Putting down their spray paint didn’t mean Swedish visual artists Slobodan Zivic and Thomas Berger would leave their gritty style behind entirely. Known as Dizel&Sate—a hold­over from their days as graffiti artists—the pair have taken the streets into the design studio, most recently in the form of a new lighting collection, Stay Creative.

Relishing the pop and decorative art of the 1950s, their tricolor illustrations adorn classic cylinder lamps produced by Bergo Belysning, a Swedish lighting company. The design references symbols of the decade such as Wayfarers (the perennially revived iconic sunglasses), a bloody Mickey Mouse, black roses, the Case Study house design program in California and the dark comedy that emerged as a literary genre during the postwar decade.

Zivic, with tongue in cheek, says the collection is also a state­ment about the importance of an individual’s creative freedom: “The collection encourages people to get creative or stay creative. The lamps are proof that we can stay creative and still come up with new, surprising expressions after so many years of creative work! For us, without creativity, there is only death.”

The Stay Creative collection represents a mash-up of mid-century creative culture, but with a contemporary twist. As Zivic puts it, “We googled the 1950s.” Similarly, much of their other work—inspired by skateboarding, street and club culture—can be described as a collage of fashion, art, architecture and humor.

“We started from the streets; now we release collections that are somewhere in between design and fine art, at least as I see it. Street art is where we came from, but we always strive for a combination. We are always trying to reach a point where the viewer can’t tell whether it’s an art exhibition or interior design,” says Zivic.

MAKING CRIME PAY
Dizel&Sate have long been active in Swedish alternative design and architecture. Best known for their large-scale graphic interiors, found everywhere from Hugo Boss Scandinavian headquar­ters to luxury suites in the Scandic Hotel Anglais in Stockholm, they’ve made a name for themselves by using these spaces to bridge creative disciplines. The pair first met as 18-year-old graffiti artists on the streets of Norrköping, a middling-sized town 100 miles south of the Swed­ish capital. “We started out as the founders of a graffiti school in Norrköping back in 1994,” says Zivic. “We started the school as a project in collaboration with the city ... as a measure against all illegal tagging that took place in the downtown area. We managed to reduce 90 percent of all damage, as most of the city’s graffiti artists joined the school.”

In 1999, Zivic and Berger moved to Stockholm to start Wall-design, a studio declaring “war on white walls.” They’ve since expanded their design repertoire, transitioning to Dizel&Sate a few years ago. Although Zivic emphasizes they no longer consider themselves graffiti artists, they still remember where they came from. As he explains it, “We don’t use [a war on white walls] as our payoff any more, as we’ve moved on to wider range of designs ... but it’s still walls and large-scale artwork that are close to our hearts.”

They’ve carved out their own niche in the stylish but sometimes humdrum Swedish graphic scene. Purveyors of typical Scandina­vian minimalism they are not. Describing their graphic interiors as an exercise in escapism, Zivic says recently there has been increased acceptance of their work within the design community: “We work with visual communication and experiences. I think that our way of working is seen as a new way to experience the space. But I also think that in other contexts, we might be considered controversial because we work with a lot of color and explicit images.”

He adds that he nevertheless finds inspiration in minimalism simply due to its contrast with the boldness and chaos of their own work: “We see this very pure design every day. It helps me to get away [from what we do].”

Part of their appeal is the fact that Dizel&Sate remain on the fringe of the design world, although in a contemporary context where elements of street art are increasingly finding their way into mainstream expression. Says Zivic: “Graffiti and street art are used in all kinds of visual mediums where the sender—whether you’re talking about Prada, Louis Vuitton, Coca-Cola, artists or photographers—works with elements from the graffiti world. So it is a way to express something that is mystical, exciting and forbidden, something from the street, dirty but at the same time free. In exactly the same way that you would use sex or death. If the art form would become accepted, these attributes I mentioned would be lost, and that means the death of graffiti. It is accepted by the individual, but not by society. Graffiti artists have throughout time been influenced by the art world, such as Alphonse Mucha’s influence on Kandinsky, just like hip hop music borrows composi­tions from all kinds of music genres. It’s a mutual relationship.”

