Kalle Lasn (founder of the Adbusters magazine) had a lot of luck indeed. It always has been the hard fact that only those will receive the Cologne Thumper that will travel to Cologne to receive it physically. The case of Kalle Lasn was the first renunciation from this iron rule.

For the first time in the year 1996 awarded to Erik Spiekermann, the »Kölner Klopfer« (the German award name) then went to Axel Kufus (1997), to Droog Design (1998), to Anna Castelli Ferrieri (1999), to Motoko Ishii (2000), to John Maeda (2001), to James Auger (2002) and to Heinz Bähr (2005). A lot more were chosen, but did not arrive in Cologne to receive it. So Kalle Lasn can count himself lucky that he was officially awarded even if he was physically not present. »Mr. Lasn already wrote several weeks ago that he might not be able to come as a family member was seriously diseased. He cancelled only one week before the event so that we did not want to throw away all the preparations we did till then,« says Wolfgang Niederle, one of the students in charge of the organization of the award. (The Cologne Thumper is the only design award worldwide that is given by students).

Because of the tragic circumstances the students decided for an exemption from the rules – but only if Kalle Lasn would care for a reasonable replacement. They decided on a video clip that replaced his physical presence on the award ceremony that was held on Thursday, 23 June 2007. In the end it was really strange to only have the non-interferable video message and at least Kalle Lasn could have sent one of his partners from Adbusters to the award night in Cologne.

In the end arose 4 videos where Kalle Lasn preaches of the dangerous times that we live in and encourages young designers to create cultural meaning and to use their power to change the world. Designers would have the possibility to alter the behaviour of the people with their products or graphic designs. Probably the pathetic words of his laudation wouldn’t have weight so much if some assistant would have given it to the audience.

For the award Kalle Lasn also launched an award on his own at KISD: the Psycho Design Contest. Winner was Nico Kläber, who designed a runtime clock for the TV. (More on ROGER LiVE).

But now: here are the 4 videos that were submitted by Kalle Lasn and that were shown on the award night:

Introduction

Intermezzo 1

Intermezzo 2

Outro