• Bedow’s Website
• Bedow’s Instagram
• Grafisk Design Podcast

• Introduction [00:00:00]
• On Art Direction Workshop [00:01:02]
• Episode Introduction [00:02:26]
• Becoming a Creative Professional & Advice for Young Creatives [00:04:27]
• On Studio Culture, Agency Growth & Work Routines [00:11:21]
• Short Episode Break [00:24:33]
• Strategic & Craft Approach to Brand Identity Design [00:25:18]
• On Personal and Professional Growth [00:45:38]
• Lessons from the "Grafisk Design" Podcast [00:55:31]
• How to Be a Better Creative Professional [01:00:53]
• Episode Outro [01:02:18]

Perniclas: Good design has the same construction as a joke—you tell 90% of a story and then you let the listener or viewer solve the last 10% themselves. And then they say, “Aha,” and they laugh or they think it’s interesting.

This is The Creative Voyage Podcast, a long-form interview show with the mission to help creative professionals level up. I’m your host, Mario Depicolzuane. I’m a creative professional myself, active in the fields of art direction, graphic design and consulting.

This podcast features insightful conversations with some of the world’s most inspiring creatives, reveals the stories that shape their lives and careers and offers actionable strategies to help you take your mindset and skills to the next level. I invite you to join me on this journey.

Mario: We’ll be back in a second to talk about brand identity design, studio culture, professional growth and more. But first, a quick message about our most popular online program.

On Art Direction is an intimate online workshop and community that provides insights into the strategies, tactics, and tools of good art direction and its usage as a tool for leveling up as an independent creator or a business owner. I teach it together with the art director and photographer Armen Tehrani. And so far, we have shared this program with over 130 participants. 

Throughout the workshop, we explore questions such as what is art direction? And how can it be done well? What does an art director actually do? And how do they bring value to a company or a brand? And can art direction be useful if you do not want to be an art director? 

If you are a photographer, strategist, storyteller, stylist, designer, or a business owner, mastering our direction can be the key to further unlocking your creative potential. It may be the missing link in your skill set that can take your work to the next level.

To learn more and join the wait list for the upcoming session, visit creative.voyage/artdirection.

In this episode, I talk to a creative director.

Perniclas: I live in Stockholm, in Sweden. I run a design studio called Bedow. It’s my last name. I founded it in 2005.

Perniclas Bedow is the founder and creative director behind Bedow, a Stockholm-based design and branding studio founded in 2005 and currently run by Perniclas Nicholas and his partner Anders Bollman. Bedow transcends the stereotypical Scandinavian style, blending handcrafted elements with innovative design techniques. The British magazine It’s Nice That dubbed their work as “simple, thoughtful, practical design that's easy to engage with, and comfortable to have around”. 

Renowned for its progressive approach, Bedow’s portfolio boasts an impressive array of Swedish and international clients, including Other Media, Coop, Neko Health, UNESCO, and UNICEF. Their work has been featured in the STEAM publications such as Fantastic Man, Monaco, and the Washington Post. 

And over the years, they’ve won many prestigious design awards. From the Art Directors Club, Cannes Lions, D&AD, One Show, Type Directors Club, and More. In addition to their design work, Bedow has also made a mark in the world of podcasting with Perniclas hosting the acclaimed series Grafisk Design. During its run, Grafisk Design featured interviews with 15 prominent designers in the Swedish graphic design community further solidifying Bedow’s reputation as a leader in the field. 

In this episode, we’ll listen to the highlights of my conversation with Perniclas from March 2023. We covered topics such as Bedow’s approach to crafting visual identities, their studio culture and growth, work routines and organization of the studio, career advice for young creatives, lessons that Perniclas got from the Grafisk Design, a podcast which he hosted, and much more.

Perniclas never went to design school. During his time at university, he studied language. Following his interest in writing, which he still values as one of the top skills for a designer, an ability to formulate what you are doing. He started with design when he was 19 years old. When, coincidentally, he got a job with Nintendo Sweden working on their website despite not knowing much about making websites. 

Keep in mind, this was in the mid-90s. So he took a two-day course about the basics of HTML and Photoshop. Found it all very interesting. And in a way, there was no turning back. I started my conversation with Perniclas by asking him about his early professional days and any advice he might have for individuals who are just starting out in the creative industry.

Perniclas: After working some years in advertising, I moved from Gothenburg to Stockholm in the late ’90s. I was doing well web design. And I wanted to work in a good agency. I moved here to Stockholm. In 2001, the dot-com bubble bursted. So a lot of people had to leave their jobs. And I was one of them. That was in 2002. 

I studied for a while. I lived in Berlin for a while. And then I decided I wanted to start my own studio. I started in 2005 with no experience from doing business or working on my own. Since I don’t have a design education, I always felt a bit insecure among the colleagues in the industry. 

When I employed my first designer in 2011, soon after that, something happened. Anders was the designer. He’s still working in the studio and we’re running it together as partners in the studio, both of us. I think sometimes after that, around 2012 or something, that might have happened.

Mario: Okay. It actually took some time. It was like a transition of sorts.

Perniclas: Yeah. Because in 2005, when I started on my own, that was not because I was an entrepreneur or anything. It was just that it was quite hard to find a job in Stockholm in a design agency. That was just something I did to be able to pay my rent.

