Karin grows up in Bankeryd, outside Jönköping in southern Sweden. Even as a child, she is an art director without really knowing it. She cares about nice things and curates her surroundings with care. Eventually she hears about Berghs School of Communication and ends up in advertising in Stockholm...Read more. After graduating in 1995, Karin starts at Garbergs Annonsbyrå. There she remains for more than twenty years, first as an art director at the agency and later as the founder of the design agency Garbergs Project. Over the years, she is awarded a Kycklingstipendiet grant and countless advertising awards. She makes an impression on clients like Södra Cell, Beijing 8 and Gröna Konsum. Twenty-five years later, you can still see her handwriting in Coop groceries. In 2017, Karin is one of the founders of a new design agency, Open Studio. She puts her feel for craft and materials and her ability to build worlds into producing packaging, graphic identities and books. Examples include work for Lykke Kaffegårdar, the H&M Foundation and Northvolt, as well as cookbooks published with Lotta Lundgren. Several win Gold or Silver Eggs, others win Svensk Bokkonst or D&AD awards. (In 2024, Karin leaves to take on new challenges.) One of Karin’s identifying characteristics is her instinctive feel for what’s nice and what’s not. She has no patience with what’s not. It must go. Just because something is nice doesn’t mean it’s perfect. Nice can mean full of contrasts, funny or playful. It can mean there’s an idea in it somewhere, or it’s a little offbeat, or it has a certain warmth or serves its purpose well. But it has to be nice, otherwise Karin feels the job is not done, and she works uncompromisingly to ensure that it is.

– A.Q.