HUMANS OF IMPACT HUB
Ander’s Story
I started studying Graphic Design at the Norwegian School of Creative Studies, Oslo (now NKH), in 2009 and after two years of studies, I moved to Melbourne, Australia, to finish my Bachelor’s degree in Communication Design at RMIT. After completing my studies, I moved back to Norway and stayed for a year doing some freelance gigs before moving to Berlin for an internship at Studio Hausherr (now CeeCee Creative). What was initially going to be a six month stay ended up lasting for an additional year. During my time in Berlin, I was lucky to get to work with a couple of different studios and meet with a lot of inspiring designers. After one and a half years in wonderful, creative Berlin, I got a job offer in Lucerne, Switzerland, which I took. While working full time in Lucerne, I got familiar with the fantastic design scene there and all the poster designers. This led me to host an exhibition for my side project, Blank Poster, at the Weltformat design festival of 2016 in Lucerne. Then, during the festival in 2017, I was a part of the an exhibition, Poster town, which featured posters made by designers in Lucerne over the last 10 years. After two and a half years of working in Lucerne, I quit my job to focus on my own practice.
The motivation for starting my own design practice was: to be able to work on many different kinds of projects, to be able to work closely with my clients in a collaborative manner and to solve each case in the way that’s most fitting. Creative freedom and the challenge of starting and running something is also up there on the motivations chart, as well is to be able to work from wherever. The greatest challenge of establishing my own business was perhaps the act of convincing myself to go for it; and then, of course, there are all the new challenges that come with it, like learning the ins and outs of running a business.
A quick Google search brought me to the Impact Hub. I think, “rent office space Bergen”. Working from a co-working space is a great way to work and get stuff done. Going to cafes and libraries only works for so long and in a co-working space, I needn’t buy a coffee every hour to justify sitting there; and here at the Hub, there is free coffee! Jokes aside, it is a great motivator to have a place to go to where like-minded people work diligently. It’s very inspiring to see creative minds at work.
At the moment, I am working on a book for a project, called Blank Poster, which I started with some friends. It’s a poster book and it will, if all goes well, be released during summer of next year. In coordination with the release of the book we’ll host some poster exhibitions in different locations. My plans are to continue developing my own design practice and to work further on developing Blank Poster. I’d like to have my own poster exhibition sometime in the near future featuring a few of my own posters. I’d also like to arrange many more poster exhibitions abroad. Then become a studio.