Mario: When you started initially, is there anything that you wish you could kind of like go back and tell your younger self?

Perniclas: I wish I had some supervisor or some mentor that could have given me some advice during the career. I was a little bit too afraid to reach out. And there were no really studios or agencies in Stockholm that appealed to me that I felt like I want to listen to this person to become that someday. That’s something that I would recommend to young designers, especially if you start your own business. Because that’s so much more than design. To find someone who could give you some advice on your way. That’s something that I wish I had done earlier. Now I know some more people in the industry and then discuss the topics that comes up. Everything from design to running an agency or a studio.

Mario: Kind of following that thread, you have extensive experience. And as you said, now it’s like 19th year of running the studio. And there’s industry industry-recognized trail of work behind you. I’m sure lot of people do look up to you as a mentor or a potential mentor. Somebody who can share some advice. I’m curious, besides what you’ve just articulated when it comes to getting some kind of mentor, let’s say you’re that mentor, what would you give to a young person or somebody who’s starting out in this field?

Perniclas: When I moved from Gothenburg to Stockholm in the late 90s, I tried to find a job as a designer. I had no apartment. I had no savings. I had no one who supported me. And I didn’t have a design education, as I mentioned. But I was curious and I had grit. And I had a cracked version of Photoshop, I think. 

Everything that I’ve done since then is some kind of 25-year trial and error process. And I’ve learned so much from all the mistakes that I’ve done. But if I should pick one thing, I would say that when you’re 20 something coming out of design school, you might not have the strongest portfolio. And your future might seem a little dark. But I would recommend to try to see a little further. 

If you practice something for 2 years, you’ll become decent. If you continue another 3 years, you will probably be good. And if you’re ambitious and continue for another 5 years, then you’ll hopefully be great. And then you’re 30-something and you have a whole working career in front of you being great. And if you do like me, you start your own practice, your 30-something friends, they will also be great at their workplaces, which might end up in that they will hire you as a designer or your studio. That’s an advice that I wish that someone gave me when I was younger. That time will give you some advantages. Try to have patience and try to be persistent. Because people will want to work with you if you’re great. It just takes some time.

Mario: On a more maybe practical or even like day-to-day level, even let’s say somebody’s coming to your studio as an intern or as a junior, what are some of the things that you look for in potential candidates?

Perniclas: There are several things. I look for someone who can complement the team. If it’s an intern, I don’t care too much about that. I wanted to be a friendly person that has something that I think can evolve and be better. But if we’re employing a designer, I’m always very careful with finding someone who can overlap. 

I often use the metaphor in football, like you’re employing a right wing-back that also can play as a central mid-fielder. Finding someone so we can create a whole team. Since we’re small, we’re only eight people, I need to find designers that can overlap each other’s skills and help out. If someone is away for a couple of days, we can take another person that could overlap that. 

And then there’s so many disciplines that a designer should handle nowadays. It’s everything from illustrating, to motion design, and 3D, and typography, and type design. We need to cover all those.

Over the years, Bedow has experienced steady growth while maintaining its original studio ethos and commitment to quality. I was eager to learn about the daily realities of running such a studio. And at this stage of their development, understand more about their studio culture, organization, and growth. In this discussion, Perniclas shares valuable insights into how Bedow has evolved and also provides a glimpse into his work routines.

Perniclas: We’re eight people in the team. We start Monday mornings with a meeting at 9:00. bike to work. I have a 50-minutes ride from home. And I come in around 8:30 or 9:00 in the morning. And during the Monday meeting, we go through the week. Look at the meetings we have or the projects we’re working on, discussing. It takes approximately 1 hour. 

Everyone can work from home one day a week. It’s something we introduced after the pandemic. Something that I see that a lot of employees want to. They feel that it’s a good thing to be able to work from home. They have kids or they have things that needs to be handled, which is easier if you can be more flexible. 

But on Mondays, Monday mornings especially, we’re all there gathered. And then we eat breakfast together and discuss the week. I work from home on Tuesdays. I play tennis. On Tuesday evenings, I want to be fresh. My opponent is slightly better than me. So I don’t want to waste my energy on a bike ride. And my kids also have activities after school. I need to handle that. 

But otherwise, I don’t think it’s very different from others. I start the day with drinking tea or coffee. Reading my emails. My days are quite varied. I have meetings. I pay invoices. I send invoices. I oversee the design work in the studio and making sure that everything runs smoothly.

Mario: When it comes to the team, you said it’s eight people. I’ve seen in one of the interviews, I think it was in 2022, it was six people. You are slowly but surely growing. I’m curious, kind of what’s the setup of the studio? Or like what are the different roles that you have within those eight individuals?

Perniclas: Yeah. We’re growing a little bit. And we will grow a bit further in the coming years. We’ve used to be like four, five, six people the last five years. But we took on an external board a few years ago and discussed how we can be better at managing projects and handling finances. And get some input from some people that has done this in other companies or businesses. 

And we decided that we wanted to grow a little bit. Scale up to get some more competences into the studio. Now we’re eight. It’s correct. We’ve grown a bit the last year. And maybe that 15 could be something where we will stop in a few years. We’ve grown extremely slow. Going from 1 to 6 in like 17, 18 years. We’re employing several people at the same time. I still want to keep the studio culture. But the ambition is to try to scale that up a little bit. Doing the same work we do, but for slightly bigger clients. 

