Rolf Lagersson

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Rolf Lagersson
A greyscale photograph of Lagersson, here in his early 60s. His head and shoulders are visible and he is looking at the camera. He has glasses pushed up onto his forehead.
Lagersson in 1988
Born
Rolf Harald Lagerson

(1925-01-08)8 January 1925
Malmö, Skåne, Sweden
Died9 January 2006(2006-01-09) (aged 81)
Copenhagen, Denmark
EducationAnders Beckmans Reklamskola
Occupations
  • Artist
  • graphic designer
Years active1948–2003

Rolf Harald Lagersson (originally spelled Lagerson;[note 1] 8 January 1925 – 9 January 2006)[1] was a Swedish artist and graphic designer.

Biography

Rolf Lagerson was born on 8 January 1925 in Malmö, Skåne.[2] He was the second of three children of Ernst Ragnar Lagersson, an electrical engineer, and Britta Strömberg.[3][4] Lagerson initially studied architecture, but quit to work with a printer before deciding on a career in graphic art. From 1946–1948 he studied in Stockholm at Anders Beckman's [sv] school of advertising art [sv][note 2] and the SGF school of typographical design.[2] For the following six years he worked at several advertising agencies: Gumælius Annonsbyrå [sv] in Stockholm from 1948–1950, Benton & Bowles in New York during 1951, and Wilh. Anderssons Annonsbyrå in Stockholm from 1951–1955.[6][7] He also worked at a design agency in Chicago at one point.[1]

In 1954 he began working as a freelance artist, operating his own studio in Stockholm from 1955–1965.[2][6] During this decade, Lagerson acted as a consultant art director and designer for various advertising agencies, industrial companies, and publishing houses, as well as Sweden's Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Home Affairs, and School Board [sv].[2] While in Sweden Lagerson married Birgitta "Gitt" Hammarberg, who was also a freelance artist. In 1965 Gitt and Rolf separated, and Rolf moved to Copenhagen.[8] From this point forward, he started spelling his name Lagersson.

In 1966 Lagersson worked at the Copenhagen branch of the Swedish Telegram Agency [sv; fr]. In 1967 he began working with Niels Hartmann, a Danish graphic designer who had become a member of Alliance Graphique Internationale that year.[9][10] From 1970–1974 Lagersson worked as the creative director at Dot Zero Design Group A/S, a studio co-owned by the LEGO Group.[11][12] In 1972 Lagersson and Hartmann redesigned the LEGO logo; a modified version of this design is still used today. Lagersson moved to Plan Design in 1974 and Papermint Design in 1976, but continued working with the LEGO Group into the 1990s.

Art

(stuff related to works below)

Lagerson became a founding member of SAFFT[note 3] in 1949, a member of its board in 1954, and the society's president from 1957–1959.[2][14] His work was exhibited in Oslo in 1957, at the Internordic Association of Commercial Artists's (NT) exhibition of advertising art in Stockholm and at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto in 1959, and at the Swedish Design Exhibition in Tokyo in 1960.[2] Three works he designed for books are represented at the Nationalmuseum.[1][15] Lagerson won awards in several Swedish competitions between 1949–1958, and won first prize for Internordic Association of Commercial Artists contests in 1956, 1957, and 1959.[2] In 1980 he was awarded the IG Prize [da] for a logo designed for the Danish Cancer Society [da].[16][17]

In 1951 Lagerson began creating paper sculptures, studying from Tadeusz Lipski's [pl] 1947 book Paper Sculpture. He later started designing paper dolls that could stand on their own, inspired by the stop motion films of Czech animator Jiří Trnka.[18] Lagerson's dolls had ping-pong balls for heads, conical paper bodies, and flat paper limbs. The dolls were customised with various paper details to create faces, uniforms, and headwear, and placed in sets also made of paper. The full sculptures were intended for use in colour photography. In his 1957 book Sculpture in Paper, Bruce Angrave compared Lagerson's paper doll art to the works of Walter Trier, "with the added excitement of a three-dimensional over-tone".[18]

In 1972 Lagersson and Hartmann redesigned the LEGO logo for the LEGO Group.[19][11] The new logo was intended to replace the various previous logos to unify the brand during a time when the LEGO Group was expanding internationally.[20] The new design was based on the previous 1964 LEGO logo, but simplified to only feature the company's name, written in bubble-styled lettering contoured with black and yellow.[20][21] Hartmann intended for the logo to be simple and modular enough that it could be applied anywhere.[10] The new logo was publicly used starting in 1973, eventually receiving a minor redesign in 1998.[20]

[8] [22] [14]

Select works

  • LEGO logo, 1972

    LEGO logo, 1972

  • "General Caramel", 1975

    "General Caramel", 1975

  • "En lille bog om børn og leg", 1980

    "En lille bog om børn og leg", 1980

  • Fabuland illustration, 1983

    Fabuland illustration, 1983

  • Duplo theme concept art, 1988

    Duplo theme concept art, 1988

  • Duplo theme concept art, 1988

    Duplo theme concept art, 1988

  • LEGO theme concept art, 1989

    LEGO theme concept art, 1989

  • LEGO theme concept art, 1989

    LEGO theme concept art, 1989

  • LEGO environmental symbol, 1995

    LEGO environmental symbol, 1995

  • Ygdrasil, 1995

    Ygdrasil, 1995

  • LEGO packaging, 1971–1997

    LEGO packaging, 1971–1997

Notes

  1. ↑ Although other members of his family, including his father Ragnar and older sibling Åke, used the spelling "Lagersson", Rolf's name was initially spelled "Lagerson". After moving to Denmark in 1965 he began using Lagersson instead. In Swedish sources he remains better known as Lagerson.
  2. ↑ Swedish: Anders Beckmans Reklamskola, renamed to Beckman College of Design (Swedish: Beckmans Designhögskola) in 2003.[5]
  3. ↑ Swedish Poster Design Association (Swedish: Svenska Affischtecknare),[13] later ABCD.[14]

