Sandberg & Timonen

When Henrik Timonen and I started Sandberg & Timonen in 2006, we wanted to do more--maybe some sleeves, some fashion, some books, some environmental campaigns, some film and moving graphics. Henrik and I are almost the same, but we always are pushing each other to go further at everything we do. We went to the same school, Beckmans in Stockholm. It's a graphic design and advertising school, but they have a lot of fashion students as well. We started doing sleeves when we were there. It wasn't like I went to school to work with fashion and music specifically, but it turned out the last couple of years we've worked with many Swedish fashion brands and musical artists.

With sleeves our aim is to help the artist push their look, it makes fashion a fundamental part. We always work from the artist's point of view to find a look that suits them. We never work with artists that don't have a style of their own, so the stylist always adds things, not changes. It's like the ingredients in a dish. You have to mix the right ones to make it good. It's hard to explain why we choose the stylist that we do, it's just a feeling that you have. We always try to do sleeves particularly for the artist, but we have a certain style ourselves. I think that's why the artist comes to us, because they want a piece of us.

For Lykke Li we worked with stylist Ellen af Geijerstum. We like her style. It's not our own style, but the style we are inspired by. We thought it would be good for Lykke to work with her, to bring out something more. She had a really good connection with Lykke and went on to style her videos. With Lykke Li, the name of the album was supposed to be something about diaries and we wanted the sleeve to feel like an upgraded diary of hers, like photographs of herself and personal collages, to portray an intimate image of her and her music. The photographer, Marcus Palmquist, is a Swedish fashion photographer that we also work with on our monthly fashion magazine Rodeo. He's one of our favorite photographers. He has a very romantic and genuine sense of style. We really liked Lykke's style but wanted to bring something extra to it. We wanted to have that famous Lykke bun. She was a little bit afraid of it in the beginning, but we thought it was a good idea to put it on the sleeve because it's a little bit of a trademark for her. We think it turned out pretty good and lots of girls are wearing it, so it must be good.

Johan Sandberg is an art director and one half of the design firm Sandberg & Timonen (sandbergtimonen.se). They have done sleeves for musicians including Robyn, Caesars and Kent. They also publish a yearly photography journal, make the monthly fashion magazine Rodeo and direct videos.

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