23 Nordic Designers

In the 1920s, the design theme of mass service determined that Nordic style design became popular around the world. Functionalism shined at the Stockholm Exposition in 1930, marking its breakthrough in Scandinavia and its integration with the world.

Nordic style combines Germany’s practical functional concept with its local traditional craftsmanship. Its humane design makes it internationally renowned. It gradually formed a systematic and unique style in the 1940s. The typical characteristics of Nordic design are advocating nature and respecting traditional craftsmanship.

The rapid economic development of Northern Europe in the mid-20th century gave Nordic people a high welfare system. However, Nordic people still attach great importance to the practicality of products, and their simple and natural aesthetics are still inherited. Nordic residential culture and design concepts are deeply influenced. Therefore, even in the industrial age, Nordic product design still retains elements of humanistic care that focus on the physical and mental health of users. Tradition and fashion innovation are used vividly by Nordic designers.

The following introduces you to 23 top Nordic designers, hoping to deepen your understanding of Nordic design.

1BorgeMogensen

BorgeMogensen was born in Aalborg, Denmark in 1914. He studied furniture design at the Copenhagen School of Arts and Crafts in Denmark from 1936 to 1938, and then studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts from 1938 to 1942. College, after graduation, he joined FDB Furniture Design Studio as the brand director.

Borge Mogensen is committed to designing furniture that meets the needs of the public. He believes that good furniture should not only be appreciated by a few people, but should be owned by everyone. In order to achieve "let every Danish With the ideal that everyone can afford high-quality furniture, B_rge Mogensen has designed a series of affordable furniture that is both simple and practical.

Borge Mogensen’s style focuses on combining traditional and modern styles, and pays attention to functionalism. In the 1940s and 1950s, chairs inspired by Africa and made of wood, leather and other materials became popular in Denmark in the 1950s. A primitivist classic in furniture design.

Borge Mogensen, who died young in 1972, left behind many classic representative works, such as the Hunting Chair in 1950, the Spanish Chair in 1958, the Wingback Chair in 1963, etc. Borge Mogensen designed countless high-quality classic furniture throughout his life. He has established himself as an immortal legend in the hearts of the world, and his design spirit continues to influence the world today.

2JanneKyttanen

Designer Janne Kyttanen, who was born in Hameenlinna, Finland in 1974, is the leading figure behind rapid prototyping technology. He used rapid prototyping technology to develop 3D molded products. Industrial design products.

After graduating in 2000, Janne Kyttanen took these creative concepts to Materialize, a company that had previously sponsored his high-tech development mold technology. The cooperative relationship created a new Materialize.MGX department, which used 3D molding technology to create the first batch of designer lamps, which were released at the 2003 Milan Furniture Fair. Janne Kyttanen's innovative 3D molding technology has significantly changed the way objects are produced, creating a greater degree of freedom in the gap between creativity and actual production.

Designer’s official website:

3 Peter Svarrer

Peter Svarrer, born in 1957, graduated from the Danish School of Decorative Art in 1981. In addition to running his own glass workshop that has been maintained for more than 20 years, Peter Svarrer also works as a lecturer at a design college. In 1997, he began cooperating with Holmegaard, a Danish brand with a long history and culture, to design glassware, and has won recognition from many international design awards.

Peter Svatter has been a very important design driving force for the Danish century-old brand Holmegaard in the past ten years. With his irreplaceable enthusiasm and unique vision for glass materials, Peter Svatter is always able to naturally reveal various elements of the Nordic living environment in his design works.

Designer’s official website:

4ToolsDesign

ToolsDesign, a design team from Denmark, was founded in 1989 by Claus Jensen and Henrik Holb_k. The ToolsDesign design team, known for its simple and innovative design orientation, has quickly won more than 250 design awards around the world in the past few decades. It can be said to be the most award-winning leading design representative in contemporary Danish design.

ToolsDesign’s design field is very broad, and its design products range from electrical appliances to medical equipment and home furnishings. Outstanding works that are both functional and aesthetic have always been the core of ToolsDesign's design. We approach products from the user's perspective, paying attention to aesthetics while not forgetting important practical needs. Henrik Holb?k, who was born in 1960 and graduated from the Industrial Design Department of the Royal Academy of Arts in Copenhagen, said, "What we want is simple, beautiful and truly useful products!".

