Nordic Sound Art

Graphic design for the 2015 edition of the annual publication on the Nordic Sound Art Program published by the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. The Nordic Sound Art Program is a joint study programme organized between five scandinavian art academies. The publication showcases the work of 12 students and was made to accompany the final exhibition taking place at the Finnish Academy of Fine Art. It consists of a large tape cassette with contains a small unbound 28 page booklet and a cassette tape which features samples of the students works. The booklet provides info on each student, pictures of their artwork and general information on The Nordic Sound Art Program. The design of the booklet is kept in a stick grid to organize the information on the small amount of space.

The cover of the cassette plays on the abbreviation of Nordic Sound Art: NSA. NSA of course immediately brings to mind the north american National Security Agency. With everything that has surfaced about the agency’s activities the last couple of years it seem interesting to use this abbreviation. I did some research on other names that is abbreviated NSA and found out that there is quite a lot. I those to write NSA in big authoritative letters and create three columns with organizes the various names I chose. Some makes sense to the content of the cassette like Noise Sensitive Area and Norwegian Shipowner’s Association (Norway being a scandinavian country) others seems absurd and completely out of place like Nippon Surfing Association and North Slope of Alaska. Nordic Sound Art is also mentioned in the list and is highlighted in red. The idea is to make people a bit mystified about the contents of the cassette and thereby generate some curiosity. The somewhat unclear cover should function as a gateway to the students work which takes on various forms and themes. The publication was edited by Jonas Olesen.