Norwegian design collective Grandpeople started putting their distinctive mark on everything from fashion and music projects to high art and advertising. Spanning avant-garde electronic-music album covers and stylishly groundbreaking retail posters for basketball kicks to the cover of Chuck Palahniuk’s novel Fight Club, whimsical illustrations for Tokion magazine and edgy rocker t-shirts, Grandpeople clearly can do it all, and with innovative panache. No surprise that K-Swiss approached them to create the “L.A. 1966” image for the “You Gotta Know Your Classics” campaign, for which Grandpeople created a clean, cool retro look reflecting California pop art.

To that end, KSPACE caught up with Grandpeople’s Magnus Helgesen to talk all things classic and design.

KSPACE:  Where are you located? How does your home base influence your sensibility?
Magnus Helgesen: We’re located in the small town of Bergen, on the west coast of Norway. It’s also known as the “gateway to the fjords”: The mountains shoot up from the North Sea, draining the town in almost constant rain. An unusually cold winter has resulted in quite a lot of snow this year, and people have actually started skiing to work! Living close to nature and its delights and perils has influenced us in a number of ways, but most important is the vibrant cultural activity in Bergen. With only 255,000 inhabitants, there’s still a lot of stuff going on.

KSPACE:  How did you start designing? What inspired you?
Magnus Helgesen: We have always been keen illustrators, long before we ever knew of anything called graphic design. For me, it was my older brother who opened up to the idea of design, by giving me Motorpsycho albums with sleeve designs by Kim Hiorthøy. I think he’s been a big inspiration for many Norwegian designers of our generation. But later we have come to find that all parts of visual culture inspire us. And I mean all parts, from antique to contemporary art, high brow and low brow, pop culture, fine art, science, and so on.

Illustration for Tokion article & front cover, collaboration with Kim Hiorthøy

KSPACE: What do you think you bring to the design process? If you had to explain your aesthetic to your grandmother (or mine), how would you do it?
Magnus Helgesen: When asked by his grandfather, Christian here at the studio usually answers: “Yes, I still do a lot of drawings and stuff, and no, we do not have a printing press at the office,” and leaves it at that.

Cover design for Chuck Palahniuk's 'Fight Club"

KSPACE: What are your “classic” influences? What makes a design classic and truly timeless?
Magnus Helgesen: Think I’ll have to skip this one—too little time.

KSPACE:  How did you get involved with this K-Swiss initiative ? What were you trying to say about the Classic’s history with your contribution?
Magnus Helgesen: Our friend Fabian Jenny invited us to the project. The notes for our chapter inspired us to explore the American modernism of the 1960s; we were looking for a connection between highbrow and pop-culture. Thinking about the K-Swiss sneaker originally as a sportswear for the tennis playing upper middle class, and its present role in contemporary street fashion, the result became a mixture of David Hockney and the LA Dodgers. There’s something truly Californian about the light in Hockney’s paintings from this era, and we tried to capture this feeling.

7" vinyl design project /sound installation for Christian Vogel w/ Pieterjan Ginckels

KSPACE:  Lastly, if you could be the all-mighty design guru for humanity, what would you change and instigate globally to make the world a better place?
Magnus Helgesen: That’s a tough one. 100% sustainable energy supply, food production and transport, for starters? The funny thing is, most of these ideas already exist, but it’s the lack of political will and initiative that hold us back. So maybe my team would also have to design a new system for a sustainable and flexible direct democracy. It’s pretty awesome to think that real change in economic and political systems is actually just a question about logistics and information. In that sense, designers can actually make a huge difference.