Founded in 2000, Karlssonwilker is internationally renowned for its deeply original and directional design solutions for some of the world’s best-known brands and cultural institutions. Karlssonwilker’s focus on in-depth discovery and research, coupled with the team’s intuitive sense of place, narrative, and humor, allows them to inject new relevance and purpose into legacy brands, hatch groundbreaking identities for new ones, and create engaging interactive experiences in complex cultural environments. Their unsparingly honest and brutally funny book Tellmewhy (Princeton Architectural Press, 2003), which chronicles the studio’s first 24 months in business, is known as the definite start-up tale among emerging designers and design students. The New York City based studio is led by partners Hjalti Karlsson, Jan Wilker and Vera Yuan.

Please also visit our SpokenPortfolio®, featuring Mr. Paul Sahre and his extra suave voice.

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What we do

CULTURAL & CORPORATE BRANDING
STRATEGY & CONCEPT DIRECTION
SIGNAGE & WAYFINDING
VISUAL IDENTITIES & LOGOS
INTERACTIVE & DIGITAL
INSTALLATIONS
ENVIRONMENTAL GRAPHICS & MURALS
DATA VISUALIZATION & INFOGRAPHICS
2D & 3D ILLUSTRATION
PACKAGING DESIGN
NAMING
DESIGN FOR MUSIC & FASHION
SOUND DESIGN
PRINT & EDITORIAL DESIGN
POSTER & BOOK DESIGN
DESIGN WORKSHOPS & LECTURES

SELECTED CLIENTS

COMMERCIAL
Bloomberg
Capitol Records
Drizly
Ironbound
MINI/BMW
Nintendo
Puma
Samsung
Swatch
TIME Magazine
TFCornerstone
Vitra
Warner Bros.
WeWork
Wolf-Gordon Inc.

CULTURAL
Creative Time
Friends of the Highline
Interactive Africa
Israel Museum
Italian American Museum
MAS, The Municipal Art Society
MoMA, Museum of Modern Art
Museum of the Moving Image
Remai Modern
Reykjavik Art Museum
Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation
The Rockefeller Foundation
The Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation

SELECTED PRESS

COVER FEATURES
Creative Review (UK)
Creativity (US)
Print (US)
X-Funs (Taiwan)
Inform (Denmark)
novum (Germany)
Grapevine (Iceland)
O2 (China)
NewGraphic (China)
DesignStudio (Latvia)

ARTICLES
Communication Design (US)
designboom.com
IDEA (Japan)
Art & Design (China)
Youth Vision (China)
Design 360 (Hong Kong)
Étapes (France)
ID Magazine (US)
Grafik (UK)
Computers Arts Magazine (UK)
Graphis (US)
Ambijenti (Serbia)
Göteborg-Posten (Sweden)
Morgunbladid (Iceland)
Addmagazine (Belgium)
BGMagazine (Ecuador)
Identity (Russia)
Azure (Canada)
Page (Germany)
Slanted (Germany)
BrandNew (US)
itsnicethat (UK)

SELECTED WORKSHOPS & LECTURES

AIGA Design Conference, USA, 2021
Domestika workshop, 2021
Art Center, Pasadena, California, 2020
AGI Open Rotterdam, Netherlands, 2019
DeTao Shanghai, China, 2019
AGI Open Mexico, Mexico City, 2018
RAM, Reykjavik, Iceland, 2017
AGI Open Paris, France, 2017
UDEM, Monterrey, Mexico, 2017
AGI Open Biel, Switzerland, 2015
One Design Week, Bulgaria, 2015
Here, itsnicethat, London, 2015
AGI Open São Paulo, Brazil, 2014
Diseño SLP, Mexico, 2014
The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, 2013
OFFF Festival, Barcelona, 2013
AGI Open London, 2013
ADOBE MAX, Los Angeles, USA, 2013
TYPO London, England, 2012
AGI Open Barcelona, 2011
VCU Qatar, 2011
SVW Workshop, Cape Town, 2011
MFA Yale School of Art, USA, 2011
SahreVictoreWilker Summer School, NY 2008–2010
LYNfabrikken, Denmark, 2009
CAFA Beijing, China, 2009
OFFF Festival Lisbon, Portugal, 2008
DesignIndaba, South Africa, 2008
ADC Latvia, Riga, 2007
Grafitat, Ecuador, 2007
Spark, New Zealand, 2007

SELECTED JUDGING

ADAA Adobe Design Achievement Awards, USA
ADC Art Directors Club, USA
CLIO Awards (Chairman Design), USA
CLIO Awards, USA
IGDB Ningbo International Poster Biennial, China
RED DOT Design Award, Europe
SGDA Shenzhen Graphic Design Association, China
SPD Society of Publication Design, USA
TIGDA Taiwan International Graphic Design Awards, Taiwan

MONOGRAPHS

15 Projects in 15 Minutes, Oddi, Reykjavik, 2021
karlssonwyman, KW, NY, 2020
karlssonwilker On America [Unit 42], Unit Editions, New York, 2018
20 Projects, Live From New York City, It’s…, Oddi, Reykjavik, 2017
15 Projects in 5 Minutes, For Quick Readers, Oddi, Reykjavik, 2013
20 Projects in 5 Minutes, Oddi, Reykjavik, 2009
karlssonwilker’s 12 Days in Serbia, Publikum Publishing, Belgrade, 2006
tellmewhy—the first 24 months of a New York design company, PAP Princeton Architectural Press, NY, 2003

KARLSSONWILKER INC.
682 Woodward Avenue
Ridgewood, NY 11385
USA

CALL US
+1 (212) 929 8064

FOR ALL NEW BUSINESS INQUIRIES, PLEASE CONTACT:
hjalti@karlssonwilker.com

FOR ALL GENERAL INQUIRIES, PLEASE CONTACT:
tellmewhy@karlssonwilker.com

Colophon:

Website design: karlssonwilker

Web-development: v-a.pt

All photography by Elizabeth Smolarz Studio or Peter Gabriel, unless otherwise noted.

Internships