Reykjavík Grapevine - 07.12.2012, Qupperneq 24

“
“I was dreaming more
and more about what I
wanted to do and doing
less and less.”
„
24 The Reykjavík GrapevineIssue 18 — 2012ART
“Sometimes the best designers, the best
artists, are the ones who do the most
minimal things,” he says. “Western
people have a tendency to over-design.”
His own office in the Iceland Acad-
emy of the Arts building is fairly sim-
ple—a couple of couches, a side table,
a desk and a bookshelf. On the walls
are three posters, all part of the 29-piece
collection that will be on display at the
Spark Design Space until January 15.
Art, design and Björk’s coattails
The collection, which first debuted
as Iceland’s contribution to 2011’s Bei-
jing Design Week, has been exhibited
in 12 cities around the world. However,
this is the first time that the posters are
formally exhibited together in Iceland.
His philosophy for making them is
fairly simple. “The message must be
conveyed quickly,” he says. It happens
in three layers: First, the poster must
catch the viewer’s attention. Then it
must convey what it is—an art exhibit, a
film poster, etc. Finally, it must be clear
who’s advertising.
This, he says, is the difference be-
tween art and design. With art, you
can spend months discovering the
message, noticing different nuances
with each viewing. This sort of delayed
response doesn’t work for promoting
events, as you want people to know
what your event is before it’s passed.
“With design, the top three layers
must be pretty clear, but behind them
you can have more layers that are not as
important, but closer to art.”
At one point Goddur pulls up the
oldest poster in the exhibit, an an-
nouncement for an art exhibit from
1996. The design is a collaboration
with Bjarni H. Þorarinsson—Goddur
received a pencil sketch from him and
created what he called “a visual rep-
resentation” of Bjarni’s world. Angel
whales float above a futuristic barn
house surrounded by tractors, both on
the ground and in the sky.
Despite being sixteen
years old, the poster
doesn’t seem dated.
This is why God-
dur prefers mak-
ing posters to
doing adver-
tising work,
which is meant
to sell products
in that moment.
As a profes-
sor, Goddur has
been able to define
the terms and number
of layers of his own work. Over
the last seventeen years he’s taught art
in Akureyri, at the Icelandic Academy
of Arts and Crafts in Reykjavík, and at
the Iceland Academy of the Arts, where
he’s currently employed. In this time
Goddur says he has never had to apply
for a teaching position. “They always
come to me,” he says matter-of-factly.
In that time he’s taught hun-
dreds of students, many
of whom now work in
the design industry.
The international
success of some of
these students, as
well as interna-
tional interest in
his own work, is in
some ways a result
of the popularity of
Iceland’s hit music
groups. As Björk, Sigur
Rós and other groups be-
gan selling albums abroad in the
early 2000s, the artwork on the albums
sparked an interest in the designers be-
hind them. Or, as Goddur puts it, “the
graphics followed the music.”
This has, at least in Goddur’s world,
been going on for decades. His own in-
terest in graphic design started when he
was a teenager growing up in Akureyri,
when the artwork on ‘70s vinyl records
drew him in.
He was at the time actively creating
posters for different student groups,
posters protesting the Vietnam War
and championing the student revolu-
tion. And while his grades in math and
other courses suffered, his visual art
grades were always high. Eventually
Goddur dropped out altogether.
Second chances for dropouts
“It’s usually the dropouts and the B stu-
dents who do best in the field,” Goddur
tells me, speaking from both personal
and general experience. “It is usually the
people that have to fight for their exis-
tence, to make their careers, who do best.”
In 1976, he began his formal educa-
tion as a fine arts student at the Icelan-
dic College of Arts and Crafts. There
he studied mixed media art under
members of the avant-garde art move-
ment FLUXUS, including Dieter Roth
and Herman Nitch. Years later, Goddur
would be invited back to teach at the
school, but in 1979, just short of gradua-
tion, he was kicked out “more or less for
drinking,” he says.
“I was drinking too much alcohol
and smoking too much pot,” Goddur
says. “I was dreaming more and more
about what I wanted to do and doing less
and less.”
It was through his efforts to sober up
during the early ’80s that he found his
way into graphic design. “Part of my re-
hab was to get away from the bohemian
life of the artist,” he says.
He moved to Vancouver, Canada and
began studying graphic design at Emily
Carr University of Art and Design. It
was the late ’80s, and the old tools of
the trade—a film grid for precision, an
exacto knife for cutting and a wax for
paste—were just being replaced by the
Macintosh wave of the future. Goddur
was part of the first generation of design
students to use PageMaker, now Adobe
InDesign and Adobe Illustrator, which
he used to design all of his exhibit post-
ers.
But ask Goddur about Vancouver
and he’ll tell you about the fireworks
during the World Expo in the summer
of 1986 when he arrived. Or he’ll talk
about the design portfolio and fifteen
boxes of personal belongings he left
there in 1990, after his three visas—stu-
dent, work and tourist—expired. “Im-
migration told me ‘get married or hit the
road,’” he says. And while he returned
to Iceland intending to head right back
to Vancouver as an immigrant, he hasn’t
so much as visited once in the 22 years
since he left.
He brings up the John Lennon quote:
“Life is what happens when you’re busy
making other plans.”
- ARIT JOHN
In person, Guðmundur Oddur Magnússon, professionally known as Goddur, doesn’t strike you as the creator of quirky and colourful
posters. Sporting an unruly white beard and dressed in a black shirt under a black vest, black pants, black boots and a black beanie,
he is the type you would expect to cover his walls with posters for death metal concerts, not movies, art exhibits and spoken music
festivals. But then, his sartorial choices may just be part of a minimalist aesthetic.
Graphics Follow Music Designer Goddur displays
his collection of 29 posters
OCT JAN
30 15 Spark Design Space http://www.sparkdesignspace.com/
OKTOBER JANUARY
Alísa Kalyanova