NODE

Can you tell us the story of the studio ? Serge Rompza: Anders Hofgaard and I met at Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam around 2000. In 2003, we were for a short period in Oslo and then went to Berlin to start working together. Since then, we work together with always a changing number of freelance and interns. In the first years, we worked mainly from Berlin but quite a lot for Norwegian clients like artists, galleries and there was also bigger institutions like the Culture Ministry in Oslo or contemporary music organisations. And after a couple of years, we started a second studio office in Oslo where we had also two more partners. The reason to do that was that we needed to be present in both cities because it wouldn’t work on the long term to be in Berlin and work for Scandinavian clients. So we had to make a decision to be present in both places. Nowadays, we have two studios : in Oslo, headed by Anders and in Berlin, headed by me but we are still working together.

How does the Oslo/Berlin part work ? Anders is in Berlin more often than I am in Oslo. But otherwise, it is organized through Internet, Skype, phone contact and we share an online server. When it comes to big projects, we work on the pitch together, on the concept, on sketches and we exchange ideas. The reason to do that is that we could have two independent studios but on purpose we made the whole thing a bit dependent on each other because we find it interesting to have a bigger network and a bigger range of clients and possibilities. We try to keep it small and decided not to become very commercial, because we still try to keep this as a platform for possibilities to work with small clients that don't have so much budget. As we have this dutch background, we work for commercial clients on like reports, magazine, packaging, but that is maybe 15%. We do a lot a print and it is shifting to screen but we are generalist in the sense that we have fun working with different things, for example exhibitions, spacious solutions, working with architects… Helge who is working with us in Norway is really good at designing typefaces, so sometimes we design our own typefaces. We also collaborate with developers on websites and illustrators. I think for Anders and me, it is more fun to work with a lot of different things.

In terms of works or practice, do you feel there is a difference between Norway and Germany ? Not really, I mean, one current difference is that we have here in Berlin one client which is the House of world cultures which is a quite big institution. It is a permanent production for us, an on ongoing job that takes quite a lot of time. In Norway, we are more accustomed to half a year/a year long projects, or very short projects. Otherwise, it is very similar. I think in Berlin, you don’t feel a lot of competition, because you know there is thousand of freelance but small scales studios is not that many and most of them work outside of Berlin. That’s different to Oslo. It is a bit more difficult to survive in there due to its very expensive life. The plan was always to work for clients there and live in Berlin. But it would not be possible to work in Oslo just for artists, we couldn’t survive.

If you can imagine the future of this studio, how do you see Node in five years ? I think that’s a bit hard to say because we never made a reel business plan or tried to make a plan for the next years. We are trying to keep it small, but there would be a possibility to have someone working with us, kind of a satellite in an other city. It could make it more interesting but otherwise educating is an issue since we aspire to do that part permanent in the future. We’re doing this all the time but we don’t have a fix position at an academy. We teach to first year to master students in Barcelona, Bremen, Bergen and Oslo, so we work with different range of schools but it is more like punctual workshops. That’s the main part to improve. Interview conducted in February 2015 ©ktlg