Sigurdur With His Grandson

This Follow Friday Spotlight caught my eye for a very special reason.  My  focus is teaching businesses how to  build relationships and communicate using Social Media, with the goal of create rewarding, profitable, productive relationships offline. As a result, I’m always looking for great people who are good at building relationships.

Imagine my joy when I stumbled across the tweet below!

Not only does Sigurdur use Twitter to communicate, he actively seeks people to help with problems and issues in his area of expertise!  I had to get to know him a little better.  I did, and I’d like you all to meet him, too!

Introducing:  Sigurdur Armannsson

Company Website

http://www2.islenska.is/

Blog

http://www.font.is is my blog. It is mostly written in Icelandic, but a few articles are written in English, which will most likely to take over in a while.  As the name implies the main thread is about fonts and typography. But I also write about design related matters of all kinds. My inspiration is mostly the questions I am frequently asked so I write about common problems and try to come up with some useful answers.

Sigurdur Armannsson (In His Own Words)

I was born and still live in Iceland. I have been happily married for over 30 years which means I am over 50. I have two grown children and one grandson.

Having studied fine art for several years in Iceland and the Netherlands I started off teaching at the art academy in Iceland. I soon got sucked into design and started my own design studio. I’m an early adopter of mac in design.  The Icelandic Ad Agency bought my computers and my company and asked me to take care of the designers needs.

Those early years really are the basis of what I do: Design Art Direction and what ever needs to be designed. Small credit cards to huge exhibitions and everything in-between. At the same time I take care of all the computers at work, coach my colleagues, teach Illustrator at the academy, blog and many other things.

Sigurdur’s “Elevator Pitch”

It’s not often that I try to explain what I do. I don’t have a title that describes it either, and that does not really matter. Communication and exchange of information plays a major roll in what I do. If I can do a little something good along with that,  the world gets that much better.

What is your Philosophy Regarding Social Media?  What is Most Important To You?

Exchange again, in every sense of the word. Friendship and love is based on exchange. Business is too.
How do you build relationships using Social Media? How do you take them offline?

There is no planning when I use Social Media. I just jump in and see what happens. I am not in it for the money. But I see all kinds of opportunities and have had private projects through these online relationships.I have been online since 1993 before anyone called it “Social Media”  I am still in daily online contact with friends I made in the 90′s through the internet. I have been fortunate enough to meet over 20 of them offline, people from Europe, South American and North America.

If you could do anything and knew you absolutely could not fail, what would it be?

I am glad that I don’t have that super power but I wish everyone could be as happy as I am. People would be surprised to discover all the worthless things that make them unhappy.

Do yourself a favor this Follow Friday, get to know this amazing guy who is a Knight in Shining Armour to Design folks in the stream.  I’m glad I did!