In Sweden, safety is of most important for many clients. The outcome is not always super important. Therefore, six people seems small to many clients here. And that’s the main reason why we’re growing a bit. We want to take on a slightly bigger clients. Have slightly longer projects and charging a bit more for the work we do. 

We do a lot of strategy. But the smaller clients aren’t always willing or don’t have the understanding paying for it. And the setup in the studio, we have one strategist, Anders, my business partner who came in as a first employee in 2011 going in a direction over the years. He’s still a designer. He still thinks design. But he’s mainly focused at strategy nowadays. And that’s something that me and him are working on quite a lot to make sure that that’s excellent. Then we have two design directors. We have one account manager. We have three senior designers. And then me. I’m the Creative Director and CEO.

Mario: And do you have any advice or tips on managing teams or directing teams? As you said at the start, a lot of it was like trial and error. A lot of it was kind of learning by doing. And the growth was also relatively conservative and seem like organic in a way. I’m curious, what are kind of your takeaways so far from like that process when it comes to—I mean, it’s very different from one person and one person and an assistant, to now eight people. I’m curious kind of what are your learnings through that process.

Perniclas: My learnings is that the work that comes out is not necessarily better because you’re bigger. My belief is that the best work that comes out in design industry globally always comes from the studios. That’s why I want to maintain that philosophy. And I don’t want to call it an agency. I want to be a studio. 

But the learnings from increasing is that it’s more fun to have more colleagues. You get less responsibility, me, that is, for things that I’m not an expert in. Over these 19 years, I’ve been both creative director and managing the clients. And that’s something that I’ve felt is a bit problematic. It’s two very disparate roles. It’s not always so easy to combine them. It’s a strength in that sense that it’s cost efficient and time efficient for both the client and us. We’re able to take fast decisions. But it takes energy to both negotiate budgets. And at the same time, stand up as a creative director for a solid design solution. You never know where to compromise. 

But growing a little bit now makes my role more fine-tuned. And, also, perspectives from more individuals is always good, I think. I being a small team, but it’s also very interesting to grow the studio a bit.

Mario: I’m curious, I guess what has been helpful, either strategy or tools, in scaling up your business? I think a lot of people probably see the benefits of scaling. But then there’s kind of lacking, I guess probably the tools or the knowledge of how to do that, let’s say, from 2-3 to 6-8. Is there something? Some kind of either mindset shift or practical shift that you had to do to get where you are at the moment?

Perniclas: Yeah. I think you should grow slowly. I think it’s important to—you have a responsibility as employer to take on people in a responsible way. Not growing too fast so that you might have to tell them that you cannot work here no more, because we don’t have enough work. We had a lot of work when you took you on. But right now, we don’t have that. So you have to leave. It’s people’s lives that you’re a big part of. Being responsible employer is very important to me.

Mario: You said one day working from home. I assume you have some kind of space, studio space. Could you describe how it looks or how it’s set up?

Perniclas: It’s two rooms. It’s one kitchen. Quite big. Where we also have meetings. And it’s the studio where we have eight desks, eight workstations. We have a sofa group and a cutting table or working table. And a lot of books. I like books. I buy them and flip through them. And I not so often read them. And then I put them in the shelf. 

We did more book design earlier. But we still do it. It’s something that I like. It’s something that is good for the studio to balance working with strategy and brand identities is one thing. But being able to also handle the craft part, to work with the paper, and binding, and cloth, and everything. That’s something that I want to keep. I like books. 

What else? We’ve built most of the furniture and interior ourselves in the studio. Or not built. We designed it. And then I work closely with a good carpenter. It’s an old police station. Used to be a fire station next door. And then we had the police station. We sat in another smaller part of the house earlier, that was the locker room for the police. And then this one became available. So we moved next door. But I’m actually looking for a bigger space now if we’re going to grow. Eight is maximum of what we can handle there. And now there’s also two dogs that’s going to fit there. It’s crowded.

Mario: Yeah. Yeah. It sounds crowded. Could you speak a bit more about the role of the external board that you have? It sounds very abstract. I’m actually curious what it is. What do you get from them/what do they expect from you?

Perniclas: This was in 2020, I think. We redesigned our website. We created this head-hand identity to emphasize that we think a lot at work. We don’t do things. We also sell strategy, which wasn’t very clear before. It was a more playful website with some stupid fonts. We said that we need to explain to the clients that what they get from us is both thinking and making. 

And at the same time, we said how can we—also, as I mentioned, how can we capitalize on the work we do better? Because we did record sleeves, and art books, and a few identities here and there. That’s where we come from. That’s where I come from. What I started with. I asked some people and I was recommended to contact Magnus who is our chairman of the board. He has a long experience from building companies and in the same industry. 

Together with him, we picked a few persons that we thought was interesting that could help us bring him. We have a PR focus. I think that the most important things for brands today is to work with design and with PR. I wanted to have people with some kind of PR background. 

The board consists of me, and Anders, and Rebecca, and Désirée, and Magnus. We’re five. We have a meeting every quarter with an agenda where we discuss everything that is relevant. We have one main topic that we discuss. We’re going to have a meeting next week. The first in a while. 

