Graphic designer Cathrine Vik spent the final months of 2017 rallying Trondheim’s creative community in an attempt to bring the global Creative Mornings concept to town. The question on everyone’s lips: Could a relatively small city sustain such a global event?
There was a certain poetic justice that the theme for the first event (which follows a global calendar) was “anxiety”. Nerves were soon shaken off, though, as the sold-out crowd packed into the DIGS co-working café, suggesting the debut event will be the first of many.
Founder Cathrine Vik joined us to look back on the birth of the event and what it’s like to work in the creative industries in Trondheim.
Why did you want to bring Creative Mornings to Trondheim?
Because I’m an entrepreneur by heart. I love to create and build something that involves other people, and an arena for my like-minded people – my tribe – was missing in Trondheim.
I chose Creative Mornings because it’s so professional, with so many people to learn from and share with. Lastly, because it’s so much fun to host and organise these events! I get to know so many people from the industry in Trondheim.
What does Trondheim have to offer a creative professional?
Trondheim has so many cool clients and projects. The market here is booming. The city likes to brand itself as the tech capital of Norway, because there’s a bunch of cool people, products and services to play with. And now, creatives can be a part of the Creative Mornings community too.
What are the latest trends in visual design you’re looking forward to working with over the coming year?
I don’t care much about trends, to be honest. Things are always changing, so maybe a “trend” is really more about a new technology making it possible to do new stuff with less boundaries, and new ways of thinking. I love that typography is everywhere, though. I love choosing the right font for a project. They can make such an impact on the final result.
How do you create?
I am definitely at my most creative in the morning. My routine consists of 30 minutes in bed with Instagram for inspiration and reading blogposts or Facebook articles I’ve saved. Then I get up and walk my dogs for an hour, which gives me a chance to play around with fonts, colours and text in my head. Then I sit down with a notebook and pencils. A fun fact is I’ve tried to go digital for a year now, I have both a Surface Pad Pro and a reMarkable tablet, but it’s not really working for me. I have to have that physical touch.
I love to use different crayons, the smell of paper and ink – I used to have a huge magazine collection – drawing and doodling, and in the end have stuff to put up on my wall. So, I’m definitively an old school, analogue designer in the design process itself, even though most of my projects today are digital.
You can connect with Catherine on her Instagram feed, which she uses as a design diary and daily blog.
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