A graphic designer (1945–2012), though he could just as well be called an artist, author, poet, lecturer, mentor, photographer or professor. HC Ericson grew up in Stockholm and attended Catholic school, where he was taught by nuns. At 14, he took his drawings and went looking for a job – and found one at Konsum Stockholm...Read more. The following year, he was the youngest student at Berghs advertising school, where typography expert Karl-Erik Forsberg introduced him to the art of letters. In the 1960s, HC Ericson became an art director and copywriter at leading ad agencies in Stockholm. He founded his own agency in 1972, Ericson & Co, which was also a production shop and a nursery. And a shop, too, Ericson Bazar, whose offerings included their own self-designed wooden toys, puzzles, stationery, posters and porcelain jars. Typical HC – he was often described as a contemporary renaissance man. From 1983 on, he took on a freer role, collaborating with various agencies and clients. He founded Ericson & Embrink in 1990. He developed more and more into an artist of the letter, though he worked as a photographer, too. He had an oral and almost physical approach to the mythic, difficult to interpret power of letters. HC loved to lecture to everyone in his vicinity. A childlike perspective was central, seeing the unexpected in the ordinary, embracing playfulness and the joy of discovery. Paradoxically, he was also an austere, clean designer with an extremely simple, often two-dimensional style. Classic and contemporary. Niche and commercial. His graphic design for Playsam, Kosta Boda, Falcon and Vin & Sprit had far-reaching impact. He came up with the concept of Lantvin, “country wine”, to describe a simple table wine, thereby creating one of beer and vodka-drinking Sweden’s first broadly popular wines. In the end, HC always returned to the magic of letters. The letter L became synonymous with Lammhults furniture. The Ö in Röhsska Museum’s logo was applied playfully and freely, and is still used by the museum 30 years later. Sometimes you can say everything that needs to be said with a single letter.

After the Platinum Egg: In 1991, HC Ericsson became a professor at HDK, the Academy of Art and Design in Gothenburg. His unconventional teaching approach blossomed in parallel with art projects, books, guest lectures and solo shows. In 2002, he received the Torsten and Wanja Söderberg Prize, the most important design award in the Nordic countries.

– B.E.