In Sweden there is two webshops that sell toys for kids. A thought that came to my mind was how similar the logos are. Both have an animal steering a flying vehicle. Leksak.nu has a small cute bear flying an airplane, and on lekmer.se it’s a monkey in a helicopter. Is it a coincidence or something else? Either way, I guess it must be a bit annoying for the store that came second! My question now, is when are we going to see the first logo with a dog in a spaceship?

Gränby Centrum is a shopping mall located in my hometown Uppsala. They have just released a new updated design/structure of their website. Unfortunately they have not really done the job quite as good as you would hope.

The website is a lot better than the previous one, that was based on Flash and not very intuitive when it came to giving the visitor a worthy experience. Gränby Centrum is a big shopping mall with about 60 stores and 5 restaurants so my guess is that the agency who created the website could charge a good sum of money. Of course I can’t  know what the client wanted in this case, but what I do know is that if you are a webdesign agency you optimize a website for search engines. This isn’t the case for Gränby Centrum!

The first thing that came to my attention was the use of weblinks. A good URL structure is very important for the search engine to index the content. Instead of using “/index?pageId=1″ it should be something similar to “/about-this-site”.

Unique titles and inline content headers is another part that is used for the making the life of search engines easier. Every page should have a unique title in the header, and preferably it should be the same as the h1-tag that is used as a header in the inline content. Unfortunately Gränby Centrum doesn’t have any of the titles.

Luckily some SEO has been done for Gränby Centrum someway down the road, because the Serp is quite good overall. I’m not saying I have the perfect solution always, but as a webdesigner i’m not proud when a work has been poorly done. I just think the responsible of Gränby Centrum should do the job that is expected in 2010. =)

Node Geo Survey is a company that specializes in advanced geo spatial services. In plain english it’s all about measuring the seafloor of the ocean.

My work with Node Geo Survey consisted of giving them a brand identity. I created a logo, website and optimized it for search engine results. The instructions from the client was to create a simple and minimalistic logo that was easy to understand. I chose the typeface News Gothic MT and created the three “waves” under the letter “o”, as a symbol of a radar measuring the underlying surface.

Bringing ideas to life is all about sketching, sketching and a little more sketching! Here’s the initial drawings from my first meeting with the client.

These danish guys have made one of the best song in 2010 so far, if you ask me. The tune, the lyrics and the feeling the song “Beat your heartbeat” from the album Mountain Sleep bring is just amazing. Every now and then you get a special feeling from music and The Kissaway Trail certainly know which strings to play to make me get that feeling! Take a good listen to them on right away!

This logo is a work I made from scratch with pen and paper. My employer needed to brand the core technology that the applications were based on. I had earlier created the original Freespee-logo with the flower icon as a part of the Freespee branding. Since the core technology was a number engine, the flower was a base for a mix of numbers.

The logo was drawn in my moleskin and then imported to Illustrator. From idea, to pen and paper and the  final work in the computer.

I have to admit – I’m a tech freak when it comes to great products. I really love it when I get a hold of a new product that is designed by Mr. Jony Ive (Head designer at Apple Inc). Today I got the pleasure of upgrading to a new 13″ Macbook Pro (2,66Ghz) from my 2 year old 15″ Macbook Pro.

My daily work consist of a life in the Adobe Suite, and mainly Photoshop. It worked fine on my 15″ screen but the time has come for me to start using an external 24″ LED Cinema Display and since then I chose the 13″ so I don’t have to drag around on a heavier computer

It’s been 5,5 years since I switched from PC to Mac and I must say (without being to much of a Apple fanboy) that I have never ever regretted leaving the world of Windows.

The past weekend I spent my last days of vacation visiting Gothenburg and the music festival Way out West. It was an incredible weekend where i got to listen to artists like Chemical Brothers, M.I.A., The XX, Wu Tang Clan, Local Natives, Girls, Lykke Li, Mumford & Sons, The National, Håkan Hellström and a couple more… All in all the top artist where Chemical Brothers, Håkan Hellström and Wu Tang Clan.

A little bit tired (and hung over) i have returned from my vacation to work and a busy autumn with lots of new work on applications from Freespee!

Stikk.se is my own online webshop where I sell vinyl decals for walls, laptops and Apple iPhone. The site uses the open source tool Prestashop. For this project i have worked with CSS, PHP, Graphic Design and last but not least – Product retail management.

Freespee Analytics is a tool for measuring call traffic and marketing activities. This has been one of the biggest project i’ve been involved in, at my employer Freespee.

I have done the whole GUI in Photoshop and worked together with my coworkers at Freespee making this service one of the most powerful in the business.

Finally I have managed to get my digital home redecorated! A soft brown feeling has been used and I’m actually quite pleased with the outcome. The idea for tolvhundra.com this time is to be a place where I can clear my thoughts on the blog or just let you know about my latest work!