Sweden is known for giving people space. Whether someone decides to stand on the train instead of sit next to someone, or give a passerby space on their side of the sidewalk. At Mitt Möllan, the sense of distancing oneself from others seems to melt away. The wonderful designers there have found ways to bring a sense of community to the people without driving them away with forced closeness. This shows through designs throughout the environment that allow people to gather as one, but continue to feel that they have personal space
Mitt Möllan is a collaborative space in Malmö, Sweden. Once a dingy old shopping mall with few tenants, that past is hard to see upon entering the transformed space. Filled to the brim with creatives, the collaborative space thrives on art and curiosity. From Helgrose Studio: an ethical clothing shop that creates unisex clothing from organic fabrics, to Typotopia: a print shop that uses old Heidelberg machines to create wonderful type based designs, the shops are teeming with creativity.
The KCAD group was given a demonstration in Typotopia, allowing the students to see the way graphics were created in the good old days. We were even given the opportunity to work alongside the owners of the studio to create prints of our own. With the sound of the machine in the background, the students carved away rubber plates to create their prints, or they arranged lead letterforms into typographic based designs. By the end of a five hour session that was originally supposed to be only two hours, no one could stop grinning as we looked at the wall filled with emerald colored prints. While graphic design is often seen as something that is done through the Adobe programs, it was liberating to see what the hands on process could contribute to design.