The Work That Made Me: Adam Ulvegärde
Adam Ulvegärde is the CCO and co-founder of APE_CC, a Stockholm-based creative studio he co-founded in 2022, with the ambition to foster a creative environment for talent and clients. In just over two years, they have created global work together with clients such as Coach, Coachtopia and Adidas.
Previous to that he was at Forsman & Bodenfors for 15 years, where he was partner. Throughout his career his work has earned the finest accolades in all international award shows, including Titanium and Grand Prix in Cannes.
LBB> The ad/music video from my childhood that stays with me…
Adam> My friends and I watched a lot of skateboarding videos in my youth – a few that I still go back to watch and reference are 'Mouse' and 'Goldfish' for Girl Skateboards, by none other than Spike Jonze.
LBB> The ad/music video/game/web platform that made me want to get into the industry…
Adam> Hmm… not quite sure if there’s a specific piece of work… but Paul Rand’s “eye-bee-m” logo has always fascinated me and I probably made me think it must be a fun industry to work in!
LBB> The creative work that I keep revisiting…
Adam> Levi’s – Odyssey
LBB> My first professional project…
Adam> Lol, not quite sure but it was probably a ton of 1/4 pages for Tele2. Headline + price + product. Simple, but my partner and I at the time (Marcus Hägglöf) tried to have fun with it and we learned a lot about the craft.
LBB> The piece of work that made me so angry that I vowed to never make anything like *that*…
Adam> Oooh shots fired. No but seriously, I don’t judge others work like that. And honestly I don’t register work that I don’t like. Which might be worse now that I come to think if it…
LBB> The piece of work that still makes me jealous…
Adam> Tons! Romain Gavras music video for Jamie XX – Gosh, is a masterpiece. Tamburins six minute film featuring Jennie from Blackpink is amazing and Show Yanagisawa’s films are visually mind-blowing.
LBB> The creative project that changed my career…
Adam> It has to be a campaign called “Dear Steve Jobs” for SVT (Swedish version of BBC), where we asked Apple to prioritise the approval of their new app. Or IKEA Facebook Showroom that won us a ton of awards.
LBB> The work that I’m proudest of…
Adam> After starting my own agency APE_CC two and a half years ago, everything we manage to put out makes me proud.
LBB> I was involved in this and it makes me cringe…
Adam> We did these spots for Marabou (Swedish version of Cadbury) back in the day and honestly they were pretty cheesy… not saying more than that…
LBB> The recent project I was involved in that excited me the most…
Adam> Coachtopia – Value all Parts was a massive achievement, creatively, timing and budget. It was full on from start to finish.
Also, I’m super happy with the Coach Fall Campaign we did, especially happy we got to work with Elaine Constantine (old fan boy here).
Also our campaign for Maurten – “Don’t take it from us” where we had ultra-runner Kilian Jornet running onto of a Norwegian mountain on a treadmill while reciting a whole scientific paper was definitely a moment.