ToolsDesign, as the main design force behind the home furnishings brand EvaSolo, has played an important role in the revival of the Danish brand with a history of nearly a century. The current location of ToolsDesign is based in the old industrial area northwest of Copenhagen, where it continues to add some "extra elements" to the design products; the design team with unlimited potential, with the ability to manage design products and communication, creates Design works that are close to life style; ToolsDesign continues to attract global attention with functional design products that are beautiful, attractive, and highly creative and innovative.

Designer’s official website:

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5SeppoKoho

SeppoKoho was born in Rovaniemi, Finland, with a degree in art and architecture . After several years of extensive experience working in an architect's office, in 1995 he founded Interior and Design Studio Seppo Koho in Helsinki. Seppo Koho has profound expertise in architecture and interior design. With the spatial concepts and aesthetics he extracted from it, he began to design lamps, using the softness of the light source to invite further interaction in the space. He has also provided projects for clients such as Nokia, etc. , tailor-made furniture exclusive to the space.

Seppo Koho attaches great importance to the balance of space configuration. His unique delicacy is his characteristic in the design world. The brand SectoDesignOy he founded is full of Nordic and Scandinavian style, and the series of lamps he released also make him famous. He has a high reputation in the design community and has won multiple aesthetic-related design awards.

Designer’s official website:

6NannaDitzel

The legendary Danish female designer NannaDitzel has abundant creativity. She was trained as a professional joiner and is known for her bold innovations. And the furniture design that meets the needs of the public is famous all over the world. At an age when most people have retired, Nanna has been working tirelessly on the road of designing furniture, jewelry, and fabrics.

NannaDitzel continued to experiment with new materials and technologies in the postwar years. He has tried various materials such as fiberglass, wicker products, and rubber, and has also dabbled in diverse professional fields, such as furniture production, jewelry design, tableware, applied art, and textile creation.

Nanna Ditzel, born in Copenhagen, Denmark in 1923, received professional carpenter training before attending the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Denmark. After graduating from the Department of Furniture Design in 1946, he opened a personal studio with his first husband J?rgen Ditzel. During the operation of the studio, it won many silver and gold medals from the Milan Triennale. It was not until the death of J?rgen Ditzel in 1961 that the studio ended. Nanna Ditzel's One Woman exhibition began to be exhibited around the world in 1962, and has toured London, Berlin, New York, Vienna, London, Stockholm, Milan, Paris, Denmark and other places for more than 30 years. Nanna Ditzel received the title of Royal Honorary Designer from the Royal Society of Arts in London in 1996 and the Lifetime Art Award from the Danish Ministry of Culture in 1998.

Designer’s official website:

7HansSandgrenJakobsen

HansSandgrenJakobsen was born in Copenhagen, Denmark in 1963. He was influenced by his grandfather, a joiner master, and learned carpentry very early. skill. After graduating from the Danish Design Institute, he received a scholarship to continue his design studies in the United States and Japan, and then joined the studio of the famous Danish female designer Nanna Ditzel. In just a few years, he has won recognition from many well-known awards and is a high-profile rising star among the younger generation of Danish designers.

Hans Sandgren Jakobsen, a craftsman and designer, believes that design should not only be beautiful, but also have functions and functions; design is not art, but a product that can be universally used by people. Hans Sandgren Jakobsen is able to perfectly combine functionality and minimalist form through the talent of his craftsmen. He has many experiences traveling around the world (the United States, Japan, Spain) and is often able to turn what he sees and hears during his travels into inspiration and motivation for creation.

Innovation, aesthetics, and functionality are three very important elements that Hans Sandgren Jakobsen attaches great importance to in the design process.

Hans Sandgren Jakobsen, who is deeply influenced by the American Shakers (American Christian Shakers), also firmly believes in "Beauty depends on functionality". Constantly seeking innovative breakthroughs based on existing designs, using a simple and clean design aesthetic of less is more, to create a universality that can stand the test of the times.

Designer’s official website:

8VernerPanton

Denmark’s most influential designer VernerPanton studied architecture at the Royal Academy of Arts in Copenhagen, but later made him famous. It is not his architectural works, but the daily necessities and furniture he designed.

Panton’s bright and straightforward color techniques, adept at using geometric images, create many futuristic designs. Each work can inspire the user’s unlimited imagination. What laid the foundation for this style was Panton’s bold experimentation with color and structural materials, and he did overcome many conceptual and technical limitations and became commonly used materials in today’s home design industry (such as plastic, acrylic, fiberglass , sponge rubber, etc.) and the creator of new visual and sensory experiences.

