips with tech enablers like the iphone, wireless, gyros, cameras, sound etc.
My time at Stink also exposed me to film, photography and motion graphics like never before and they eventually became cornerstone skills for. I never thought I would be moving on from that amazing studio because there I had found sincerity and energy in the work that was new to me and getting to banter about tricky executions and what street trends could do for us was nothing short of a very good time in the office and the strange places our line of work takes us.
FANTASY INTERACTIVE I had been in talks with Fi for a year or so about coming on in NYC before I finally accepted a position to start up design efforts in a new London Office. It was an incredibly arduous agency to work in and it took a lot out of me in every regard but the rewards were immense. Where previously my work had generally been focused around campaign efforts, at Fi I got my first real experience in designing and deploying full scale design systems and brand executions for major FF500 properties. Here was a tremendous shift in effort required to incept, deploy and maintain design aimed to scale and carry full localisation but the people around you that helps you fulfill these high ambitions made it all quite special.
Coming into Fi I felt that I had a good grasp of what makes a brand, visually. I also had a range of concepts in how to market and campaign through design. All in all fairly good experience with all that goes into writing, designing and executing on small to medium treatments made to convince and impress. With the help of Anton+Irene, design and ux directors respectively the knowledge pillar we call user experience was opened up to me. It was the first time someone really challenged me to produce great usability through my designs and to be responsible for expansive end deliveries. This all came with a physical and mental toll however, no doubt about it but you have to be thankful for as long as you learn and move on when that is no longer the case.
FREELANCE in 2013 I revived my old company and studio of one. I was decidedly into lifestyle brand at the time and started to divide my team between photography of product in context and the more typical digital brand work that was my bread and butter. An interesting few years passed by that saw me design in a freelance capacity for old and new friends. I ended up spending the most time with Google and Andre Le Masurier doing some great treatments and even greater sites. It was mostly a great labour of love that even earned some plaudits on the awards circuit.
The five year period between 2013 and 2018 has been more or less back to back engagements with big and small agencies like Google Labs/Brand Studio, Elespacio, Stinkdigital, Tool of NA, Raleigh and Drake, Propane Studio, Sony Music Entertainment and more.
We left London for Malmö, Sweden in 2014 to try and a bigger studio space and get closer to nature. I kept collaborating with Google in London/SF from Sweden but I eventually grew tired of travel and the frequent video conferencing. This led me to scout the city for more personal freelance work and that’s how I ended up at Above Agency.
ABOVE AGENCY I first walked into Above’s studio space in the summer of 2017. I got talking to the design director and his technology counterpart and what they told me about their company got me so excited that what started as a freelance discussion quite soon ended up being a permanent role. Above is in the unique position of being situated in Sweden and keeping a book of high profile, international tech clients.
I took up duties as Principal Visual which saw me expanding on a skillset I thought I was proficient in as well as add a few new ones. A very busy for two years followed, both with well known actors like Ikea, Sonos, Suunto next to design system projects for big and small startups. I could best describe this period as one where I got to exhaust the realm of applied design systems in branding. Both from a style perspective but also in operational deployment. It’s been very satisfying work because at a shop like Above its coupled with real industrial design and technology development. Use cases with actual physical prototypes is being fashioned next to UI and UX models they are intended to pair with. More than anything prior it gave me a birds eye view on the start to end user impression of both digital and physical design.
History
November 2013 to present
Freelancing Art Director and Designer
September 2012 – October 2013
Art Director at Fantasy Interactive London
January 2012 – August 2012
Art Director at Stinkdigital London
July 2008 – December 2011
Art Director at Your Majesty NYC
Nov 2009 - Jan 2010
Freelance designer at Blast Radius Amsterdam
August 2007 – June 2009
Student at Hyper Island
November 2007 – April 2008
Art Director at Duke
April 2007 – June 2007
Freelancer at Daddy
Recognition
Google: The Performing Arts
D&AD Wood Pencil (Digital Design - Websites)
Adobe Cutting Edge
FWA SOTD
FWA MSOTD
Google: Beyond the Map
FWA SOTD
Google: Inside Abbey Road
D&AD Wood Pencil (Digital Design - Websites)
Cannes Lions — Design Silver Lion Digital: Website
FWA SOTD
FWA SOTM
Adobe Cutting Edge
Nike: My Time Is Now
Oneshow — Interactive Gold Website And Consumer Goods
Cannes Lions — Silver, Interactive Film
Cannes Lions — Bronze, Interactive Video
Cannes Lions — Bronze, User Experience
FWA — Site of the Day
Geox: Amphibiox
Oneshow — Interactive Gold User Experience Design / Visual Designx
Cannes Lions — Gold, Clothing, Footwear & Accessories
Cannes Lions — Silver, Photography
Cannes Lions — Bronze, Best use of Branded Content & Sponsorship
Cannes Lions — Bronze, User Experience
FWA — Site of the Day
Canon: Beyond the Still
Communicator Awards - Other - Distinction
Creativity 41 - Consumer Website - Honorable Mention
True North Snacks
Pixel Awards - Commerce - Winner
Creativity 39 - Gold
Davey Awards - Gold
Cisco: The Realm
HOW Magainze's Interactive Annual - Merit
Creativity 39 - Gold
FWA Site of the Day — Google DevArt
FWA Site of the Day — The Good Food Fight @ C+B Europe
FWA Site of the Day — Fight for the Flavor @ C+P Europe