The Platinum Egg 1994: Flemming Holst.
Born in Aarhus, Denmark in 1931, a heritage of craftsmanship was coded into Flemming Holst’s genes. His father Karl was a smith who started his own factory, and brother Ole followed in his father’s footsteps, but was also a talented artist. Flemming’s creativity expressed itself in both painting and drawing, and he was quickly picked up as an art director at a Copenhagen advertising agency.... Early on, he understood that big things were happening across the sea. Probably mostly to the west, to be sure, but newly married to his bride Birthe, in 1957 Flemming set his course to the east, instead, across a smaller body of water. For even there, something big was happening, in Malmö at Svenska Telegrambyrån, but also in Stockholm. Thus it was that Flemming came to be employed by Stig Arbman AB in the Stockholm suburb of Solna at the same time as other titans of the era such as Leon Nordin and Alf Mork. Early on, Leon became his constant collaborator. Not because they had so much in common – more disparate personalities are hard to imagine – but probably because true talent often seeks out its complement, in this case a fiery extrovert on one side, and someone calm, cool and collected on the other. Flemming could never be bothered to abandon the Danish language for Swedish. Legend has it that it was because he thought his work should speak for itself. And speak it did, with a steady stream of awards flowing in as a result, early on for Wasabröd and Beckers, later for Semper, Pripps and many more. Much of Flemming’s best work was done with Per-Henry Richter at Arbman’s Malmö office. Here, too, the personalities involved were a melding of yin and yang … as art direction and copywriting so often are, at their very best.