Pia Bergholtz
Pia Bergholtz is the graphic designer for our Society. She designed our Logo (which started out as a school project for her in 2004) the SHS CV emblems, and other promotional items and merchandise.
Pia was born in Skäret - a small village in Kullabygden, the picturesque peninsula north of Helsingborg on the southwest coast of Sweden. She moved to the US in 1980 and has spent her time here in Utah, Wyoming and Hawaii. She moved to Logan in 1993 and raised her family there for 20 years. Several of her kids still live in Cache Valley and continue the Swedish traditions in their own families. She is currently living her dream in a cabin just across the Idaho border in beautiful Bear Lake.
Pia is a graphic designer with a passion for patterns. She gets her inspiration from the colors, shapes and patterns of nature around her. She also has a strong connection to the form and color of the mid-century Scandinavian textile and surface design that surrounded her growing up. Images and color palettes from her favorite children's books, have stayed with her and strongly influences her color sense and style.
Being raised in a family of artists (her grandmother Eivor Fisher, father Ralph Bergholtz, mother Randi Fisher , and sister Katarina Gill) she watched her family work in glass, wood, textile, print and enamel, which cultivated in her a love for patterns and abstract form.
A more recent confirmation of the influence Pia’s roots had on her work, was the 2011 exhibit of her mother’s lifework, at Skissernas Museum in Lund, Sweden. Seeing a cross-section of her mother’s work—much of it for the first time—she noticed how Randi’s personal abstract style and consistent color palettes subconsciously are the foundation of her own instinctive style.
Pia’s website tell the story of how her pattern design got started: The beginning: MFA Thesis “From Form to Form”
During my time in the BFA program in Graphic Design at Utah State University I was encouraged by my teachers and peers to pursue the simple and direct “Scandinavian” approach to form and design that felt natural to me. Continuing in the masters program I knew that I wanted to explore the evolving nature of patterns, and test their origin in some way.
My MFA thesis consisted of designing four original Scandinavian style patterns, with imagery and colors drawn from my roots and childhood in Sweden. I then explored how to make new patterns from each of those, using only the original lines and elements, but transforming curves, changing position and color.
With the inspiration and direction of a variety of different cultural imagery and form, I ended up designing over 100 different patterns and variations from the original four. The variations of each “mother” pattern represent the range of transformation that can be achieved; and also the blending of many different cultural influences in my own life, and in our society today.
Through the process and stages of creating the variations of the patterns, I made many interesting and unpredicted discoveries. Some of my favorite patterns came to be unintentionally, from using the tools in Adobe Illustrator, as I was moving in a new direction.
Color combinations and scale play an important role in use and everyday application of pattern and surface design. Patterns on surfaces are to be combined and used as an integrated part of our surroundings—something we connect to. Elements of rhythm and surprise are equally rewarding, and different color combinations provide a range of mood and emotion.
Find more of Pia’s work here:
piabergholtz.com
on instagram @piaspatterproject
