About:Blank is a young no-brand design com­pany  that makes min­i­mal paper note­books. Min­i­mal­ism has been one of the key par­a­digms con­nect­ing Asian and Finnish design philoso­phies for a long time now, and About:Blank, with its oper­a­tions divided between the Far East and North­ern Europe (mainly Seoul and Helsinki), is a great exam­ple of this con­nec­tion. Only this time the mutual sense of min­i­mal­ism is taken a step fur­ther than usu­ally. About:Blank’s man­i­festo “Noth­ing is every­thing, full­ness is empti­ness” speaks for itself. The note­books are stripped down of all aux­il­iary ele­ments to the very gist of what they fun­da­men­tally are. Add to this the use of thick, acid free paper, a newly patented bind­ing tech­nique and impec­ca­ble Japan­ese man­u­fac­tur­ing and you have a new clas­sic that is sure to last a good while.

We had the oppor­tu­nity to talk to Seungho Lee, one of the part­ners in the com­pany, that resides here in Helsinki at the moment. See the inter­view after the jump.

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Pod­cast num­ber four by Mag­nus Blomkvist.

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Pod­cast: Play in new win­dow

Our pod­cast series con­tin­ues. Num­ber three by Fummer.

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Pod­cast: Play in new win­dow

We are more than pleased to present our first prod­uct col­lab­o­ra­tion together with Finnish hat man­u­fac­turer Fredrik­son. The prod­uct is a recon­struc­tion of a for­got­ten clas­sic cap made of the finest wool avail­able. Fredrik­son, with its long, vivid his­tory, tra­di­tional ways of man­u­fac­tur­ing and upmost respect for eth­i­cal val­ues, was a per­fect part­ner to work with in this spe­cial project.

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Oh my! We’re get­ting Nordi­cal next Sat­ur­day. Dølle Jølle will be there from Oslo, Mag­nus sort of from Swe­den and Jaakko, you, me from Fin­land! Get involved in Face­book too. More info to fol­low and maybe a con­test next week. Mean­while enjoy our new pod­cast with Dølle Jølle. See you next Saturday!

Pod­cast: Play in new win­dow

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Kaffa Roast­ery is the first inde­pen­dent cof­fee roast­ery in Helsinki. Located in the Punavuori area just next to the har­bor, Kaffa Roast­ery also runs an invit­ing café where cus­tomers can watch the roast­ing process while sam­pling cups from their excel­lent in-house blend selec­tion. On one hot summer’s day we sat down to have a word with the co-founder of the com­pany, Svante Kampf.
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Wel­come to the new site (which is still in the early start so please bear with us). A new project is always a tough one but it’s def­i­nitely look­ing very promis­ing. We have now a few inter­est­ing fea­tures up on the site and many good ones on the pipeline.  We would like to thank the peo­ple who con­tributed and trusted us on this.
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