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Blogi on jäänyt vähemmälle huomiolle näin kesän tullen, vaikka sosiaalisessa mediassa pyrin jakamaan tekemisiäni ja projektejani aktiivisesti. Tsekkaa kanavani alta!
As we roll to the summer fields, the blog has suffered a necklet on posting. I do still share my most recent projects and updates on my social media channels, so be sure to check them out below! 
Eniten aikaani olen käyttänyt Kalevala-teemaisen roolilautapelin visuaalisen ilmeen uudistamiseen. Viime syksynä alkunsa saanut projekti sai jatkoa alkukesästä Freelance Ohjelmatyöntekijät ry:n apurahan turvin ja olemme etsimässä nyt toista kuvittajaa tiimiimme auttamaan projektin maaliin saamisessa :) laita viestiä jos kiinnostuit!
Most of my time has been spent on the visual updating of a Kalevala themed Roleplaying Boardgame project from last Autumn. At the beginning of this Summer, we recieved a grant from FOT ry and are now looking for another illustrator to help us finish the game to the market :) got interested? Send a message and I'll tell you more! 
Nyt niitä saa! Suomen tunnetuin yläpeukku, onnittelu ja tsemppi eli 10 pistettä ja papukaijamerkki!
Suunnittelin ja painatin näitä viattoman ironisia rintamerkkejä 50 kpl toukokuussa ja ne hupenevat kovaa vauhtia. Kun haluat onnitella jotakuta hyvästä yrityksestä tai näyttää muille yrittäneesi parhaasi, näitä saa vielä laittamalla minulle sähköpostia tai somessa viestiä! These pins are an inside joke for Finnish people. Of course you can have one tho, just drop me a line! 
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At last it is here!
Kalevala: The Capture of Sampo board game prototype has arrived from the print house, and will be shown at the Spiel Essen in Germany! Tuomas Mansikka had a game he'd been working with for some time and contacted me to help him put the cherry on top. We worked for over two months and had several hours long video chats until last week's Monday the prototype was sent for printing. The game consists of: A divider screen to be put between players. A map to be hung on both sides of the divider screen (similar to Battleship game). 20-page Rule book. Player aids in two different sizes. 160 different cards with five different backs! Sampo & Wound tokens and Wind Compass out of cardboard. Also several beautiful paintings from Akseli Gallen-Kallela (link), Dana Mad (link) and game-icons (link). Logo, tokens, wreath and map illustrations by me. The first prototype was printed with my home office ink jet and cut by hand. It was then tested at the local board game café Taverna. 
Want to be part of making this game? Mr Mansikka is looking for investors and interested players to try the game out and develop it further. Contact Tuomas Mansikka on his email here.
Ukkoverkot organized a Smart Ratina demo day on September 1st at Raatihuone in Tampere.
The event showcased pioneer company solutions in the virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) for mass events such as concerts and sport venues to be held at Ratina stadion in Tampere. Visitors included CEOs, investors, athletics and people from various businesses. Companies such as Intopalo, Accenture, Notava, Eatech, Affecto, IBM, Nokia, Huawei, First Beat, Eligo Studio and Virtual Dawn held presentations of their newest solutions on their stands throughout the course of the event. Service design agency Hellon helped out with the event, and every participant were encouraged to take a short survey from each of the demos. 
The photo above depicts the event very well: people finding new innovations through companies: sharing, discussing, and trying out ideas and solutions!
I designed the visual identity for this event, as requested by Antti Vuorio from Ukkoverkot. The style was to be kept simple and professional, and fit with the existing SmartTampere look.
The event required A5 folded flyers and name tags for all the facilitarors as well as visitors. Additionally, voting boxes were labeled and a huge A0 poster was hung in the hallway with the same information found in the flyer. event gallery
In June I took part in Tampereen Sähkölaitos and Moro newspaper's competition that aims to design and build a new light art fixture for this year's Valoviikot event held in Tampere. It also celebrates the 130 year journey of Tampereen Sähkölaitos (electricity distributor) as the very first light bulb in Finland was lit in Tampere! :)
Valoviikot is an annual event that brightens up the city with art pieces made of light fixtures, hung over the city streets and decorating parks and monuments. The winner will receive a gift card and up to 30 years of fame as the fixture is made to last around that amount of time! ALSO all voters have a chance in winning one of three gift cards all worth 100€. My design was chosen in the best 6 so please VOTE me by clicking the link button below and choose the number 1! :D <3
On the weekend of 19-20th August, I took part in Service Design Sprint organized by Tribe Tampere in their just renovated space on Pinninkatu 47. Read more about Tribe Tampere here.