VernerPanton took the lead in completing the world's first one-piece plastic injection chair in 1959, the world-famous Panton Chair. It not only became a collection classic, but also established VernerPanton's status.

Designer’s official website:

9TrineAnderson

Trine grew up in a small town in Denmark called Jylland. Her family ran a garment factory and she had a talent for design since she was a child. As a young girl, Trine knew how to use leftover fabrics from the factory to design and make clothes for her dolls. She founded Ferm-LIVING in 2005. Her works combine imagination and a unique style that breaks through tradition, and use the beautiful natural scenery of Northern Europe to outline smooth lines and realistic artistic conception in a fashionable and fresh perspective. Designer's official website:

10 PoulChristiansen

Poul Christiansen, a Danish architect born in 1947, graduated from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in 1973. From 1969 to 1987, PoulChristiansen brought innovative and exciting changes to the originally straight-line pleated lamps of LeKlint, a century-old lighting manufacturer.

Actively developing and breaking through technical difficulties, PoulChristiansen transformed the wrinkles through mathematical calculations to create a more beautiful architectural appearance. The curved waves and specially processed materials show the flow of lines and light.

PoulChristiansen and Russian designer Boris Berlin established the design company KomplotDesign in 1987. Its service projects include furniture, industrial design, graphic design, etc. KomplotDesign is favored by many well-known furniture manufacturers, including Gubi, Norman Copenhagen, etc. The Gubi Chair designed for Gubi is a single-board chair made using innovative 3-D technology. It is collected and displayed at MOMA, the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

11MonicaF_rster

One of the representatives of Swedish contemporary furniture design, MonicaF_rster has designed many internationally renowned furniture products. Born in a village in northern Sweden near the Polar Circle, her works are known for their pure forms and novel materials and technologies. He often creates in a cross-disciplinary and diversified way, constantly inventing and innovating the scope of industrial design.

Monica F_rster's studio is located in Stockholm, and has cooperated with major international brands Cappellini, PoltronaFrau, DePadova, Bernhardt, Whirlpool, Vibia, Tacchini, Modus, Offecct, and Swedese. The opportunity to work with a major furniture manufacturer for a long time gives Monica Fürster sufficient resources and opportunities to work together with a top R&D team to realize unrestricted innovative designs. Monica Fürster's design represents not just one individual, but the entire team behind it.

Monica F_rster, an internationally renowned designer, draws inspiration from nature and her curiosity about new materials and technologies. Nordic crafts, Asian cuisine, fashion, nature. These diverse fragments combine to create Monica Fürster's strong, practical and poetic design products.

Designer’s official website:

12MattiasSt_hlbom

MattiasSt_hlbom likes to start with simple ideas and use simple methods and materials to create objects that are obvious, but simple and extraordinary. .

Mattias St_hlbom, born in 1971, is a well-known Swedish architect and designer.

Mattias St_hlbom studied architecture and furniture design at the University of Arts, Crafts and Design in Stockholm, while studying ethnology and art at two local universities.

Designed furniture and kitchenware for well-known Swedish companies, and also worked in the design field in New York. In 2002, he started running the architecture and design office TAF in Stockholm together with Gabriella Gustafson***. Starting from the items that can be seen every day, through the magic of design, people can appreciate the ordinary and extraordinary things in life more.

Designer’s official website:

13MaijaIsola

MaijaIsola is a very outstanding contemporary female designer. Her works are influenced by the colors of multicultural images, with strong ethnic flavors and lively color layers. The pattern UNIKKO (meaning poppy in Finnish) she designed for the Finnish brand Marimekko has become a representative of classic style, and its status is completely irreplaceable in the Nordic design world.

Maija Isola, born in Finland in 1927, studied drawing at the Central School of Industrial Arts in Helsinki. He was the first full-time designer hired by Printex (the predecessor of Marimekko) and became the chief designer of interior fabrics. Her most famous print, Unikko, is still a registered trademark of Marrimekko.

Maija Isola is a versatile artist who uses bold colors and has created more than 500 design drawings. Her experiences traveling to Yugoslavia, Italy, and Algeria have combined inspiration from different cultural styles in her designs. In the 1980s, she began to design bolder graphics and decorative designs with her daughter (Kristina). Kristina continues to work as a designer at Marimekko today.

