Post 12. The story of finnish design

Ciao ragazzi,

My next few posts are going to be about finnish design overall. Finnish design is very higly valued and known all over the world. Design of finnish companies is more and more the major success factor of them.The story of Finnish design is also part of the background to this success. First the myth of Finnish design was built, generating the international reputation of our design, which is still today the cornerstone of Finnish design’s success.

According to international studies, Finnish industry today is among the front rank for competitiveness: state-of-the-art, information technology and high levels of innovation, combined with excellent research and education, create a strong competitive edge and a basis for industrial success now and in the future. In the 21st century, an increasingly important part of this overall competitiveness of companies has been played by industrial design and the added value it confers: it is frequently what makes a product the first choiceof a consumer.

My next posts are going to be about the myth of finnish design turning into a success and reputation. The last post concerning this subject will be about the future expectations.

Have fun diving into the miraculous world of finnish design with me!!

Post 11. Alvar Aalto

Ciao everyone,

as I have been very busy with my mid terms for the couple of last weeks, I have not been updating my blog during that time. However, now I am back to business and will present you maybe the most famous designer of Finland, Alvar Aalto, and some of his works. Alvar Aalto was born in 1898 and died in year 1976. He was a finnish architect, designer and academician.

His most famous works are for example Finlandia-house in Helsinki, Villa Mairea and Culture house in Helsinki. Aalto absorbed functionalism in his designing and stressed especially the meaning of humanity and social conscious. Typical for Aalto's buildings were white, geometrically simple walls and structures which made the buildings look like light. After the big wars Aalto changed his style to more humane and down-to-earth direction.

Maybe the most famous design of Aalto, the Finlandia-house, is many times critizised of the material used which is marble. This is because marble is not very suitable for finnish climate and because it affects negatively the acoustic features of the building.

Post 10. Xpress Music

Hello

Above you can see some recent design of Nokia. It is Nokia's music phone Xpress music. Since Apple introduced it's iPhone, Nokia's answer to this was Xpress Music. In this phone, regarding to the model, you can fit for example 3000 songs and enjoy up to 22 hours of music playback with headset. Nokia tells that you can listen with absolute clarity of sound thanks to the dedicated audio chip.

With this phone, you can also watch videos from a wide screen displayin 16 million colors and enjoy the video playback of almost dvd quality. Naturally this phone also includes high quality camera with flash. You can also call video calls so that you can see who you are calling and they can see you.

Also, I am sure that this phone is more comfortable to use than iPhone which is many times described to be a bit complicated. Also Nokia's music phones are mostly in a lower price range than Apple's so obviously they are more affordable. Which one would you choose?

Post 9. Nokia design

Hi all,

Now I want to introduce you the proud of Finland. The company is the most succesful finnish company which has ever existed. As many of you may already know, the company is called Nokia. And no, it is not from japan! Nokia-name comes from a small city in Finland - Nokia - where the company was born. First producing many other things such as rubber boots or televisions, Nokia introduced its first portable mobile phone for GSM networks in year 1992., which is seen in the picture above (model Nokia 1011). After that the growth rate of the market has been extremely high. Now Nokia is for sure the most known mobile phone producer in the world. The strenghts are basically the wide product range and the design which in this case means both, the aesthetics as well as the easy-to-use-feature. So Nokia produces mobile phones for every price category and for every different demand. Also the phones are designed to be as easy to use as possible.

At Nokia, design is the fundamental building block of the brand. It is central to their product creation and it is a core competence integrated into the entire company. Nokia is a global company, which employs designers from different cultures and backgrounds, representing the needs and desires of people all around the world. Nokia design works as a global network of multi-disciplinary teams. Together with consumer research, marketing, engineerking and technology experts, they explore and create solutions where design, technology and ease of use are combined. They give physical presence, identifiable characteristics and a contemporary look to the Nokia brand.

A mobile phone, device or enhancement is much more than a piece of electronics: it is a personal object. You keep it close to you, you tell it personal and intimate things, you use it when and where you want. It reflects your mood and personality and is in tune with your interests and attitudes. All of this separates it from the world of wired products, fixed locations and the convetions of how things have been done. All this makes it an object that embraces innovation and design and is a reflection of the changing lives we live.

Throughout history, craftsmen and designers have strived to produce objects, which satisfy both our functional and emotional needs. Achieving this human need with real balance and harmony continues to be a driver and inspiration to Nokia's designers. This approach has allowed Nokia to lead design innovation within the mobile phone industry. Nokia designs products for a broad portfolio, addressing the needs of different markets and users, and encompassing different technologies and protocols. The look of each Nokia device is the result of a combined creative and functional mission.The end-result is a unified and harmonious solution matching emerging user needs with various evolving technologies.

Less than a decade ago all mobile phones were black. Then Nokia introduced color to the priducts and everything changed. The mobile phone suddenly became the statement of one's personal style, communicating more about the owner's identity than any electronic product had before. Nokia was the first company to introduce removable covers, enabling people to personalize the look of their phone in seconds. Continuing to pioneer new forms of personalization and communication Nokia introduced ring tones, graphics, downloadable applications, text messaging, and multimedia messaging between devices.

The future will continue to bring further convergent digital capabilities to a variety of new mobile devices, each with different primary functionality. It will increasingly be about personal preferences, and the devices will be tailored to meet individual style, communication, services and entertainment needs. Nokia's design principles remain as relevant to this future vision for Nokia as they do today, and combined with the Nokia brand attributes, will continue to guide them.

In my next post, I am going to write about Nokia's answer to the Apple's iPhone, Music Xpress mobile phone. Till then I wish you all a plesent weekend!! CIAOO!