I think it’s good to have someone to report to. To say that this is what’s happened the last quarter. This is how it’s going financially. This is the new clients. This is the work we’ve done. And to get some input. But it’s important to have goals when you take on a board. And that’s something that we have been working on. To set up clear goals. So the board members know what we should work towards.

Mario: Yeah. Are those goals I guess certain revenue, or growth, or type of clients? Or what would be an example?

Perniclas: Yeah. That’s good examples.

Mario: Okay. Actually, how many projects do you have at the moment? Or what’s a good amount for this type of size that you have?

Perniclas: I would guess that we have 10 projects going on right now. Some parallel from same clients. But they’re not 100% work every week. You do sketches and then you send it over. And then you’re waiting for feedback. And then you work on something else meanwhile. But I would say, yeah, around 10 projects going on at the same time. And it spans from strategy to production. We do everything in between. We do everything from naming to type design. It’s quite a varied kind of tasks that we’re working on.

Hey, friends, we’re in the middle of this episode. So, it’s time for a short break. If you like this podcast, I’m confident you’re going to enjoy the Creative Voyage Monthly Edit. Every month, we ask a new creative professional to curate 10 brief recommendations, including books, articles, products, videos and podcasts, which serve to inform and inspire. And we deliver them exclusively to your inbox. It’s a newsletter curated by creatives for creatives. To sign up, visit creative.voyage/newsletter. Thanks, everyone. Let’s get back to the show.

The following is from Bedow’s about page, “Since 2005, we work to build strategies and craft solutions for our collaborators. Applying reason and rationality to the process of design. Finding satisfaction in the simple acts of thinking and making. But reason and rationality have limitations. Work only feels worthwhile when we combine rationality and craft with ingenuity to shake off anything that feels formulaic.” 

That’s a beautiful statement about an integrated approach to design. And I believe it strongly reverberates through Bedow’s output, which has inspired me since I started my graphic design career over a decade ago. I took this opportunity to delve deeper into their process and approach, especially regarding designing the brand identities for their clients. Here’s what Perniclas shared with me.

Perniclas: We have a very clear process in our work. To us, design is two things. It’s strategy and it’s craft. That’s why our brand identity is build up on a head and a hand. Our logo is a head-hand. And our variable typeface on our website, for example, has two weights. It’s a bit of a head. It’s a sans senser. Slightly overweighted top. And then it’s a bit of hand, which is more of a calligraphic. And then it can move between that, between those poles. 

And we visualize this through a simple model, which is a square that is overlapping a circle. Where the square stands for the rational part and the circle for the intuition or the more emotional part. You can see it on our website if you’re curious to see. And at the intersection of the square and the circle where the strategy meets craft, that’s the narrative. And I think that that’s our sweet spot. Being able to transform text into image, that’s strategy into craft. And that’s where I would say that we are great. It’s super hard task to move from something written to something visual. Therefore, we always formulate what to do before we do it. 

Design is such an abstract task. You have nothing and you’re being paid to create something. Something that a lot of people have different opinions about. And the outcome can look like this or like that. And it’s nothing right or wrong. And then you should convince the buyer that this or that is good. And at the same time, having expectations of creating something new that hasn’t been done before. 

Therefore, we always write this sentence before we start the actual craft work. It’s crucial in our process. And we’ve done this for so many years now. And I think that writing for design is sometimes more interesting than the visual outcome. It’s tougher part to being able to put words on what you’re doing. 

We go through five steps. The square and the circle has five steps in it, which are discover, define, imagine, explore, and craft. And the third step, the imagine, that’s where we formulate this sentence, the brand narrative. This is something that we follow very strictly in all our work. It doesn’t matter if it’s a book, or if it’s a logo type only, or a full identity, or a packaging design. We all always try to summarize in words what we should do before we do it.

Mario: Let’s start at the beginning. You said the big part and even in some way maybe more interesting part is kind of articulating that sentence. How does that look, I guess, in a practical way both through the process? What do you do with the client in that stage? And, also, let’s say the deliverable of that phase before you go to articulating that.

Perniclas: Do you want me to take you through the whole process?

Mario: Yeah.

Perniclas: We always start projects with a discovery. I mean, that’s what most people do. They research. They do desk research. They do interviews, workshops. Trying to get an idea of what the client are looking for. The next step, the insight part. Or we call it define. That’s where we draw conclusions from the research work, from the discovery stage. And then the third part, as I told you, where the square overlaps the circle, the imagine part, that’s the toughest one, I think. 

To be able to write something that is interesting, we say that if we use this stage to write a tagline, sometimes clients want to have a tagline for their brand, then it should contain three things. It should indicate what kind of business it is or product. It should have some kind of customer benefit. And it should also be memorable. Written in an interesting way. 

I have an example. We worked many years ago. It was like in 2012, I think, for a fintech startup called Capital. They’re from Sweden, but they are operating from New York. They help Americans save money. Instead of living paycheck to paycheck, you save money before you spend them. And they help the users with that through this app. And for them, we wrote, “Save small. Live large.” “Save small. Live large.” The word save says that it has to do somehow with money. Live large is the customer benefit. And the contrast between small and large makes it memorable. That’s the ambition. 