THINKING BIG
Dizel&Sate have successfully made the transition from the clandestine to the commercial, learning how to manage big concepts and big clients along the way. They start their design process from the space itself: “We analyze the space and the purpose, and then we sit down with Illustrator and Photoshop. We use the 3D program when we present the project, as well as when we design parts of the interior. It is totally natural for us to think graphically when we take the space as a starting point. We see large-scale images, patterns, shapes and colors. When we work out ideas and sketches, we also start from what the space needs to communicate. It helps when the clients already know their target [audience] at the beginning phases of a project. But in many cases, we have the role of helping the clients reach out to their target.”

Balancing the needs of corporate clients while staying true to their own expression does not always come easy, but Zivic says col­laboration and communication with the client is the most important part of the design process. Suite 809 at the Scandic Hotel Anglais is an example of Dizel&Sate’s ability to find a happy medium. Their first presentation, which included car explosions and Hello Kitty heads stuck on human bodies, was too edgy for the client … but both parties ended up satisfied with the end result.

While the explosive imagery found in many of their interiors is absent from Suite 809, they can clearly articulate the ideas behind it. Their final inspiration—illustrated by triangular geometry—came from the park that the room overlooks: “The view … made us start thinking of throwing paper planes towards the park. It simply symbolizes the starting process of folding paper planes. The most basic paper plane would only take at most six steps to complete.”

Their own print collections also give them an unfiltered creative outlet. Life and Death in Architecture, which they describe as a “graphical mixtape of life behind the façades,” was launched in February 2008 during Stockholm Design Week. “Each picture contains fragments of different lives: places, events and symbols. … We’ve had the idea for some time. The architecture that is our work surface is also the surface of society. Every building is a monument to the people within it. Those who are alive. The dead. And those who have gone but live on,” says Berger.

BAUHAUS MEETS JAPANIMATION
More recently they developed the graphic profile for a tapas restaurant, Bauer, in Stockholm. When visitors step inside the door, they’re greeted by several larger-than-life characters, including a jolly bear, an insomniac owl, a giant pink mouse and a yellow square that resembles a block of cheese with googly eyes. It’s Bauhaus meets Japanimation. Zivic explains that each icon represents a particular emotion or experience. “We wanted to illustrate different pleasures and senses—tastes, visions, thoughts, dreams, flavors, sexual pleasures, nightlife, parties,” he says.

A blurb on the menu describes the design as “1920s Bauhaus style” combined with “Berlin’s new gallery and bar culture.” The reference to Berlin is appropos: The décor in the main room combines a gritty, unfinished feel with a touch of elegance. Raw fiber­board is juxtaposed with ornate molding from the original architecture, creating a lounge area that doubles as a gallery space.

References to art deco and Bauhaus are a running theme throughout their work. “Art deco is architecture, art and form and a reaction against Bauhaus mass production and simplicity. We are inspired by simple design as a way to think, but when we act and do there’s an explosive expression. Art deco emphasizes individuality and the decorative; that’s why we like to refer to it, but we only use it as a way to frame our thinking. It is the same with graffiti and street art; we don’t practice it, but it’s still in our bones.”

Designing the graphic concept for a restaurant was something new for them. But, Zivic says, the design always needs to have something controversial, like blood, sex, decadence. Their approach? “We take a nice image and put it into a twisted situation.” Regardless of what they’re working on, Dizel&Sate like to keep it mixed up. “We don’t really fit in, and that’s what forces us forward,” Zivic says. “When people try to define what we do, like ‘These guys paint walls,’ then we start to do prints. And when it’s said that we only work with interiors, then we start a T-shirt label.”

www.dizelsate.com

[TOP] INSET: STAY CREATIVE: Dizel&Sate created the graphics for this lighting collection, launched at the Formex interior design fair in Stockholm in 2008. Partners Slobodan Zivic and Thomas Berger say the visuals are a tribute to “Paris, art deco, Kate Moss, the 1950s, dark humor, modern architecture and dizzying adventure.”

MAIN: While Dizel&Sate have shed their identities as taggers, the moniker reflects their days as graffiti artists. “We wanted cool names with cool letters,” says Zivic. The name is also a play on their linguistic backgrounds: “Dizel is from when I used to travel through former Yugoslavia as a child,” Zivic explains. “They spelled diesel fuel as ‘dizel’ at the gas stations, and I liked how it sounded and what it looked like.” Simi­larly, Sate is related to the Swedish word sattyg, “mischief.”