Ruuhinen Erkki
Professor Emeritus Erkki Ruuhinen is one of the most internationally renowned graphic designers in Finland. He has played a key role in raising the profile of Finnish graphic design. In addition to his extensive and active design work, he has written and lectured on graphic design and judged an expert in graphic design competitions. He has co-founded several design and design-related events in Finland, such as the “Top of the year” competitions. Ruuhinen was the first designer to be named Graphic Designer of the Year in 1985, and in the Top of the Year competition, Ruuhinen was awarded the main prize of the competition with the Platinum top in 1986. He has been awarded the State Prize for the Arts and Crafts twice, in 1969 and 1989.
Since 1966, Ruuhinen has actively participated in international exhibitions of graphic design, posters, typography, and calligraphy, and has won numerous national and international professional awards and prizes. Posters designed by Ruuhinen, as well as typographic and calligraphic works, can be found in the collections of several museums abroad.
Ruuhinen began his studies at the School of Advertising Graphics in 1964. In the years after his graduation, he worked as a designer for SEK , an advertising agency, before joining Anderson & Lembke as a designer in 1975 and becoming a partner in 1977. In 1983, he opened his own company, specialising in graphic design, corporate graphic design and visual corporate image consulting. During his career, Ruuhinen has designed numerous brands, logos, and corporate visual identity redesign projects, as well as film and cultural posters. Among Ruuhinen’s film posters, the two posters for Ingmar Bergman’s Oscar-winning 1982 film Fanny and Alexander have received the widest international distribution and attention.
Ruuhinen’s archive contains material related to corporate graphics and the design of various printed products, as well as many posters. See here the catalogue and digitised posters from Erkki Ruuhinen’s archive.
Explore Ruuhinen’s design work in the Design is thinking online exhibition.
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- A pair of posters for Ingmar Bergman’s Oscar-winning film Fanny & Alexander (1982)
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- Help The Helpers poster (1970), silver medal at the Brno Biennale 1970
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- Who Will Be the Next One? poster: Silver medal at the Warsaw Biennale 1972 and Brno Biennale 1974, Team: Erkki Ruuhinen, Pekka Råman, Seppo Näränen, Kaj G. Lindholm
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- Jörn Donner: Poster for the “Naisenkuvia” film (1970), photographer Boris Fehrman