14KlausRath

KlausRath graduated from the Industrial Design Department of Aarhus School of Architecture in 1990 and became an industrial designer. . From 1990 to 1996, he worked as a designer for Modulex A/S, a subsidiary of the LEGO Group in Billund. In 1997, he founded KlausRathDesign design company and designed for Siemens, Motorola, Modulex, GNNetcom and many other brands.

Klaus Rath’s design emphasizes technical craftsmanship, and he perfectly combines technology and craftsmanship. He not only develops high-tech production methods, but also holds two technical patents for innovative design. At the same time, his design features clean and neat lines, simple and practical functions, and always maintains the tradition of Scandinavian design.

Designer’s official website:

15JohnBrauer

Designer John Brauer was born in Denmark in 1960. His experience of traveling around the world has allowed him to experience almost all kinds of things around the world. A variety of adventure and work experiences, and he also visited and collected various cultural impressions. These rich life experiences and interests and exploration research across multiple fields gave him a multi-faceted and in-depth understanding of different cultures, creating a He has a broad and open mind and a rich source of design inspiration.

Through in-depth participation in the design process and the pursuit of developing new value for products is John Brauer’s design style. His design concept is to convey the deep meaning of objects and create new value for them. He won the British Industry Awards in 2007 The Illusion magic towel table of the British Industry Award uses innovative construction methods to create natural shapes, which is a successful example.

16ArneJacobsen

ArneJacobsen, Denmark's most influential architect and industrial designer, can be said to be the number one figure in Denmark's "functionalism" and the biggest representative of Nordic minimalist design. As can be seen from the well-known classic chairs designed by Arne Jacobsen, such as Egg Chair, Ant Chair, and Swan Chair, there are no redundant lines or structures at all. The simplest curves are used to achieve the best use function of the chair, and the beautiful and elegant posture lasts forever.

Arne Jacobsen, who studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Arts, won the "House of Future" competition for future housing design organized by the Danish Architectural Association after graduation. Since then, his reputation and ultra-modern design style have quickly spread. Jacobsen's designs undergo extremely precise calculations and require perfection down to the smallest detail. For example, when he helped to design St. Catherine College for the University of Oxford in the UK, he also specifically requested in the contract that all areas of the land be designed by him, including the landscape and accessories. This college later became his masterpiece.

Designer’s official website:

17JakobWagner

JakobWagner is a very prominent contemporary designer in Northern Europe. He has designed many award-winning works that are collected in museums.

His works appear regularly in exhibitions in Northern Europe and around the world.

Born in Copenhagen, Denmark in 1963, graduated from the Product Design Department of Art Center in Montreux, Switzerland in 1992. In the same year, he established his own studio and initially cooperated with sports and professional equipment companies, such as Porsche and Pioneer. Later the design began to transfer to household objects.

Jakob Wagner’s designs often use strong contrast to express the tension between different qualities, combining seemingly opposing concepts, such as movement and stillness, male and female, organic and geometric, etc. Through this tension, new life is injected into the product, challenging the senses while constantly tempting and attracting our feelings and emotions. The kinetic energy of JakobWagner's design also comes from these various forms full of meaning.

Designer’s official website:

18HansJ.Wegner

HansJ.Wegner was born in Denmark in 1914 to a shoemaker family. He completed his apprenticeship as a carpenter at the age of 17 and went to the School of Arts and Crafts in Copenhagen at the age of 20.

The young architect Wegner and many senior designers have had the opportunity to make a career. In 1940, he joined Arne Jacobsen and Erik M?ller in the furniture design work of the Rhus City Hall. In the same year, Wegner collaborated with master carpenter Johannes Hansen***, which brought him to a higher level of skills.

In 1943, he founded his own design studio and the following year began the creation of a series of Chinese chairs. The idea of ??the Chinese chair was inspired by Ming-style chairs from photos taken by Danish businessmen. One of them, the "Wishbone Chair", is one of the best-selling and most popular Wegner chairs from 1949 to the present.

The Round Chair designed in 1949 appeared on the front page of the American Interior magazine and was hailed as the most beautiful chair in the world. RoundChair has repeatedly appeared in various important international occasions, such as the 1960 presidential televised debate between US Vice Presidents Nixon and Kennedy and the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. The perfect combination of Hans J. Wegner carpenter and designer faithfully presents the most beautiful form with precise techniques.

