I've spent the day at northmodern - the design fair at the Bella Center in Copenhagen. It's astounding to see so much design talent and all in one space. It's the quality of design and the diversity that's so impressive ... and it's across the board from the well-established companies ... like Muuto and Normann ... to the small, one-designer companies with the drive and vision to do everything from marketing to packaging to PR in order to get their new designs and products out ... and there is also the work here of recent graduates straight out of university with new ideas for new products.

Planes stacking over Heathrow coming in to land one after another is impressive. Denmark does that with designers. Denmark has amazing designers in a holding pattern over what has to be one of the most important design hubs in the World. OK a cheesy way of trying to expressive something that I feel very strongly about.

Seeing so many good designers producing so many great things is inspiring ...

... even if inspiration and a little too much enthusiasm do odd things to my prose.

I’m back at northmodern tomorrow taking photographs and talking to designers and then I’ll start trying to post all that on this blog.

There are some changes planned for this blog. Moving to Copenhagen I’ve not stopped grinning inanely as I take photographs of pavements and power stations and metro hoardings but posting about all that here has tipped the balance of this site … too much architecture and too much Copenhagen.

So I’ve started a second blog to run in tandem - copenhagenbydesign - and from now on that is where you can find my thoughts on architecture and planning and the history of building in Copenhagen.

This site will focus more and more on the best design from the region and the design process … what makes good design … how designers work and how they develop a design and how they progress as designers … how good designers build on a craft and design heritage … or not.

It will still try to cover design in the widest sense and still try to look at inspiring design in all the Nordic countries. Each country has a specific and important design heritage and taste and style differ from country to country in ways that maybe people from outside Scandinavia do not appreciate or understand but there is also a strong common ethos and strong common sensibilities to light and nature and a sense of colour and sense of space that can be seen as distinctly northern.

copenhagen by design is still with Squarespace but uses a different template that deals with photographs in a different way and I will probably move Nordic Design over to that template because images are crucial to a design site.

Comments and feed back really are helpful

John - 19 January 2015