Iceland review - 2016, Page 71

ICELAND REVIEW 69
Graphic designer Einar Geir
Ingvarsson has been working in
design since he started creating
magazines in school; a hobby he didn’t
envision as a career. While studying
at Reykjavík University for a business
degree, Einar began working in a small
design shop as a summer job, and he was
soon hooked.
PASSION FOR DESIGN
“I found myself working on commer-
cials, magazines and branding campaigns
and my interest just evolved and I kept
at it,” Einar recounts. After university,
he worked at larger agencies full-time
before founding his own company in
2010: E&Co. His projects are diverse and
his passion for design is clear. “There’s a
stigma about design that I don’t like; that
it’s something other than work. I really
like my work, but it is work,” he says. “To
get the results you want and to improve,
you need to do the work. In Iceland, in
design, there’s a lot more understanding
about the importance of what design is;
that it’s more than making things look
a certain way. It goes deeper than that.”
His stellar work has earned him an envi-
ous client list spanning some of the larg-
est names in Iceland in a variety of fields;
including Icelandair, Crymogea publish-
ing, Bioeffect skincare and Straumur
investment bank (now Kvika).
Arguably, Einar’s most recognizable
work is for Geysir, an Icelandic clothing
label that has been designing and pro-
ducing their own line since 2010, with
a strong emphasis on Icelandic wool. “I
started working with Geysir around the
same time that I started my company
in 2010, and we have grown together
and it’s a very important partnership,”
he says. “This, like all relationships, is
built on trust. If you have trust, you can
accomplish many things. I’d say trust is
the key to good design.” The dialogue
with Geysir’s team starts early and the
campaign is fleshed out. “It’s really good
to have them on board for the whole
process,” he says. “With Geysir, I may
start out with something and it may not
be just-right, and you work together to
make it better and better. My work has to
complement their work, their creations.”
Geysir’s campaigns are easy to spot, with
muted colors, clean design and Einar’s
signature classic style taking center stage.
DIVERSE DESIGN PROJECTS
Another design project that Einar is fond
of is for a local food market. “Frú Lauga
is a company that my friends started and
they happen to be my neighbors,” Einar
laughs. “This is like so many relation-
ships in Iceland. They were thinking
about doing something and they liked my
work, so I did their logo and some graph-
ic design for them. I set out to do some-
thing that was honest and that conveyed
the feeling of Frú Lauga—fresh and local
products from a company that has a lot
of integrity. I thought it shouldn’t be
D E S I G N