My interest towards service design has been developing during this summer and I think that graphic design is closely linked to it. When designing anything visual, we have to think about both the user (client and end user) as well as the placing of the final product, be it a roadside billboard, a light pole advert in the city center or stamp-sized logo in a business card. These are all aspects of service design which also links to User Experience (UX) design too! Daryna Barsukova had asked me to design and print guide sign posters outside and program posters inside the Pinninkatu building. So I had to think about the users, the environment (including the weather!) and the many possibilities that our visitors might take upon their arrival. Would they come from the left or the right side of the building? Will they check their location on Google Maps and will they find the front door or the back door first? Do they have a number to call in case they get lost? When placing the big A-stands with posters I had to think about the journey from different angles and make sure the data on the posters were visible from up to 20 meters away. So we ended up with posters sized A3, and smaller guide posters in size A4, that were printed with clear white background and striking pink text with an arrow shape as a directional guide. I also added a few sentences in cursive, that worked as a beckoning personalized message to further guide the attendees. 
Once all the attendees had arrived, everyone was divided into teams and given a problem to solve during the weekend, through service design thinking. The question was about methods on how to lower the threshold between companies and internationals in communication and job recruitment.
The Sprint had guest presenters: Veikko Törrönen from Kreapal gave an inspiring presentation called "Service Design", Reetu Kainulainen elaborated the arts of "How to pitch", and Outi Nokkonen who is a service designer at the city of Tampere, held a presentation on "Service Design for Social Change", and Suvi Helén from Idean gave a really hands-on presentation about "Design Research and Insights" where we learned to prototype our services with different tools, most importantly she showed us that to create a prototype we don't need anything fancy or ready, purposefully factory-made products: we can use pine cones, erasers, pens, thimbles and even crumbled up paper! 
The teams' answers were presented shortly as prototypes to an actual jury with people from Business Tampere who were looking for fresh ideas to be implemented within Talent Tampere network. Some presenters from service design companies also stayed to see the last pitches.
This poster "Abridge" is my team's prototype solution. The team consisted of Shakil, me, Dermot and Santeri. The idea was to design an online service AI that would compile different social media profiles and website content, into one single page. This way the user (be it a talent or a company) would not have to create yet another account and a password to a service. In the poster, the view on the left is user's profile compilation, and on the right is the AI's combined Suggestions page where the user can easily see possible interests. These interests mean the following: User (person): check out these companies / courses / events / meetings / channels / blogs / etc... User (company): check out these talents / events / channels / blogs / etc... These two pages of the online service would simply present the existing data from several different channels, in an easily viewed and digestible form, and analyze it, comparing it to other users and their needs, showcasing the data on the Suggestions page according to the user's preferences and search inquiries (hashtags). Let me know what you think of this idea :) if you'd like to take it further, I'm more than happy to help you!
I graduated as a Designer (Muotoilija) so I have a thing or two up my sleeve when it comes to multidisciplinary work! So when a chance to design and construct a mascot came forwards, I took the challenge head on, and it proved to be more fun than expected!
Since the end of 2015 I have been working with Pirkanmaan Eläinsuojeluyhdistys, PESU ry (Pirkanmaa Animal Protection Assocation) and designed a several advertisements and products for them during this time (portfolio link). The association holds and attends many events during a calendar year and hand out different brochures and information about themselves and animal protection, educating, supporting and pledging for donations to keep helping the homeless and sometimes neglected animals in need. For these kind of events, a mascot for the assocation to draw attention and raise awareness, was sketched on paper. The mascot could be used also as a teaching tool for kids and others, with cute and easily approachable size and form.
With a restricted budget, I managed to gather the materials and could begin. As metallic wire is sold either as single line on a roll, or a mesh with different eyelet sizes, my next challenge was how to make a ball out of a roll?
