Reykjavik Diary: Notes on Icelandic Design

Hello!

The very first thing I noticed about the Icelandic design was how contemporary it was. Even just setting foot in the terminal in Keflavik, it’s modern aesthetic was noticeable. There were glass pyramids, decorative and not-quite-windows, hanging down like tinted teal appendages from the ceiling, no doubt a reference to icicles. I will have to try to remember to get a photo on the way back to the States. The drive from the airport was lacking in architecture, and mostly had dark landscapes that I couldn’t see. But my first taste of the city of Reykjavik was the Harpa performing arts center at night. The windows changed color, which was quite nice to watch. The windows were cubes in nature. As a reminder, this iconic building was built during the Icelandic economic crisis, whenever that was.

In the daylight, I began to notice more trends in design. The buildings were almost entirely contemporary. They were all incredibly geometric in style, and fairly neutral in color. It is the older houses that had much more life to them, colored in saturated hues. If the [older] houses themselves weren’t colored in bright colors, their roofs were. Below find examples of the old city architecture (built in the 1800s-early 1900s) and then the modern architecture, from 1945-present:

Now, regarding graphic design, there were some examples of vintage-style design, but for the most part, it was all very clean, contemporary, and generally rather abstract. There was very little that offended me, although I did see someone use papyrus typeface once. What did surprise me, was the seemingly random areas where advertising was placed…in other words, there didn’t seem to be a system. It was on fabric hanging on signs, stuck on buildings, street corners. I didn’t see any large billboards. But I did see a lot of small ones with the triangle shaped posts that rotate to form a complete picture.

Below find some examples of Icelandic graphic design.

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