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Q&A with Valeria Hedman, Creative Director
Published in CAP&Design No 1 2010, p.58

capdesign.idg.se

Who has been responsible for the sharpest design internationally and in Sweden?
M/M Paris has been a huge inspiration for many creatives during the last decade. Their playful and experimental form has activated drive and joy for design and play across the world. In Sweden, it will have to be Hjärta Smärta within art direction and Sara Acedo within book design.

Who/what has been the most groundbreaking design internationally and in Sweden?
The biggest change within design today is that we have gone from the isolated creative genius to the creative collective. Creative brains have fused together to produce fabulous results that would have been unattainable for single creators in the past. I'm thinking of Troika, GTF, Hi-ReS! and Experimental Jetset - who have all created new approaches and inspired many along the way.

What where the colours of the decade?
Cyan, magenta, yellow and black. When larger companies and institutions rebrand for a friendlier, more social identity design they go for cyan – and it has now effectively replaced the old corporate blue.

What was the typeface of the decade?
Helvetica survived yet another decade and seems to be more popular than ever. Although it got huge competition from Gotham and because of its close connection to New York City was also chosen for the inscriptions in the Freedom Tower. It really can't get more noughties than that.

Who was the most prominent typeface designer?
Hoefler & Frere-Jones, the creators of Gotham, Knockout and Archer – everyday items in any designer's font folder. I am not an expert on the Swedish type scene but often find myself peeking at Fountain Type in Malmö and feel I've seen Kada by Joel Nordström of Lineto on every single club flyer in London for the last few years.

What was the application of the decade?
Any application that made it possible to record video on your mobile phone and publish it on the web. This has democratised the recording and publishing of moving images in a truly unprecedented way. Ten years ago, we would not have been able to predict witnessing dictators being hung and the police stir up demonstrators from such explicit angles. It is clear that this has had an effect on power structures between established news media and independent information channels. This Youtube-look is nowadays also a visual style that is used and even paraphrased in everything from Hollywood movies to commercials when a certain type of authenticity is called for.

What was the most significant design moment of the decade?
Surprisingly enough, it was the absence of a specific type of design that stood for the most interesting design moment – when the international business city of São Paulo passed a law banning all business advertising in public spaces and 8000 of the city's billboards had to be taken down or kept blank. This made the city's architecture visible and imminent, and this naked city with all these huge white canvases inspired creators and artist all over the world to design our own cities. It also got us thinking about how the conversation is being held in the public space and what our designs are adding to this discussion.

How will the new decades design look like and what will it be governed by?
The digitalisation of complete works of world literature with projects such as Google Books opens up the amazing history of graphic design to a wider audience and this will create new frameworks and influences for designers everywhere for years to come. Environmental thinking will be more comprehensible as well as necessary and the technical limitations of sustainability in the printing industry will influence both form and function.

What will be the new decades' most important tool(s)?
Same as today; the laptop. Even higher performance on even smaller machines will allow more players to raise the quality of their projects and offer more than just design, such as postproduction of ad spots in what today is considered professional quality – from their kitchen table.

What media will be most important?
Independent media will grow exponentially and become a crucial part of the news flow. The mobile phone will become the primary tool for exploring the Internet so mobile websites become a must.