Every time we write this sentence, we have these three checkboxes to go through. It’s not always possible to do it as good as this one. There are many parameters that comes in. But the ambition is to always do this. And then the transition from that when you go to the next step, the exploration, to be able to translate that sentence into something interesting visually. That’s the exploring stage. This is where the designers come in. 

The first three stages are usually the strategist and creative director. Maybe a design director comes in there as well until the third stage. And then in the fourth and the fifth stage, the exploration and craft, there’s where the senior designers comes in. And the interesting with this model that we have is that you can see it from many perspectives. I think if you look at it as a designer, you’re coming in at the last stage. When you go out design school, what you know about is often craft. Sometimes you’re not even good at craft when you go out from design school. But that’s what you learn. And the further you come in the process to the craft part, the craft part is where we are the experts. It’s like a sliding scale in knowledge. And that’s something that we discuss with the clients. That you cannot come in a fifth meeting and discuss the inner shape or the counter shape of a capital D. That’s our expertise. And the good thing with writing this sentence is that if we can agree with a client, if they’re happy to go along with “Save small. Live large.” then it’s up to us to interpret that visually. It’s a good tool for us.

Mario: Makes sense. And I guess the main deliverable of that first phase is that, let’s say, tagline or a sentence? Is there like kind of more to it? Is there some kind of like a strategic deck or other things that you do, that you provide beside this, let’s say, conclusion which serves as a kind of anchor for the narrative?

Perniclas: Yeah. There is. Of course. There’s a lot of deliverables during this process. The narrative is just the outcome that the client sees. Tere is an insight platform, and a brand platform, a design platform. And so, there’s a lot of things. I thought it was interesting to tell you a little bit about that tool that we use. It could be interesting for other designers as well to try.

Mario: Yeah. I think so. It’s very cool. And I think while we’re describing this process, could we kind of move then further and see how that goes until the finalization?

Perniclas: The exploration stage is what you’re talking about now. It’s very, very unclear how long that takes. There can be a visual solution already when we write the narrative. But there is also projects where we have no clue how it should look like. Often, Anders and I write these taglines and we throw them at each other. We walk and we discuss and we say, “What about saying this?” And it’s like, “Oh, that word isn’t the best. Can we change that word a little bit, so it gets another connotation?” We really craft these small sentences. While we do that, we sometimes also discuss that. That could be visualized through this. Or that could be visualized through this. And then we could give the design director or the senior designer a reference image. 

I have a recent example of that. We worked with a company in Georgia, the country Georgia, with the capital of Tbilisi. They had a kombucha—there’s a kombucha brewery there. A new started kombucha brewery. And they reached out and said, “Can you help us with a packaging design and a small identity?” And after going through these steps discussing what is interesting to communicate, we realized that they were the only kombucha brewery in Georgia that had 100% natural kombucha. They said that our kombucha is brewed. It’s not made. 

We just took that. They didn’t look for an external tagline so we just wrote the sentence “100% natural”. That was the scope to work from. That’s what we should communicate. And we discussed how can we visualize this. Maybe we can show the ingredients very clearly somehow. We said maybe we can take the ingredient list and just blow it up on the front side. But we felt immediately that that’s probably been done before. Someone has probably already worked with big type on the front of the pack. 

We discussed back and forth. And Anders had some ideas. And then I came to think about the defragging process. When I was young, I had a Windows 95. A PC with Windows 95. And the hard drive was always full, so I had to do this process which was called a defragging process. You can Google that. Defrag process of Windows 95. And you can see images of a grid system where small tiny squares shows up. And I was sitting and waiting and waiting for this defrag process to be finished so I could use my computer. 

And I was just thinking maybe that’s a very rational system of showing ingredients. If we could colorize that in an interesting way, it could be fun to use. I gave that image to a designer and I said, “Can we do something like this?” And then we did. The result is a label with 100 cells. You can’t see the cells, because they’re all filled with square cells, filled with a collar. They have five or six ingredients, each kombucha. It’s water. Then it’s like 25 cells are filled with water, with blue color. And it's SCOBY, the bacteria culture. I don’t remember the certain amounts of the percentages. 

Each, it’s 100%. 100 squares. And then we’ve just filled the squares with the color of the ingredient, which is a very rational system. But it’s also quite unique. It’s a system. It doesn’t necessarily need a companion logotype or anything. It’s just a nice system that can be used for adverts, or in social media, or motion. Or this rigid percentage system is the identity. We created a logo as well. But it’s not important. I think that a good brand identity is when you can remove the logo type and still see what brand it is. I think we succeeded very well with that. That’s an example of how the exploration process looks like. 

And the craft, the fifth part, that’s just hygiene. Good photography. Good typography. A nice layout. A system that is scalable. The good thing with this Swee Kombucha, which is called, the system is very scalable. They can do 30 products. It’s just different colors that would separate the flavors.

Mario: In this case or even in the example of this project, I’m curious, what was your involvement? I think you already described it to an extent. But what I’m I guess going towards is that I’m curious how much are you, let’s say, hands-on involved in a project or even actually designing? Or is it like much more creative direction and guidance? How is that balanced? And, also, perhaps how that has changed, I assume, over the years?