Post 8. Comfort versus La Bella Figura

The first day I walked through the hallways of Bocconi University, I noticed it right away. You can see it from the faces of people, by listening to them, from the way they dress up, from their shoes. It is even more obvious, I had thought before. And I love it. It is something what so strongly distinguishes people in Italy from those in Finland. What am I talking about? It is the above all sense of beauty. It is something so stereotypical italian. It is something that defines the meaning of existence for them: the most important thing is la bella figura: it means how things look like, not how they really are.

The reason I brought this up is that I wanted to link my previous and still coming posts together. I want to define them some common features and what would be a better way than to mirror the finnish design to the italian one. These two perceptions of design and beauty are stereotypically very contrary.

At first, when you look at a chair designed by a finnish designer and then a chair made by italian designer, the difference is significant. You can see right away which one is designed to be comfortable and which one is supposed to look marvellous and something that is luxorious.

First, here is a SWING-armchair designed ny HT-collection, which is a finnish furniture company. You can clearly see that this chair is meant to be comfortable and also the design is very simple. The chair is calling you to sit on it.

On the contrary, here is TERMINAL-chair/daybed designed by B&B Italy. This piece of furniture is clearly something that catches the attention. Since it is made of hard materials, it is not meant to be that comfortable. Also, the design is not symmetric nor simple. Quite a difference compared to the SWING-armchair.

So traditionally finnish design is something that is comfortable and beautiful in a simple way. Finnish people furnish their houses to be places where you feel cosy and where you can relax. Also the colours are usually harmonic and not very bright. It is just that way the finns have always done it.

You can see the difference also on the streets. People dress up in a pretty neutral way. One of the most visible ways of seeking the comfortableness is the shoes. When on the streets of Milan, you can see high heels in feet of every second woman, in Finland the amount could be one of five or even smaller. In Italy, it is normal that women wear heels and as they have always been doing it, it is not even a guestion of suffering for beauty any more. In Finland many women think that they don't want to wear high heels because they are not comfortable and because it is not an every day thing. The heels are digged from the closet, when it is the time to celebrate.

In my next post, I will continue the discussion of comfortableness and extend it to the easy-to-use. I will introduce you the most famous finnish company, Nokia, and its strenghts - why it is so succesfull.

Post 7. IVANAHelsinki and fashion week of Paris, October 2008

IVANAHelsinki arranged its official fashion show for the second time in the fashion week of Paris in October this year (2008). This time IVANAHelsinki was already something more than just a new-comer in the fashion field. The show was notified in many international medias, like in magazines such as International Herald Tribune and Le Monde.

International Herald Tribune made an interwiev of the designer of the brand Paola Suhonen and Le Monde chose IVANAHelsinki as an example of the internationalization of the fashion week. Also British Telegraph chose pictures of their show to the picture gallery of the magazine.

IVANAHelsinki is also cooperating with a british cloth chain, Topshop. IVANAHelsinki's collection will be in sale in Topshops from the 10th of October on.

Post 6. Paola Suhonen and IVANAhelsinki

Hi everyone!

As for the last two times I was writing about a classic finnish design company, Marimekko, which has been operating already for decades, I will continue with a new-comer to the same field of business. I want to introduce to you a young, promising finnish designer, Paola Suhonen, and her own, original clothing collection IVANAhelsinki.

So who is this young promise and what does she do? Paola Suhonen is 31 year-old finnish designer and entrepreneur. She is one of the founders of the label IVANAhelsinki and her education background is bachelor of Arts. She has gone a long way to where she is now. Just few examples of that are vocational school and polytechnic in Helsinki, studying designing of clothes in a University, finnish national championship in snowboarding, designing for Italian company Fiorucci as well as for IVANAhelsinki and Nanso (a finnish home textile company).

IVANAhelsinki is expanding all the time to different couuntries throughout the world and last year they had their first fashion show on the fashion week of Milan. No one could claim, this young designer would not be on her way to the top.

So in year 1998, Paola founded IVANAhelsinki together with her sister. This finnish art brand represents a completely new northern style called "Fennofolk". On their website Fennofolk is described like this: "It brings together Slavic melancholity and pure Scandinavian moods with white arctic summer nights and endless winter sadness." For me this describtion is exactly what being finnish and being scandinavian represents.

IVANAhelsinki-name comes from two things. Firstably Paola's second name is Ivana. Secondably she is born and grown in Helsinki. Simple. IVANAhelsinki.

Paola Suhonen is the main designer of this art brand's fashion pieces starting from her dark naive mind-landscapes, northern legends and sagas, doing prints, graphics, short-movies and everything that is involved with the visuals.

IVANAhelsinki is run together by Paola and her older sister Pirjo. Every single IVANAhelsinki piece is ateljee manufactured in Finland. The whole manufacturing system is based on ethical and ecological choices. There are also a lot of hand-made details and traditional Finnish handcraft is featured.

This is what Paola Suhonen has said about their art brand:

"IVANAhelsinki started as my personal art-project, now it is a way of living to us. Hell yeah it's a clichee but that's how it is. I'd rather just travel around and go to my road trips, but it's pretty much ok to do cute, straight cotton and woolen dresses for drummer girls and girl women. They are the ones who love moonlight fields, pirates, dark forests, crummy motels, champagne state of drunkness, fragile butterflies, unstable relationships and guardian angels. After all, I'm sure they are just after love of their lives, just waiting to see, will he be a rock start, a motor biker, a gnome, a cosmonaut or a sailor."

And now I am positive, you are desperate to see what kind of clothes and textiles IVANAhelsinki designs. I will continue in my next post introducing to you some of their textiles more closely. Here for those, who cannot wait to see how they are, a link for IVANAhelsinki's website. Remember to turn the music on to get you into the right mood...

http://www.ivanahelsinki.com