Morten Duemose — graphic design and art direction
Piola Pastificio
Visual IdentityArtwork
MODU Storage Crates
Art Direction
Casio F-91W
Personal Project
MODU Balance Beams
Art Direction
No projects in this area yet.
Piola Pastificio
Piola Pastificio was just around the corner from our office, in a tiny space that used to be a fish shop. Working with Antonio and Johanne, the couple behind Piola, we quickly felt part of their family business. There was this feeling of being invited to a big Italian dinner, with time to talk, drink good wine and finish with a strong espresso. We wanted to carry that warmth into the identity. We kept thinking about the little cafés in Italy, where the lettering feels made by someone who works there, and different typefaces come together in ways you would never have guessed.
Made together with Sebastian Ygge
The idea for the menus came from old wine labels we spotted in the basement toilet at Bar'Vin: a simple frame, with a different artwork inside each time. It gave us a way to make each Piola menu its own piece, changing almost weekly at the beginning. We loved the quick crayon drawings on the wine menus. They felt like the end of a long dinner—a little wine spilled on the tablecloth, but that’s okay. Looking back, we’re proud of how much room the identity leaves for food, art and everything Antonio and Johannes put into the place. Simple, but with a lot of emotion. For us, it comes back to that feeling of being invited in: sitting around a table, being in the moment and feeling the warmth of the people around you.
Tourell
We kept coming back to that slightly irritating feeling when something is two things at once. Tine, Tourell’s founder, came to us with strong ideas about materials, production and how the jewelry should look. Through our conversations, we began to see those ideas in pairs: handmade and high-tech, pure and raw, simple and complex. The jewelry itself is swirly, looping into itself in forms that are really complex to make. The natural thing would have been to make something ornamental around it. We were more interested in putting something very controlled beside it and seeing what happened between the two.
Made together with Sebastian Ygge
That tension is concentrated in the wordmark. You can read it as a sans serif wanting to be a serif, or the other way around. It’s sharp and constructed, but there’s something organic in it that almost wants to break out. Around it, we used Helvetica and kept things almost entirely black on white. Very little to pull your attention away from the jewelry. We love that kind of minimalism, where you still get the feeling right. Seeing everything together was satisfying because it formed a whole and still felt like it was battling itself a little. The jewelry had room to shine, while the identity kept that small irritation. We wanted to hold on to that vibrating tension—the feeling that it could be one thing and still have its opposite in it.
MODU Storage Crates
There’s a detail of the crates stacked on top of each other that I really love. It seems a little random, but at the same time really controlled. It reminds me of the corner of a building where you can see that something has been made well. I wanted that architectural feeling for MODU’s Storage Crates: the sense of space you get in an almost empty room, where you start noticing the structure or a corner. The setup stayed deliberately close to a standard product shoot. Clear light. Simple forms. Only the product colours. Almost too simple, in a way, which felt right for such a straightforward product.
Photography: Peter Dalsgaard
The crates were stacked in a single colour and in combinations of colours. Peter Dalsgaard brought a depth to the images that makes them feel super sharp and detailed. A crate with modular blocks inside starts to look almost like a sculpture. That’s something I’m especially pleased with: how these ordinary objects can remind me of an architectural detail, just through the way they’re arranged and photographed. The simplicity was intentional, and so was the feeling of calm around it. This is actually a box for your space to be empty. I wanted you to feel some of that space just by looking at it.
Casio F-91W
As a kid, I remember going to Apple presentations and seeing the iBooks with their orange or blue edges. I had so many ideas about what I could do with a computer, but not the money to buy one. For me, the Casio F-91W was the poor child’s technology: something you could hold in your hand and feel part of the future. It looked insanely cool. The digital display, the light, the alarm, all in something so sleek and thin. It felt like it did everything. This project is an homage to that childhood feeling: if you just had that one thing—the right tool—everything would be possible.
With these renders, I wanted to get back to that feeling. The colours are exaggerated, almost holographic: blues, purple and yellow that meant technological coolness to me as a child. It’s about seeing the future in the glossiness of it, letting the colour and light follow my memory rather than the exact mechanics. I hope people who grew up with the watch recognise something of their own childhood here. Now we have more than enough technology, and it’s often the ideas, or the time to do them, that are harder to find.
MODU Balance Beams
Photography by Katrine Møbius
I remember wanting to explore everything as a child: smell it, feel it, jump over it, jump in it. But I also remember sitting, getting a bit bored, looking out of the window and trying to figure out the world. Both sides mattered in our art direction for the MODU Balance Beams. Balancing has something inherently childish about it, like crossing a stream on a piece of wood and hoping not to fall in. We wanted to capture that energy alongside the quieter moments of sitting and looking, when everything still feels new.
The warmth of photographs from the ’70s led us to analogue film and coloured paper backgrounds that are very obviously coloured paper. There’s something a bit naive about them, like old school portraits or a visit to a slightly crappy photographer. That feeling was part of what we liked: the warmth, the vibrant colours, the sense of being safe in your own little bubble. We hoped the photographs would speak to adults, too. Children play and reflect; as adults, we often keep the reflecting and forget the playing. These images are also a reminder to ourselves to look up, smell the flowers, and let something other than the next task catch our attention.
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