19FormUsWithLove

FORMUSWITHLOVE uses one word to describe itself─dedication. This young Swedish design studio does not wait for good things to happen out of thin air, but takes the initiative to create and expand its own designs. FORMUSWITHLOVE's design field is very wide, and everything related to product design is the object of FUWL's concern.

FormUsWithLove was established in 2005 by John L_fgren, Jonas Pettersson and Petrus Palmér. The three met each other in a product design course at Kalmer University. FormUsWithLove takes Innovation, Interaction and Love as its design philosophy.

For FUWL, the biggest gain from cooperating with major furniture brands (Axcent, Zero, DesignHouseStockholm, Materia, Mitab, Muuto, etc.) is not the result of the product, but the thinking, creation, and Design and production experience. These experiences of cooperation continue to stimulate FUWL to use innovative entry points to inject some fun and humor into the minimalist style of the 21st century.

Designer’s official website:

20EeroSaarinen

EeroSaarinen is one of the most prolific, subversive and controversial architects of the twentieth century. Eero Saarinen grew up in a design family, his mother is textile artist Loja Saarinen, his father Eliel Saarinen is a famous architect and land planner, and his sister is also an interior designer.

The architectural designs that are famous at home and abroad have shaped the international image of the United States after World War II. Dulles International Airport, the St. Louis Memorial Arch, the General Motors Technology Center, and the TWA Terminal at Kennedy International Airport, these American values Powerful Symbol is EeroSaarinen's representative work.

Eero Saarinen has produced furniture designs throughout his creative career. Eero Saarinen’s rich, clever and highly original furniture can be said to be the representative of American furniture design in the 1950s. In 1940, he and Charles Eames won first place in the MOMA organic furniture design competition (Organic Armchair), and later developed a long-term cooperative relationship with Knoll Associates. The use of new materials, construction techniques and innovation in sculptural forms give each object designed by Eero Saarinen a strong architectural quality.

Designer’s official website:

21 Eero Aarnio

Eero Aarnio was born in Finland in 1932. He studied at the Institute of Industrial Arts in Helsinki from 1954 to 1957, and established his own studio in 1962. , engaged in interior design and industrial design. Many of his works have achieved international recognition around the world and have received many industrial design awards.

As a professor and interior designer, he began to challenge traditional furniture design norms in 1960, and instead experimented with plastics, diverse and colorful colors, and organic forms to create newer and more functional furniture. Stylish furniture.

The plastic works he designed have since become world-famous. The Ball chair he designed with fiberglass in 1963 and the Bubble in 1968 not only caused a stir at the time because they accurately reflected the Pop Culture (thePopCulture) The response has been overwhelming and remains a benchmark in the design community. Fiberglass has become one of EeroAarnio's favorite materials.

EeroAarnio’s works combine culture, fashion, aesthetics and functionality. He has won numerous international awards, and his works are collected and exhibited in major iconic museums around the world such as the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, MoMA in New York, and the Vitra Design Museum in Germany.

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22Bj_rnDahlstr_m

Bj_rnDahlstr_m is a very famous Swedish designer. He was born in the 1950s and worked in graphic design and animation in the 1970s. Design, he established his own design company in 1982, and initially focused on graphic design projects for several large companies such as Ericsson, Scania, and Atlas Copco.

Slowly, Bj_rn began to extend his design talents to product design, with many categories, such as: Playsam children's toys, Skeppshult bicycles, Krups coffee machines, Marimekko fabric design, Magis, Plank and Daviddesign furniture. His style is understated and simple, with a unique elegance that cannot be replaced.

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23AlvarAalto

AlvarAalto can be said to be an important figure in launching modern Nordic design, covering architecture, furniture, fabrics, glass art, etc. Born in Kuortane, a small town in Finland, the place where I grew up is surrounded by the most beautiful natural beauty and dreamy lakes. Alvar Aalto has shown artistic talent since he was a child and is particularly good at painting and art. At the age of fourteen, he began to draw illustrations for local publications. Although he became an architect when he grew up, Alvar Aalto was very interested in movies when he was a child, and even built a small theater on the top floor of his house.

Alvar Aalto is unique in creating dramatic spaces. Therefore, in the early 20th century when the economy took off and standardization and mass production were popular around the world, he was able to skillfully integrate sensibility and standardization into architecture. Let the building express its natural organic nature.

AlvarAalto's design style has gone from early classical, functional, and organic to later experimental and commemorative works. It can be seen that he is constantly creating classics, and he was influenced by early