OK, this blog is on the verge of death. I've written it many times before, but since I started out kennmunk.com my focus has shifted, I mostly design through a secret club.
At the moment I'm teaching and I'm focussing my teaching on the importance of the sketchbook, yet sketchbook pages have all but vanished from my website. Sketchbooks aren't made to be showcased, but if I'm trying to inspire the creatives of the future to use this tool, I should put my jpgs where my mouth is, so here's the first of a series of sketchbooky entries.
Gysinge
In 2009 a secret club went to Sweden. Mostly to get stung by wasps and mosquitoes, but also to just sketch, think, experiment without having a project. This is a sample page from that trip:
It shows various random stuff, research and ideas all mingled and mangled, but that's my mind for you. On the left hand page, right in the middle, you see G Y S I N G though. What it actually says is Gysinge.
When you walk up the path to Gysinge, this is what you see.
If you walk round the back, this is what you see - a side of a house painted in different traditional Swedish colour combinations. You see, Gysinge is a hardware store, but not your standard B&Q. Gysinge is for people who really love their old homes, people who restore and it's the sexiest hardware store I've ever seen. It's a mix of reclaimed materials and new, but the true beauty of this place is that it itself functions as inspiration and DIY guide, take the slightly blurry pic below, it shows a ceiling in the state you'd find it in an old house, stripped, primed and painted. It's beautiful. It's not just about flogging your primer and brushes, this place cares.
This excites me. Without my sketchbook, I'd forgotten its name and contrary to what Shakespeare thinks, a lot is in a name - if you have the name you can find it, dead easy. Use your sketchbooks, kids. You'll save so much time later if you don't have to google "Cool Swedish Hardware Store"
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