Maryland Institute College of Art

Kristian Bjørnard

Where is your hometown?: Northfield, MN
Where did you attend undergraduate school and what was your major?: Kalamazoo College, Kalamazoo MI, BA Studio Art
Do you have any particular interests?: Sustainability, Music, Bicycles, Architecture, Food & Drink, Books (any kind, variety, topic or subject), and a good chair or coffee table
What are your favorite typeface(s) and why?: Gentium Family – It’s free, it’s really nice, and you can edit the source if you desire to customize it to your preference. Anything by Process Type (www.processtypefoundry.com ), cause you have to represent your homeland (hail twin citizens), and, recently, pretty much everything Exjlibris does as well (www.josbuivenga.demon.nl )… Oh, and I can’t forget Arno, Whitney, and Caperock—and my old book cover standby, Trade Gothic.
Do you identify with any particular designer? Why?: I got into graphic-oriented art through Lichtenstein, Warhol, and some of the other Op-Art/Pop-Art artists in art school. After college the work of Aesthetic Apparatus, Heads of State, and Jesse Ledoux were sort of my thing, mainly because of my musical interests—I was interning at a record label at the time. More recently the book covers of Paul Sahre and Peter Mendelsund have been my cup of tea. Oh, I also find Daniel Eatock’s conceptual brand of design quite exceptional. Lastly, being from the Minneapolis area, I suppose the Walker Art Center’s books and materials have always been work that I’ve been inspired by.
Why have you chosen MICA to further your graphic design education?: I never really did any design work in college. Having ended up in the profession through equal parts accident and intention, I was interested in adding some academic rigor to my work and research in the field. I was also a little tired of working on other people’s stuff all the time, and wanted some room to work on my own stuff—something that involved my own themes, interests, and content. MICA’s design department seemed to have a nice balance of structured “projects” and time to work on whatever I wanted. Also, the focus on publication and book creation was something I was interested in (a lot of my past design experience had been in the realm of publications).