15 years ago Jan Wilker from Germany and Hjalti Karlsson from Iceland conveniently located their HQ just above Dunkin’ Donuts on 6th Avenue. Ever since then karlssonwilker inc. has been busy working on branding, identity, packaging, design, motion graphics and editorial. Their European Atlantic union gained added charming US support from native New Yorker Megan Elevado, Director of Creative Operations, plus art director Sandra from Portugal
The agency caught GoSee’s eye thanks to ‘Mexico’, their animated music video for successful Icelandic band GUSGUS. We have already shown you the GUSGUS video here on GoSee and we also presented their showreel at the UPDATE in Berlin as visuals. Now we visited the design agency in New York and met up with Hjalti, Jan, Sandra and Megan in their office, where the scent of freshly brewed coffee and oven hot donuts filled the air.
How did you end up working with GUSGUS? "We started our relationship with GusGus in 2013 when we spent a long weekend with them filming and scanning them for their music video. Over the past two decades, GusGus has done mostly photo-based artwork and promotions for their albums. We were excited to offer them something in a very different direction. As we worked on the video, we developed a new logo for the band, designed the CDs and Vinyl albums, and tour merchandise. The graphic elements and vignettes that evolved from the process of making the video for “Mexico” influenced the artwork for all album single releases and remixes as well as the tour graphics. Working on the “Mexico” video was a valued growing and learning process for the studio. We pushed ourselves to experiment and explore. It was wonderful that with this process, if we did it all again, the outcome could be very different and that is very exciting to us."
And what can we expect from the design agency? "We are offering clients a new, unexpected perspective, something they haven’t done before, and reviving .. refreshing .. renewing a current image. This can be subtle, like with Brennivin, or dramatic like the sculptures for Wolf-Gordon," Hjalti tells GoSee. All projects are available on their brand new must-see website. Several appetisers available here on GoSee, for the full works visit karlssonwilker.com. And meet them at our UPDATE15 NYC of course ;-) !
