Jokodsign is a Madrid-based studio,
but a large part of how I think about design and about running a business was shaped somewhere colder and quieter: Bergen, Norway, where I lived for seven years before this chapter began.
I don’t bring this up as a piece of trivia. It changed how I work.
Designing for restraint, not decoration
Norwegian design culture has a low tolerance for anything unnecessary. Interiors, branding, even the way products are packaged — the instinct is always to remove before you add. Living inside that for years recalibrated my own eye. It’s part of why the templates and websites I build now lean editorial and restrained rather than busy: negative space is not empty, it’s doing work.
That’s a value I’ve carried directly into templates like Chéri, where a single image and a few carefully placed words are doing more than a page full of competing elements ever could.
Working across languages changes how you write copy.
Between Spanish, Norwegian, Polish, and enough Swedish to get by, I’ve spent most of my working life moving between languages that don’t share the same rhythm or assumptions. That constant translation — not just of words, but of what actually lands with a reader — is close to what good copywriting requires anyway. You learn quickly that a phrase that sounds persuasive in one context falls completely flat in another, and that the same discipline applies whether you’re switching from Norwegian to Spanish or switching from writing for a photographer to writing for a jewellery brand.
Why this matters for clients
None of this is behind-the-scenes trivia for its own sake. The clients I work best with — independent designers, photographers, artists, and brands building something considered rather than mass-market — tend to want exactly this kind of design sensibility: pared back, intentional, and built to hold up under scrutiny rather than just look good in a first glance.
Madrid is where jokodsign operates now, but the years in Bergen are still doing quiet work in every project that comes out of this studio.
Thee role of the designer is that of a good, thoughtful host anticipating the needs of his guests.”
Charles Eames
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Jokodsign is a Madrid-based studio, but a large part of how I think about design and business was shaped somewhere colder and quieter: Bergen, Norway, where I lived for seven years before this chapter began. I don’t bring this up as trivia. It changed how I work.
The instinct, when a website isn’t performing, is to rebuild it. That instinct is usually wrong — and expensive. Most underperforming sites don’t need to be torn down. They need a precise diagnosis of the two or three things actually costing them visitors, enquiries, or sales. That’s what a Website Audit is for.
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If that sensibility is what you’re looking for in your own site,
take a look at the templates and services at jokodsign.com.
