John Maeda, the philosopher, designer, artist and educator, dispensed his wisdom through one to one appointments at The Riflemaker Gallery in London on the occasion of his four-day live exhibition titled ’John Maeda is The Fortune Cookie’ on November 16-19. Inspiring as Maeda has been for OK Do, it felt only reasonable to book a consultation/confessional in order to examine the possible future of our practice. …(more)

Celebrating its first birthday this autumn, OK Do has lived, worked and travelled in many places and different contexts over the past year. Currently based in London and Paris, we took a moment to reflect on our collaboration in the borderlands of home and work, different disciplines, cultures and environments. …(more)

OK Do is a little over a year old now, and to celebrate our birthday we are not only making plans for the future but also, and in relation, taking a month for writing, research and self-development after a hectic year of doing. Jenna in London since recently and Anni still in Paris, our October is mostly for thinking. Having had the rather neurotic, yet very free-format, manner of compiling to-do lists in emails, text messages and Google documents among each other, we decided to share the most recent one with you. …(more)

Ever since starting OK Do, we’ve had issues with calling ourselves a design think tank – or design-whatever for that matter – but didn’t manage to find other compact enough words to describe what we do. We’re anguished by the word ‘design’ as well as the world of design, yet see no other way out than creating our own sphere within it. …(more)

Napa Books invited us to have a Helsinki book launch at their gallery on July 10. We put up a miniature version of the Science Poems exhibition first launched in Paris in June and had a book party. Kiitos Napa! In August, Science Poems will go to Berlin. …(more)

Anna Mikkola, a Berlin designer and friend with a particular interest in books and exhibitions, approached Anni Puolakka and Jenna Sutela of OK Do with an idea of doing a project on the life of publications. As it happened, OK Do was just planning Science Poems, their first book and exhibition, which felt like a natural point of departure for common ventures. So, the three ended up in a discussion about the both. …(more)

A year has passed since the idea of OK Do came into being. Defying what John Thackara told us about acting instead of thinking too much about one’s role, we feel it’s time to reflect what OK Do is and what we want it to become. However, we are convinced that experimentation is the right way to find out the true spirit of OK Do. The following issues haunt us at the moment. …(more)

1. Get an idea

The idea of a design think tank sprang from our need to create a home for uncompromised thoughts, writing and doing. We wanted to create our own platform for collaboration and projects. The idea of OK Do was first discussed during a loud gig. We could hardly hear each other, but a couple of messy sentences were enough to deliver a common understanding. The idea of OK Do is great at least in a sense that it’s something that we believe in and really wanted to do. …(more)

After nine months of incubation, OK Do opened on September 11, 2009. The launch was a house party, hosted at a friend Tuula Pöyhönen’s place. The party was held in a home because we think it must be one of the most interesting and inspiring venues in the world. Moreover, the first OK Do party started a research project Home-Work-Home which looks at the idea of two merging spheres: home and work. Based on meetings with creative people, the project explores how the mixing of home and office affects creative processes, results and, ultimately, life. …(more)