In 2017, Studio Daniela Juvall was commissioned to develop the identity for Stockholm City Museum’s exhibition ”Östberga, Östberga”, which puts the spotlight on a divided neighborhood in Stockholm with poor public transport, few grocery stores, and a rising problem with gang-related crime. To let the area speak with its own voice and to bring the citizens to light, Daniela reached out to type designer Göran Söderström (Letters from Sweden), who himself grew up in the neighborhood. They held a type-drawing workshop with the kids from the Östberga Youth Center. The letters that the kids drew became the typeface Östberga Type, which was used throughout the exhibition.
The typeface was awarded Young Swedish Design 2018.
Client: Stockholm Stadsmuseum/ Stockholm City museum, 2017–2019
Project: Concept, exhibition design, graphic production and surrounding visual communication for the Exhibition Östberga, Östberga. The exhibition was presented in two versions, the first time at the Östberga youth center and the second time in an updated version at the Stockholm City Museum.
The concept included the creation of a font for Östberga, designed by the children from the Östberga youth center in collaboration with Göran Söderström, Letters from Sweden.
Curators and project managers: Sara Hedberg & Johan Stigholt, Stockholm City museum
Type designer: Göran Söderström, Letters From Sweden, together with the kids Rola, Nima, Mohammed, Riccardo, Klara, Fabian, Masa, Bo, Amin and Ali from Östberga youth center.
Download the Type Specimen, read more about the project at Lettersfromsweden.com or read an interview about the project at It’s Nice That.
See the film from when Östberga Type were drawn by the kids from Östberga Youth center
To capture the kids perspective, the kids was wearing GoPro cameras attached to their heads.
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»Flipping the stereotype of type design as the realm of the fastidious and precise on its head, this charming font has been developed by a crew of rambunctious kids. The project was conceived under the watchful eye of type designer and Letters from Sweden founder Göran Söderström and designer Daniela Juvall.«
Read about how the typeface was made in the article “These Swedish kids designed a typeface to celebrate their neighbourhood”, It’s Nice That.
The kids at the Youth center are drawing letters with fat markers
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»Fonts were not something you could joke about before, but now we get a child’s perspective that demystifies what has long been a very serious genre. The playful roughness is embedded into the letters, as are the cultural identities, and we get a sense that this children’s work has actually been done on their own terms.«
Östberga Type exhibited at ArkDes during Young Swedish Design 2018. Photo: ArkDes.
Ung Svensk form (Young Swedish Design) is an annual award and traveling exhibition that highlights young and innovative designers in Swedish design and architecture. 2018 the typeface was selected as one of the winners, and was exhibited around design museums in Sweden and in Tokyo.
Östberga Type in Tokyo during Designart Tokyo 2018. Photo: Said Karlsson, Swedish Design Moves Tokyo.
It’s Nice that wrote about the typeface in an article that became one of the most read in 2018
These Swedish kids designed a typeface to celebrate their neighbourhood
Flipping the stereotype of type design as the realm of the fastidious and precise on its head, this charming font has been developed by a crew of rambunctious kids. The project was conceived under the watchful eye of type designer and Letters from Sweden founder Göran Söderström and designer Daniela Juvall, after the latter was commissioned to develop the identity for Stockholm City Museum’s exhibition Östberga, Östberga, which celebrated the eponymous Stockholm neighbourhood.
“Östberga is special because of it’s geographical position just a few kilometres from the city centre but with a history of very bad public transport, a lack of public services and almost no grocery stores,” says Johan Stigholt, the exhibition’s project manager. “It is divided into two separate areas – ‘good’ and ‘bad’ – both mentally and geographically.” Given the rising problem with gang-related crime in the more deprived half Östbergahöjden, the City Museum wanted to stage an exhibition that brought people together, documented local and aural histories and inspired pride in the suburb.
Designers Daniela and Göran held workshops with ten children between ten and 12 (Rola, Nima, Mohammed, Riccardo, Klara, Fabian, Masa, Bo, Amin and Ali) at their local youth centre, plastering the floor with paper and graffiti pens before letting the kid’s imaginations and hands run riot. “The whole idea with this project was for them to create their own typeface, without any direction from us. We encouraged them to draw in their own style," Göran explains.
Daniela adds, “We didn’t want to influence how they wrote the letters, but one idea I had was to ask if the kids wanted to write a lot of different Ös as in Östberga. They didn’t, instead they wanted to write a lot of different Bs and Ns.” In fact some of the children wrote in Mandarin and Persian, others wrote their name, their favourite football team or the names of their siblings. “We ran out of paper in no-time even though we had over a hundred meters to start with,” says Daniela. “The kids didn’t want to stop writing!”
Göran and Daniela then picked out the useable letters, scanned them and digitised them using a font editor. The use of brushlike graffiti pens meant that the letters’s bold strokes felt coherent despite their different authors. Daniela says, “It was also interesting to see that the children didn’t care about ”good” or ”bad”, they just did what they did without evaluating what it looked like.”
As well as being used in the initial exhibition, the typeface will feature in a second show this autumn, and interest in the open-source typeface has spread all over the country, from community centres to grocery chains. “The typeface is also getting Östberga recognised for their work with the kids at the youth centre,” says Daniela. “Plus one of the kids says he wants to work as an artist in the future.”
Laura Snoad
13 March 2018