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 "About Rolf Lagersson". Rolf Lagersson Billedmager (in dansk). Archived from the original on 26 January 2024. Retrieved 31 July 2024.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 Amstutz, Walter, ed. (1962). Who's Who in Graphic Art. Zurich: Amstutz & Herdeg Graphis Press. p. 433.
  3. ↑ Harness, Paul, ed. (1948). "Lagersson, Ernst Ragnar". Vem är Vem? – Skånedelen [Who is Who? Skåne region] (in svenska). Stockholm: J. O. Peterson. p. 304. Archived from the original on 3 August 2024 – via Project Runeberg.
  4. ↑ "Avdelningsredaktörer". Svensk uppslagsbok [Swedish reference book] (in svenska). Vol. 13 (2nd ed.). Malmö: Förlagshuset Norden. 1949. p. vi. Archived from the original on 4 August 2024 – via Project Runeberg.
  5. ↑ "Then and now". Beckmans. Archived from the original on 6 May 2024. Retrieved 2 August 2024.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 Lagerström, Sten, ed. (1966). "Lagerson, Rolf H". Vem är det: svensk biografisk handbok [Who is it: Swedish biographical handbook] (in svenska) (1967 ed.). Stockholm: Norstedt & Söner. p. 510. Archived from the original on 3 August 2024 – via Project Runeberg.
  7. ↑ A Directory of Foreign Advertising Agencies and Marketing Research Organizations. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office. April 1959. p. 109. OCLC 1155970.
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 Vagland, Jens; Tjelder, Michael; Londen, Magnus (2015). "Rolf Lagerson". Come to Sweden (in svenska). Come to Sweden Publishing AB. ISBN 978-91-637-8312-8. Archived from the original on 26 January 2024.
  9. ↑ Uddling, Hans; Paabo, Katrin, eds. (1994). "Lagersson, Rolf H". Vem är det: Svensk biografisk handbok [Who is it: Swedish biographical handbook] (in svenska) (1995 ed.). Stockholm: Norstedts förlag. p. 628. ISBN 91-1-943202-X. ISSN 0347-3341. Archived from the original on 5 August 2024 – via Project Runeberg.
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 "Niels Hartmann, Denmark (1967)". Alliance Graphique Internationale. Archived from the original on 31 July 2024.
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 "LEGO". Danish Logo Preservation Society. December 2017. Archived from the original on 2018-02-21.
  12. ↑ Jönsson, Lena, ed. (1994). "Lagersson, Rolf H". Vem är det: Svensk biografisk handbok [Who is it: Swedish biographical handbook] (in svenska) (2001 ed.). Stockholm: Norstedt & Söner. p. 650. ISBN 91-7285-042-6. ISSN 0347-3341. Archived from the original on 3 August 2024 – via Project Runeberg.
  13. ↑ Aynsley, Jeremy. "A Century of Graphic Design". London: Mitchell Beazley. p. 128. ISBN 1-84000-348-0.
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 14.2 Gyllenhoff, Carl (21 January 2006). "Rolf Lagerson". Dagens Nyheter. Stockholm. Off-site copy available here.
  15. ↑ "Rolf Lagerson". Nationalmuseum. Archived from the original on 4 August 2024.
  16. ↑ Bernsen, Jens; Capetillo, Birgitta, eds. (1988). Profession: Designer. Copenhagen: Dansk Design Center. pp. 90–91. ISBN 87-87385-40-6.
  17. ↑ Dickson, Thomas (2006). "Grafisk design". Dansk design. Copenhagen: Gyldendal. p. 476. ISBN 978-87-02-07768-1. Sløjfens facon gav i midten af 1970'eme inspiration til det logo, som Kræftens Bekæmpelse har i dag. Det blev tegnet af grafikeren Rolf Lagersson og tegnestuen Plan Design, der forenklede det gamle mærke til et mere abstrakt symbol for foreningen.
  18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 Angrave, Bruce (1957). Sculpture in Paper. London: The Studio Ltd. pp. 86–87.
  19. ↑ "Logos - Symboler". Rolf Lagersson Billedmager (in dansk). Archived from the original on 26 January 2024. Retrieved 5 August 2024.
  20. ↑ 20.0 20.1 20.2 Evamy, Michael (2007). Logo (2015 ed.). London: Laurence King Publishing. pp. 152–153. ISBN 978-1-78067-180-2.
  21. ↑ "A modern, international company – LEGO History". LEGO.com. Archived from the original on 31 July 2024. Retrieved 5 August 2024.
  22. ↑ "Rolf Lagersson". Danske selskaber [Danish companies] (in dansk). Archived from the original on 2024-07-31.

External links

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