Katrín Ólína Pétursdóttir, is an Icelandic industrial designer and graphic artist. Her work has materialised in the fields of product, graphic, digital design and writing. She has created large immersive graphic installations at the National Gallery in Oslo and the Reykjavik Art Museum, and her pieces have transformed various private and public spaces in the hospitality industry. She has won numerous awards for her work, including the Forum Aid Award, SEGD (The Society for Experiential Graphic Design), FÍT and the DV Culture Award in Iceland.
Ólína’s work is thoughtful, narrative and poetic and often offers a humorous approach to daily life, while being practical. During her carrier, Ólína has explored creativity as a designer, teacher, collaborator, researcher, art-director and entrepreneur. Her digital drawings have covered entire spaces like the Cristal bar in Hong Kong. Her work has been commissioned by festivals such as the Montreux Jazz Festival, Reykjavik Arts Festival and Nordisk Panorama. Tree, coat stand for Swedese, is by many considered a contemporary Scandinavian design icon.
Bridging the gap between the disciplines through technology, and encouraging new ways of thinking and making are visible themes in Ólína’s work. From 2014 - 16, she held a visiting research position at Aalto Digital Design Laboratory in Helsinki, where she explored digital manufacturing and 3D printing. Her research resulted in the Primitiva Talismans, a unique collection of 40 cast bronze jewellery that are designed to encapsulate some of humanity’s existential questions as well as helping the wearer find focus in a technically entangled and often disconnected physical world. To navigate the collection, Ólína wrote Primitiva - Book of Talismans.
She is regularly invited to participate as a public speaker, in design and global events, recently including TYPO-Berlin, DesignTalks Reykjavik and Women Economic Forum in Delhi.
In the past 25 years, Katrín Ólína has been based in Reykjavik, Paris, London, Brussels, Taipei, Hong Kong and Helsinki. She currently lives in London.
www.katrinolina.com
