Everyone makes the identity.
Blaska celebrates the creators and the people who help add to Sweden's cultural scene.
The name is Swedish for a small, slightly crummy paper, chosen with a wink. Felix wanted to bring KOMMON's own creators together with others adding to the culture in Sweden — artists, DJs, producers, gallerists, and culture-bearers all mixed together, in a way that's playful and analog but still fresh. Maybe the first magazine of its kind, made to leave the reader with a bit of hope and the urge to create something.
The same idea runs through the identity: no fixed logo at all.
As Felix put it, "Blaska is a word tied to sloppiness and something half-done, so it's nice if the logo carries that same feeling." Instead of drawing one mark, several of us wrote the word BLASKA by hand, over and over, each in our own way, both analog and digital.
It came to 82 variants, gathered in their own logo book. All of them are equally valid, used interchangeably. The whole point is that none of them is the right one.
The only fixed thing was KOMMON's red, beyond that there were no rules.
The task was to make a cohesive cover, then let the spreads speak for themselves, representing the different creators inside. Both of the photographs were hand-picked by Felix, and captured by two different photographers at KOMMON.
The same idea turned inward: each profile got its own design.
The wordmark pulls many hands onto one name. Inside, the spreads flip that: one look per person. Each profile got its own design and a carefully chosen typeface, tuned to who they are. The range of the talent became the range of the design.
Handed out at Sweden Live, and celebrated with its own release at Café Klotet.
The identity reached past the magazine. Invitation and content for the launch, a KOMMON neon in the window, and merch made together with Manåm.
