Selfportrait
Ragnar Freyr Pálsson
Ragnar Freyr, currently 24, was born in a relatively small town in northern Iceland called Akureyri but ironically his parents moved to an even smaller town just one year later and fortunately took him with them. So... Ragnar was brought up in this miniature fishing town called Olafsfjordur where soccer was the ideal sport and and everyone's ambition was to be a fisherman.
After not really fitting in for 16 years, Ragnar finally moved back to his birthplace to study sociology and psychology in college. It was there when he began to gain interest in advertising, later to be developed into interest in graphic design. He finished school and luckily got himself a job as a graphic designer at a small all-around design agency in Akureyri. Eventually he got bored with the unchallenging atmosphere of Akureyri and moved along with his friend to the capital of Iceland, Reykjavik, seeking grand opportunities. Consequently, after staying unemployed for two months he became a salesman for a computer company. Later the company discovered that Ragnar might be of some worth in the graphic design department and hired him to do in-house advertisements and other promotional material.
It was there when Ragnar finally got the idea to apply for the Icelandic Academy of the Arts. He got in and will hopefully be finishing his Bachelor Degree study in this spring.
Along with his studies, Ragnar is currently a self-employed graphic designer, working at the comfort of his own home. He is also the editor of the only web based design magazine in Iceland called The Icelandic National Team - a community of Icelandic designers focusing on all aspects of design, including industrial design, architecture, literature and photography. In addition to that he is the editor of the "soon-appearing" website for The Icelandic Association of Graphic Designers.
Other stuff
© Ragnar Freyr Pálsson
Various projects for various clients.
Lineletter
The Lineletter alphabet was specially designed for my submission to the SpeakUp poster contest. I wanted to make something that would be hard to read because using a quote from the SpeakUp was required. I wanted people to see these abstract lines and initially think that I was cheating by not using a quote from one of the SpeakUp authors. The design of the characters themselves came from a study I've been doing on letterforms. I've been asking myself the simple question; "When does the letter A stop being an A?" and I've been experimenting a lot with vertical and horizontal lines to form a character.
Free Palestine
Pro-bono work for Iceland-Palestine association. Intense situations call for strong visual language. The design of the Free Palestine charity CD had to be as simple as possible, yet convey a powerful message. One of my most rewarding projects, both for me as a designer and a person.
Nýji Tónlistarskólinn
What I wanted to do with the new identity of this music school was to make it look as simple as I could but yet have a strong context to the school policy. I wanted to use forms or icon that meant something to the school and music in general without using old clichés. I wanted to create an visually abstract form that would, when put into the context of music, light up with semiotic meanings. Of course the 5 lines of the logo represent the unwritten lines of the music sheets.
Airwaves
A new website for the most exciting music festival in the world; Iceland Airwaves. The Airwaves crew approached me and asked me to come up with a playful and cool design for their 2004 festival's website. What I like about it is the unconventional use of menu and the floating blocks on the blue gradient background.
Apple iMac
This was an advertisement for an Apple reseller in Iceland. It was published on the back of a catalog for a graphic design show at the Icelandic Academy of the Arts. The goal was to illustrate the creative flow you could obtain by using Apple iMac computers. The biggest challenge was to make the ad look interesting to third-year graphic design students.
múmweb
A website for the Icelandic band múm. The most visited múm fansite on the web. The website had to resemble the look of the new album. I used elements from the album like scratched type, the book feel and the all-over vernacularity of it.
Heimthorp
A pro-bono poster for Heimsthorp - anti-rasist group. The idea was to make a nice typographic design of various colors without loosing the readability of the poster.
Sketchbook
The outsides of me beloved sketchbook. Unfortunately I don't sketch as much as I should. I find myself more and more having a certain picture in my head of what I want to do with each project. Having this picture in my head I almost always sketch it out on a computer. A damn shame if you ask me!
Tekko poster
A part of a motion video project I did for Tekko 03: Future Beutiful show in Singapore and Toronto. I took the elements of this poster into After Effects and made a 1 minute long video.