Perniclas: I don’t draw anything. I did that when I started. But I’m honestly not a good—I’m good at design thinking, but not so good designer. It’s very relieving to leave that to the designers. I draw on a whiteboard just some initial sketches. That’s it. But apart from that, you need to have good designers around you.

Mario: Yeah. And then who is the person who, let’s say, signs off the dish? The chef who like looks at it before it goes out. Design director or from the craft perspective? From everything?

Perniclas: I’m not involved in all of the projects internally. It depends on a little bit. Anders is managing some projects. And I’m managing some. We have a little separate roles. I’m not 100% involved in all those. But the big projects, I’m always involved in. Almost always. But it’s a discussion. I mean, it’s not that I am the one who has the answer to everything. It’s an ongoing discussion in the studio. And our design directors are very, very accurate when it comes to judging design. I trust them a lot.

Mario: Yeah. I guess when you look at a piece of a, let’s say, graphic design, like a final product, even it can be whatever is produced in your studio or when you’re just looking around at other studios or whatever you see in the world, how do you kind of like analyze it or judge it? What for you makes it a good piece of graphic design today when you see something?

Perniclas: I think when you are able to formulate what you do, when you can see that there is a strong narrative in the design, that’s what I’m looking for. I also look for uniqueness. Trying to do something that maybe hasn’t been done before or at least in that field. 

I’m interested when you take something that is considered ugly and using it in an interesting way. I think that ugly is the embryo of beautiful. The first time you see something, you’re afraid of it. The second time you see something, you might think it’s strange. The third time you see it, it’s interesting. The fourth time you see it, you like it. And then it goes around like a circle and then you end up and you hate it again. But you’re not afraid of it. 

I think that ugly or beautiful is just a perception or the result of how many times you’ve been exposed to something. Trying to come in early in that circle is interesting. That’s also what I’m looking for when I judge design. And then craft, of course. But everything is so well-crafted nowadays. You don’t have to bother about that.

Mario: Thank you for sharing. I think it’s quite interesting to hear, I guess, the ideas or kind of underlying concepts behind the work or just the work approach. Because one thing that was always appealing, and it still draws me to the work of your studio, is it’s a bit different. It’s unique. It’s not like—I’m always surprised in a positive way by it. But at the same time, of course, it’s I think also crafted or well-executed. It’s not just, “Okay. We’re exploring and leaning into the ugly or kind of being contrarian in some way.” It’s a very interesting mix of those tendencies. It’s kind of nice to hear kind of the background story. 

Perhaps, maybe this is relevant or not, and then we can I think kind of close this chapter potentially, is I guess how you see yourself in this maybe, let’s say, Scandinavian design scene? And how you maybe work with that. I guess from the style perspective. Because I feel that that’s also something there kind of how you, I would say, are in some way different. I’m curious how maybe conscious was that, or just natural, or—

Perniclas: Yeah. I have a bit of a problem with that sentence or the expression of Scandinavian design. I honestly don’t know what it is. Maybe some kind of simplicity. But it’s not like that Scandinavia owns that. And I have never really seen our work as something like that. Maybe that there is a simplicity to it. But I think that graphic design and even branding is opportunity to entertain someone. I think it’s so interesting when you can create something that has some humor to it. 

I used to have a lecture for many years that was called playful is the new serious, where I open up the lecture with a joke. Because it’s the same construction. I think good design has the same construction as a joke. You tell 90% of a story and then you let the listener or viewer solve the last 10% themselves. And then they say, “Aha,” and they laugh or they think it’s interesting. That’s something that I think we have in some and/or several of our projects and something that I aim for. To find this aha moment. 

When you succeed to do that, you will engage the viewer in the work that you’ve done, which, hopefully, they will remember what they’ve seen a bit longer. The work is pretty simple. It’s not very effectful in the sense of super great 3D, or motion graphics, or cool music or sound. It’s pretty modest in some way. But it’s also thoughtful. We spend a lot of time on thinking of what we’re doing and trying to find these details that makes it stand out. 

And we don’t have the resources to create this maximized effectful work. I think that that’s why I like the third part in our process, the narrative. To be able to convert text into image. That’s our sweet spot that’s where we want to be the best.

“We become leaders the day we decide to help people grow. Not numbers.” It’s is a revealing quote by Simon Sinek. Today, our work and private lives are increasingly intertwined, making our professional identities more significant. Our vocational growth often parallels our personal development. Shaping us into better individuals through all the inevitable ups and downs. Here, Perniclas and I explore the topics of personal and professional growth.

Perniclas: We discuss a lot in the studio, especially me and Anders. We have had so much work the last year. It’s been fewer and fewer walks. But when we have a problem, we usually go for a walk and discuss how to solve it. 

The work we do is so connected to life somehow. I think that by discussing and digesting these questions also makes me as a person evolve. I think that there are so many questions that you have to answer throughout the design process. And that’s why we have this narrative. That’s the answer to all the hundreds of questions throughout the process. But when you don’t have an answer to a question during a design process, you often go to yourself, to your inner beliefs. And that’s why we also handle feedback quite bad both as a designer. Because the thoughts you put into that paper or that illustrator your document or whatever, that’s what you believe in. It’s a very personal piece of work that I see that our designers do. it’s not always easy to handle those questions. 

