Lotta Nieminen

Lotta Nieminen moved from the largest city in Finland to the largest city in the U.S, and is already making an extremely large impact of her own. This Helsinki-born artist draws from her Scandinavian background and her cosmopolitan lifestyle to create stunningly simple designs and illustrations, all with a New York City sense of humor. In 2010, Lotta received the Art Directors Club Young Guns Award and was selected by Print Magazine for its annual New Visual Artists review, highlighting 20 rising international designers under the age of 30. Learn more about this refreshing designer in her 10 ANSWERS below.

1. How would you describe your work in three words?
Graphic design: minimal, clean, deliberate.
Illustration: detailed, textured, colorful.

2. Who is your creative role model?
Ever since I was little, I’ve always watched my mother paint and draw. She would sit down and draw with me and my sister for hours when we came home from school. I still go to her for advice if I’m stuck with a piece, and still value her opinion above many others, even though we’re in very different creative fields (she’s a fine artist and stage designer).

3. If you had an extra hour each day what would you do with it?
Read through the endless pile of magazines I buy, stack on my bedside table and never get down to actually read.

4. What place in the world most inspires you and why?
The small island in the Finnish archipelago my grandfather bought in the early 50s to go fishing. I’ve been there for at least a week every summer ever since I was born. The Baltic sea surrounds the small, rocky island, and up until a couple of years ago, we didn’t have running water or electricity (there’s now a well and a solar panel, which I consider cheating). The complete disconnection to everyone and everything else is utterly inspiring.

5. If you could do a different job for a day what would it be and why?
I would realize my childhood dream and be Tarzan. Other jobs involving hanging in a tree also accepted.

6. What is your favorite homemade gift to give?
I always try to send postcards to my friends whenever I’m traveling. I  draw a little sketch of a funny encounter or event that I’ve just experienced, write the date and time and mail it out. My grandmother is the only person who gets just text (in very big type), because my drawings are too small for her to see.

7. What is your favorite object in your home?
The Bertoia chair my parents rescued 30 years ago from their apartment building trash.

8. What is the best advice you ever received?
“Kill your darlings.”

9. What websites do you use for inspiration?
I usually get most inspired by imagery that’s not directly related to what I do, graphic design or illustration carefully curated collections of imagery from photographs to street style can get me into very inspired moodscapes. I recently found Another magazine’s Loves section, and my friend Kaarle Hurtig’s Listhings can be an endless treasure chest when hitting designer’s block.

10. When do you consider a piece of your work complete?
When I add the extension ‘final_final_2B” to a file name. This tells me I should probably stop working on the ‘final’.