Logo for the architect firm Cesar. Custom-made typeface.

An earlier design, with a more rounded R.

The website can be found here

Client Cesar Arkitekter
Art Direction, design, webdesign
and photography Staffan Millqvist

Tags: Graphic Design, Logo

I went to my cousines wedding a while back, and took some photographs for and of her. I think she looks so beautiful in these, I had to show them here...



Well, that's it... as you were.

Right... a bit late, but here is a gallery from my road trip starting in Los Angeles and ending in San Francisco. I went with seven friends, and we met up with a couple of others living in LA.

I've only been to New York and Washington before, and the west coast is different. I never quite got a grip on Los Angeles. I suppose, being european, I like a city to feel like a city. Los Angeles is anything but a city. In places, like Venice beach, you can walk around without a car, but it would take a while to get a feeling of the city as a whole.

San Francisco is a weird place. We lived just fifty meters from the Hilton, in the worst possible crack-ghetto. Walk fifty meters in another direction, and you're suddenly thrown into the the business district. No sign of any crack there. I suppose you learn a city after a while, but I found SF weird and LA even weirder... but not in an altogether bad way. Americans are fun.

San Francisco is much more like a european city. Apart from the vast amount of crack heads literally littering the streets, I really liked it too. I went to SF Moma to see the Matthew Barney show Drawing restraint, and we went to a few clubs. A hipster club called Qoöl, among others. Qoöl is an after work house club, with the beautiful and/or rich.

On to the gallery then....

At last you can go out in Stockholm, without getting frostbitten toes.

Vietnam is a country of contradictions. You can start a business whenever you feel like it. You don't pay taxes. You do pay for schools, your children are your pension and medical care isn't free. Yet, Vietnam is a communist peoples republic. In the words of our tour guide Phuong Thao:

"Although we are Communists,
we have to pay for everything".

I never really got what the communist part was.

See a gallery with more pictures here

Perhaps it would be more clear if I had went to Hanoi, where all government official buildings are. Presumably there's a lot more police officers and, well, communism in general. In Saigon it's all business and no government. Police are scarse and people doesn't seem at all afraid of speaking their mind, like they definitely are in China.

Vietnam is now open to the world, and has grown economically since the reform, Doi moi (Renovation), in 1986. Before that, after the Vietnam war, the borders were closed. Vietnam still remains a very poor country though, especially in the country where farmers and fishermen live off the land. If you want to make a better life for yourself, you have to move to the fast growing cities.

The population in Vietnam is 82 million, and Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) is home to eight million of them. HCMC is a blend of french, chinese, indian and perhaps a touch of russian influences (they are thought russian in school). Naturally it's a lot of western influences nowadays too. They have incorporated the cultures of their invaders without second thought, and seems to forgive and forget in a rather healthy manner. There is concern about the past, but no hate. This may not have been the case just after the war, and Thao told us her father, who fought for the losing power (USA), was discriminated up until the late 70's. As his daughter she wouldn't have been able to go to the university at that time, but later things changed and she has. Meeting her, it's obvious she skipped her mathematics for something else though.

Phuong Thao, tour guide

Our tour guide had a theory why Vietnam didn't quite follow the success of Korea and Japan; They aren't as clever. The Cambodians are even more stupid, however. She also thought vietnamese people lazy by nature, who won't do anything at all if their lives don't depend on it. She told a few stories about it, but I'm afraid I can't remember them truthfully. If your get a chance to go to HCMC, send me an e-mail and I'll forward her contact address to you so that you can hear her stories first hand.

Although people outside the cities are poor, they are very friendly and seem happy. I know very well that westerners tend to glorify the poor and picturesque, but I don't think you can fake happiness.

Another article on vietnamese coffe can be found here

A slow cold day in Mars.

Designed and built in 1917-40 by Gunnar Asplund and Sigurd Lewerentz, Skogskyrkogården in Stockholm is one of the worlds best designed open spaces. It earned a place on UNESCO:s world heritage list in 1994 with the motivation "The design blends vegetation and architectural elements, taking advantage of irregularities in the site to create a landscape that is finely adapted to its function. It has had a profound influence in many countries of the world."

Apart from being a cemetery, it's also a real designers heaven.


You find more pictures in the gallery here

I would have loved to make a book about it, if there wasn't already a very good one. I can't seem to find a link to it now, so maybe it's time for a new one.

We wanted to spot an owl that had been seen in Djurgårdsstan, but he must have moved on.


See todays pictures here

See the gallery here.

I took some photographs for an architect firm, Ankar Arkitekter. A rather ambitious office interior design for a real estate agency called Kungsleden. It's located at Medborgarplatsen in Stockholm in a building looking fairly boring from the outside, but with a nice atrium once you get inside. The office is very spacious, and must have costed quite a lot to build with several custom made details. The Barcelonas are expensive. That much I know.


See a slideshow with more pictures here.