If you compare our work to something that isn’t that kind of creative work, I think you invest so much of yourself in the work. It’s a constant ongoing thought process of life, I would say. But how I handle that? I as the principal or the creative director of the studio, I have to be positive, and encouraging, and not diminishing any work or try to find solutions. Because it’s not so easy to solve these stages always. 

I have to be patient and give time to the designers to do their work. And it’s just something you learn over the years. I’ve had a lot of employees over the years. And you learn from every new person you meet. You learn something. I just try to be better next time if there is something that I am not good at.

Mario: Are there any Investments that you made either in yourself or in your studio that you think are like really were worthwhile? I’m sure there’s like many. But is there anything like that kind of sticks to mind or anything that really feels like, “Well, I’m so glad. I’ve actually done that?”

Perniclas: There are a few milestones in the years of the studio. One thing that I think was very good that we did was to take on the external board. As a owner of a practice, you don’t have to serve to anyone. To get someone that can help you with some advice and just them being there is very good for me. Because then you put some pressure on yourself to deliver what you discuss. That’s a good thing. 

Taking on an account manager or an account director that we recently did. Taking on a senior person for that role now has been very, very good. That’s something that takes this problem off my shoulder that I mentioned being both creative director and a client director. That was a very good thing. You could call it a personal investment for me. 

And something else. I told you I never went to design school. I’ve always struggled a bit with my confidence in the work we do. There is nothing right or wrong in design. You can do 10 different solution and everyone can be great. But sending in work to award shows has been something for me, especially when I worked on my own and when it just was me and Anders. Then it was super important to me to get the recognition and the approval of the work we do. 

I understand that a lot of people don’t think awards is important and you cannot compete in design. But if you could, then an award would be as close as you can come to doing something correct. Because when 10 people that also are working in the same profession as you for 40 hours a week say that this is good work, then you somehow have succeeded. That’s also something that was important to me, especially in the early years.

Mario: Are there any, I guess, challenges which is going to stick out through the last 18-plus years that you could share? I guess any professional challenges?

Perniclas: Yeah. What we’re doing right now, we’re growing the studio. That’s a pretty tough challenge. I mean, everything goes really well so far. But employing can be tougher than you might think. That’s something that I’m working hard with now. We get so many applications from designers around the world every week. But being able to pick someone that fits the studio needs is quite hard.

We’re very careful when we employ. We try to pick the staff members that can overlap. We also have to have a friendly atmosphere. And there has to be a gender balance, and a fair salary plan, and other employee benefits. And that’s things that I have to do as a CEO. Being the creative director is one thing. But this is the CEO work, which I enjoy. I like it. But it’s a challenge, for sure.

Mario: Yeah. Is there anything else at the moment or recently?

Perniclas: I mean, running a design practice is a life of challenges. Every day, there is a lot of challenges. But at the moment, this is what I’m working with. Growing the studio and keeping the work solid. And trying to get everyone on board in a good way.

Mario: Yeah. Let’s talk a little bit about the topic of finances or money. I mean, that can also often be a source of challenges for creatives, especially when they’re starting out or maybe trying to get their footing. I’ve read in one of your interviews that money has never been something that you’ve kind of strived for. And there’s many different kinds of currencies beside the actual money. I’m curious if we can further expand on that and like talk a little bit about that aspect of your practice.

Perniclas: Yeah. But that’s true. I’ve always said that money is not why we go to work. At the same time, when we’re growing a bit now and eight senior employees cost more than four juniors. We have some expenses to be covered every month. We need to have a certain amount of projects going on at the same time. The industry we’re working in, I would say that it’s a very high-risk business. We never have projects planned for more than 3 to 6 months ahead.

We have a big assignment now that spans for 2023. But apart from that, it’s super risky. But work always comes in. We’ve done this for 18 years and starting our 19th now. I’ve learned that I don’t need to be too worried if there are a month or two when not too many assignments comes in. I prefer to do good work over making money.

But at the same time, I think that if you do good work over time, you will be able to capitalize on it. I think that the work we do adds so much value to a brand that it should be expensive to buy design. We just need to be better selling it and explaining that to the market. And I’ve seen so many examples over the years of clients who spend all the money on product development, and logistics, and legal parts, and e-commerce. And then they have a few pennies left for the brand design. It’s not that the first parts are unimportant. They’re very important as well. But it’s just my belief that you start with a brand. That’s the foundation for everything. And then comes the rest.

Mario: Yeah. Is there anything else that you’re excited about, I mean, at the moment or maybe in the future? It can even be like is there something else that you in some way see like beside what you’re doing now? Is there something else that you wish or maybe plan to do?

Perniclas: I have two sons. They’re 11 and 8. I think that’s the sweet spot so far of parenthood. I play video games with them. And I play football and tennis, which I like. I enjoy it so much. It would be nice to do that more. Running a studio means a lot of work. Yeah. But it’s so nice to come home every day to the family and play with the kids. That’s something I wish I had a little bit more time for. But I think I will. With this new setup in the studio, with the account director, it will make me happier.

