During the last year Hot Snow did many very interesting and creative projects, and although our studio performing in various areas of design, 3d visualisations are one of our strongest skills.

Hot Snow Design Studio, would like to wish its customers and partners a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

If it’s been a little quiet around here lately, it’s because we’ve been busy with, among other things, launching a new website for Tuotekuvastudio, the specializing on pack shots photo studio, located in central Helsinki.

As project lead, my responsibilities included strategy, IA, wireframes, art direction, writing content, you name it.

Design Finland - Finnish Design will be moved to a brand new server within couple of weeks. If you are linking to the site or any content on the site, there will be some changes.

The main address www.designfinland.fi will be the main domain for the site in future. In the beginning, the site was functioning under designfinland.blogs.com domain, and there are many permanent links using this subdomain. All article, pictures and comment will remain also on the new site.

When the change takes place, all designfinland.blogs.com addresses will stop functioning. The change is estimated to take place between Dec 23rd and January 1st.

Please check back with us during those days and if your links are broken, correct them from the new www.designfinland.fi site.

Since we are already in the transfer process, there may not be too many posts here. News will be communicated through our Facebook page. http://www.facebook.com/designfinland  and through Twitter account http://www.twitter.com/designfinland .

For Design Finland - Finnish Design, this is very exciting, since there will be a whole new layout for the site and eventually more content through more contributors joining the team. More news on that later.

Thanks for your patience,

Janne Saarikko

Editor-in-Chief

As you may know, we are going through some changes here at Design Finland - Finnish Design. There will be new contributors and we will be more content than ever during the coming year. One interesting thing for us and maybe for you as well is the statistics.

Looking at the figures from 2009, we have quite wide audience of viewers from around the world, coming to look for different things. Let’s list some interesting things:

TOP10 Countries by number of visits (total of 138 countries):

1. Finland
2. United States
3. United Kingdom
4. Sweden
5. Germany
6. France
7. Canada
8. Australia
9. Netherlands
10. Denmark

TOP10 Keywords

1. moomin shop
2. finnish design
3. maija isola
4. finland design
5. design finland
6. fennofolk
7. moomin shop helsinki
8. finnish interior design
9. ristomatti ratia
10. finnish designers

TOP10 Search engines

1. Google
2. Yahoo
3. Search
4. AOL
5. Bing
6. Ask
7. Altavista
8. Yandex
9. Live
10. MSN

TOP10 Individual postings

1. Moomin Shop in Helsinki
2. Maija Isola Patterns for Marimekko
3. St. Henry’s Ecumenical Art Chapel in Turku
4. Tapio Home Textiles by Finlayson
5. Designer Shoes from Finland
6. Interview: Paola Suhonen on Spring/Summer 2008 and Paris Fashion Week
7. Finnish Fashion in Japan
8. Finnish Design Yearbook 08-09 is Available
9. Design Christmas Markets
10. Limbo - Clothing for the Young and Wild

Maybe we should start looking at these figures every month. It would be interesting to see what things are hot and which ones are bubbling under.

The International Council of Societies of Industrial Design (Icsid) designated Helsinki as the World Design Capital for the year 2012 on November 25th, 2009.
The first World Design Capital was Turin (Torino) of Italy in 2008. World Design Capital 2010 is the South Korean capital Seoul.
 
Design is a factor deep-rooted in the urban lifestyle of Helsinki. Design is manifest in the everyday lives of Helsinki citizens in many ways, ranging from home furniture and items that represent old Finnish design traditions to modern urban solutions in the city and contemporary interior design.
 
The creative sector is re-shaping Helsinki’s economy and enhancing the citizens’ quality of life. Design seen from a broad perspective – in city planning, architecture, industrial design and service design – plays an integral role in the development of Helsinki, city services and consumer products.
 
Helsinki’s World Design Capital year 2012 will comprise a wide range of events and projects related to design and its manifestations. In 2012 Helsinki will also celebrate the 200th anniversary of becoming the capital of Finland, when the country was a grand duchy of the Russian Empire.

World Design Capital 2012 Helsinki Official website

Helsingin Sanomat article (Finnish)

CIty of Helsinki announcement (Finnish)

Congratulations!

This time of the year, hundreds of Christmas markets are being hosted all around Finland. These events cater to the needs of holiday preparations.  In Finnish they are called joulumyyjäiset or joulumarkkinat.

Since there are so many Christmas markets, we are trying to list the ones that feature Finnish design or crafts.

Please bookmark this page, since we will be updating the list as new events come to our knowledge.

Note! If you are an organizer or a designer, mail us at designfinland {at} ekana.fi to your event on the list.

Design Christmas Markets 2009

28.-29.11. 2009 Nykyaikaiset joulumarkkinat, TURKU

Opening hours: Sat 11 - 17, Sun 11 - 17

Venue: Vimma, Aurakatu 16, Turku

Featuring: Globe Hope, Ihanna design, Kiertokulku, KLO Design, Saana ja Olli, Secco, Vitidesign

28.-29.11. 2009 TAIKin joulumyyjäiset, HELSINKI

Opening hours: Sat 9 - 18, Sun 9 - 18, Mon 9 - 18

Venue: TAIK, Arabia, Helsinki

Featuring: Products by students of TAIK.

28.-29.11. 2009 Taidemuseon designtori, TURKU

Opening hours: Sat 11 - 17, Sun 11 - 17

Venue: Turku Art Museum, Aurakatu 24, Turku

5.-6.12. 2009 Ornamon joulumyyjäiset, HELSINKI

Opening hours: Sat 10 - 18, Sun 12 - 17

Venue: Design Forum Finland, Helsinki

5.-6.12. 2009 Ornamon joulumyyjäiset, JOENSUU

12.-13.12. 2009 Korjaamo Markkinat, HELSINKI

Design Finland - Finnish Design has been very quiet during the last year. Still we have a steady number of visitors, looking for interesting information and news about design in Finland and Finnish design.

We also have a number of designers and design brands approaching on a weekly basis.Unfortunately we haven’t had enough time and resource to use all these great opportunities and share them with our readers.

We have a plan to revise the whole site in the near future. But revising the site is not enough, there needs to be content as well. That’s why we need more people who are eager to follow the design scene in Finland and want to write articles, take photos or record videos about the whole thing. 

If you have a passion about Finnish and are willing to spend some of your time with the publication, this may be your opportunity. You choose you specific area of interest from design, fashion, industrial design, graphical design or modern art, just as long as it’s related to Finland.

We can offer you a channel for your interests and a worldwide audience, priority access to many exclusive news and events and potential to be part of Finland’s design scene.

Interested? Want to talk more? Contact Janne via email at designfinland (at) ekana.fi

Telemax is a TV service company in Helsinki well-known as a first choice for installation of Russian satellite and Internet TV Channels.

Innovative Design

TV and entertainment profile of the company enforced by use of black background and active header picture giving the necessary twist to convince visitors to explore site.