Prototyping with pieces of paper and tape, more questions arose: how could I tame the mesh without bending it too much and possibly breaking it? How to limit unnecessary cutting of the mesh and how to tie pieces together when needed? Solution: make a cylinder from a long piece of paper, and tape it together. Imagine the cylinder is like the face of a clock, and make small incisions to 12, 3, 6 and 9 o´clock, fold/weave the pieces together and voilá! :) 
Of course it took me some time to cut the wire mesh and literally hug it to desired shape. Had to wear a thicker jacket too, not just because I was on the balcony and it wasn't too warm outside, but also because the mesh had pointy wires sticking out, ouch!
The ear pieces I managed to fold out from a spare part of the mesh. A rectangle piece that I cut into semi-squares and then folded to a cone-shape. Then I weaved the mesh parts together with wire, all the time wearing construction gloves, and covering the pointy mesh edges with duct tape. This project used A LOT of duct tape! 
I sketched out the mascot's eyes and nose, to help with percieving of the perspective and size ratio from the two-dimensional images I was showing to the team members throughout the project.
The nose and upper lips were constructed from cardboard and more tape, to bring more realistic form to the ball shape. I also proceeded to cover the whole head with duct tape to give the wire mesh more stability and skin-like texture. Then I drew the eyes on pieces of paper to get removable templates. This way it was easier to place them accordingly, making sure the mascot's facial expression was happy and not creepy. 
After the shape was as desired, I covered the whole beauty with two layers of newspaper strips and paper mache glue.
Then the only thing left was to paint! Painting a mascot head with acrylic paints made it durable for small size changes (like handling and transporting) and against tiny amounts of moisture (like rain drizzle or similar). When creating a mascot head, make sure you know the requirements of the usage environment and usage culture! Who will be using the final product? What will they most likely do with it? It might not be only what you initially intented!
The paper mache was covered with white acrylic paint, and then with an orange-brown coat with details.
The orange color was chosen mainly because of Pesu ry's brand colors, and green eyes as complementary contrast. The core idea of the whole project, was to create a mascot with a stand, for people to be able to "feed" the donations through the mouth, filling the attached stomach pouch. The stand part turned out to be a challenging build, so an option to wear the mascot head like a helmet came to my mind, and well, I took the risk! I think it was worth it :D The whole project taught me a lot of shape building and painting on a round shape (dimensions!), and I think it turned out to great :) What do you think? Let me know down in the comments and if you'd like your own mascot head or have a project brewing in your mind, drop me a line to my email! Ps. If you drive around Tampere you might see Tilkkis looking down from a balcony at the busy streets ;)
Usability of an advert is essential in delivering the message: visuals, sounds, haptics (how the physical product feels like when touched) and media in which the message is shown in (web, tv, print, radio etc.), all play an important role in a successful marketing campaign.
The target group can be found in various places, thus the medium of advertising has to be fitting: always know your target group, who they are, what they do, what are their values and where to find them, to name a few. A roll-up next to an expo stand might fail in its purpose when placed facing the wrong direction of people walking by. Also, the content of the said roll-up has to be interesting and laid out in a way that is easy for the eyes. Too much information (full of long text paragraphs) and poorly positioned logos and contact information (at the very bottom of the 2 meters high stand) will not serve the purpose the roll-up was created for: to spark interest in the cause, product or a service. In these cases, the potential customers are more likely to walk by. 
The layout and physical positioning of an information can actually make the target group avoid the information or not receive it (or understand it) in the first place.
When I was still in school, most information from the school to the students was printed on a billboard that (surprise!) no one either knew even existed or never went to check out for possible updates. This caused several misunderstandings or failed campaigns just because the target group had not seen the message. This misplacement of important information is a big problem in places with a lot of people coming and going. Thanks to smartphones most of us have schedules with internet connection in their pockets, but is that enough? How often have you run into an information accessibility problem? Let me explain: you go to an info desk with a question. The employee tells you to go to their website and look it up from there. You ask specific route to find the information, but the person shrugs it off by saying "it's there somewhere." That is like going to a library without any shelf numbering or signs directing you the correct section! Every marketing campaign and posted information should have a thoroughly thought out communications plan, or at least someone to take responsibility that the information will reach the target in time. Think about where is the info going to be posted? Do you send an email, make an in-house newsletter or a print out on a notice board? Can and will your target group access it and can they understand it?
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