In 2017 and 2018, Perniclas hosted the Grafisk Design podcast, where he interviewed practitioners from the Swedish creative industry. Across the three seasons, these conversations offered a detailed insight into the daily work of graphic design professionals in Sweden. I asked Perniclas about his motivation for starting the podcast and the lessons he had learned from it.

Perniclas: The reason why we started it, I was the one who did the interviews and then my colleagues helped out with editing. And so, it’s a teamwork. But we started it because we missed a conversation about our profession. There are no really organization for graphic design, or brand design, or whatever you want to call it in Sweden. There are a few that say that they’re our organization. But I don’t think they—it’s not so much happening around that.

I thought we could do something on our own. Just invite some of our colleagues in the industry to talk about these things that we do all the day. It’s important for me. Since I never went to design school, I don’t have too many friends that went to school that are working in the industry. I’m not too involved in the industry in Sweden here. It would just be interesting to listen to what they have to say. That’s why I asked a few persons. Do you want to record just something with me where we discuss a few topics?

And this was in 2017. We did three seasons with five episodes. A total of 15. And I tried to invite as many different kinds of designers as possible. Everything from small studios to the biggest ones, but with focus on design. There were no strategies, or account directors, or clients, or anything. We discussed design. And that was fun and it was good. And we got a lot of feedback. And we’re still getting emails. People asking can we do some more work?

I think we will someday. But right now, we ended up with the list we had of people to invite were only white men. It was hard to find a diverse set of people to interview. And I wanted to—from the start, when we started I, said that if we’re going to do this, we’re going to include everyone in this. It doesn’t matter the size of the studio or how prominent they are. Let’s just show that it’s a very diverse industry. There’s everything from super commercial packaging design to people that only work with books. That’s why we took a break.

I have some names that I still want to talk to and discuss. But what I also want to do is TV. That’s something we started to investigate after we recorded these three seasons. We said that this is interesting. But it’s only the people working with graphic design listening to it. If we should be able to reach out to a broader audience to get people to understand that wherever you look in a city environment, there are tens of thousands of graphic design choices. Everything from the signage letters, to the mobile phone apps in your pocket, to the—and behind every little curve in those designs, there is a thought. And that thought is not always there to help you. It can also be there to sell you something. Or it can be there to trick you into something. And I wanted to talk about that to a broader audience.

But doing TV is such a big project compared to a podcast. We had some meetings with some production companies. But I felt that if I’m going to do this, I have to quit work and just working with this. And I’m not that interested in doing this. It’s something that might happen later on if someone comes to us and says maybe we could do this.

I mean, there’s been 15, 20 years cooking was nothing. What happened with cooking with all the TV shows? People are cooking at home. Same thing with architecture. People didn’t look at houses 20 years ago. Same. They’re doing now with all the architecture shows on TV and construction programs.

I’m thinking that the world is ready for design, graphic design and branding to understand. Because you’re exposed to it whether you want or not. And people are also very angry when it comes to changes in the city environment. If a big company changes their logo and then their store has a new sign, people are immediately offended. Because they can’t escape. It’s there. If there’s a commercial going on a TV, you can just switch channels. But you can’t escape from the design in the city environment. That’s also a reason that it would be interesting to tell this to a broad audience.

We’ve reached the final topic I discussed with Perniclas. As with previous guests, I’ve asked him to highlight some closing advice based on the insights he’s gained throughout his professional journey.

Perniclas: Try to put words on what you do before you do it. As I mentioned earlier, design is a very abstract discipline. And being able to formulate something makes you understand what you’re doing. That is crucial to our work. I think it can solve a lot of things.

Be aware of trends. You should know them, learn them and avoid them. I think they’re toxic. And you might lose focus on what is important. You should build your design based on a narrative rather than style. Style is not bad. It can be used. But it will last for a year. Stories will last for generations. Using a narrative as the foundation for your decisions is very good.

And the third thing is to learn from the past and look ahead. Aim for the future. Don’t look to the sides. There’s so much going on there right now in the branding, in design world. And you might lose focus if you look at what everyone else is doing. Continue refining your process and your outcome will become better and better over the years.

Hey, everyone. That’s it for this episode. I hope you found it useful. And if you like this podcast, tell a friend. 

I want to thank Perniclas for this conversation. I’ve been a fan of his studio’s work ever since I started working professionally. And I’m grateful for all the insights he shared. Links to Bedow’s work and some other things mentioned during the conversation can be found in the show notes at creative.voyage/podcast.

It’s been a while since we released the new episode. And it feels great to be back. My goal this year is to share new episodes on a more regular schedule. If you have any guest requests or general suggestions, send me an email.

Despite the hiatus with the podcast, we kept busy with a range of other creative endeavors. Our latest Creative Voyage Paper has been a great success now sold out. Additionally, our first book, Chidy Wayne “In the Mirror”, and “Designing Brands”, our collaboration with Gestalten, are both available on our website. You can also find the first two products from our CV archive collection, the Plain Notebook and Daily Journal on our site.

Looking ahead, our next On Art Direction workshop is scheduled to start and we’re also preparing new online seminars. Investing in our small but growing library of products or experiences is one of the best ways to support this podcast aside from sharing it with fellow creatives. To learn more about all of our offerings, visit creative.voyage. And lastly, if you haven’t already, be sure to subscribe to this podcast.

Until next time, my friends. Take care.