Oleana
Traditional Norwegian arts and crafts often inspire modern design. This is particularly the case at Oleana, a fashion design firm based just outside of Bergen.
“Our clothes are inspired by Norwegian culture and traditional costumes, as well as by modern trends,” Oleana’s chief designer, Solveig Hisdal, said. “We don’t copy the traditional outfits, but rather draw inspiration from them.” Hisdal is considered one of the premier textile designers in Norway.
Oleana’s designs combine cultural heritage with contemporary use of textiles. As an example, the Rosendal knitwear collection, (featured at a design exhibit during the annual festival, Norwegian Christmas at Union Station, in Washington, D.C.), incorporated patterns and colors found in the porcelain, design, and rose garden at the renaissance barony of Rosendal on the west coast of Norway.
“Norway has a very rich clothing tradition,” Hisdal said. “Many Norwegians travelled abroad and brought new fabrics and ideas back home with them, creating a very diverse and colorful range of traditional outfits.”
Oleana clothes are designed and produced in Norway combining traditional handcraft and modern technology, and about half of the production is exported, among other places to the U.S. and Canada.
Stokke Xplory
Stokke Xplory is a new breed of strollers, in which the needs of the child, and not only the needs of the person strolling, are equally important. It is built by furniture manufacturer Stokke in Norway, but designed by several young, new and promising Norwegian designers.
“The Xplory Stroller was designed with two main ideas in mind,” industrial designer with Stokke, Hilde Angelfoss, said. “We wanted a stroller that encouraged contact and interaction with the child in the seat, and also a stroller that protects the child from exhaust fumes, mud, and all other risks involved with strolling a child in an urban area.”
To achieve this, the Xplory is designed to raise the child up higher than most strollers, giving the child a better view and protecting him or her better from the elements and from car exhaust.
“Our research showed that the child is happier and less impatient if lifted up to a level where it can actually see the things around it,” Angelfoss said.
The seat can also be turned 180 degrees, so the child and parent can interact more directly.
“It is not a stroller for joggers, we saw that people with children in urban areas often have very different needs than what the “sports strollers” can provide,” Angelfoss said. “So we designed it to enable a child to sit in the stroller at a table in a café or restaurant too, which most strollers won’t allow.”
“Norwegian design is very much focused on being practical and user-friendly, but also aesthetic,” Angelfoss said.
“But we need to be better at marketing ourselves abroad.”
Autosock
The idea of Autosock was born when the inventor Bård Løtveit remembered how his grandmother used to don woolen socks over her shoes to get more friction when she was walking on ice. Autosock applies the same principle to cars: By wrapping tires in fiber covers they get a significantly better grip on icy or slippery roads.
With the extreme conditions drivers might encounter in Norway, it is no surprise that Autosock received instant popularity when launched in 2001, and 400,000 units have been sold to date.
Design-wise, creating a product that was functional but also aesthetically pleasing and easily recognizable was a priority from the start.
“From a design point of view, we wanted Autosock to be extremely easy to use,” said Einar Hareide, founder of Hareide Design Mill, an industrial design firm based in Moss, Norway.
“One of the ways we did that was by creating a user’s manual looking very much like what you see on emergency exits in planes, with easy-to-understand stick figures performing the tasks, giving the product a clear graphical identity.”
A former chief designer at SAAB in Sweden, Einar Hareide is one of the most internationally recognized Norwegian industrial designers today.
“Design is always about function and aesthetics, and striking a balance between the two is our main challenge,” Hareide said.
“A lot of things are going on in Norwegian design today,” he said.
“If you only pay attention to the media, though, it seems as the only thing we make is furniture and decorative ornaments. However, Norwegian industry is increasingly trying to gain a competitive advantage through the use of clever and aesthetic industrial design. One example is in the ship-building industry, where the bridge is increasingly made to feel like the driver’s cabin of a car, giving an increased sense of control for the staff onboard.”
Autosock has already won several design awards all over the world, most notably the International Grand Prix for Technical Innovation from the Association of European Technical Journalists, as well as the Award for Design Excellence from the Norwegian Design Council.