Review: Art By Nohr

When we think about the people who have had an indelible effect on RPGs as a medium we tend to think of those responsible for the words on the page, the Gygaxes, Pondsmiths and Staffords of our myriad strange worlds. Sure we’ll often wax lyrical about the Art Brut strangeness of Erol Otus, the fantasy realism of Larry Elmore or Clyde Caldwell’s airbrushed pin-ups but as they were often working within existing fantasy art traditions the actual impact of their work is often harder to see.

That’s definitely not the case with Johan Nohr, whose art and graphic design for MÖRK BORG hit the scene like a shocking pink meteor in 2019, leaving a garish crater that strange neon things have been crawling out of ever since. One of the loudest complaints that you’ll still hear from certain quarters to this day about Nohr and Nilsson’s ‘Blackened Art Punk RPG’ was that it was purely style over substance, a simple OSR adjacent system loosely bolted onto an art book. A complaint that is in many ways both correct and in absolutely no way the slam dunk criticism it’s meant to be.

More than any amount of prose, it was Nohr’s art that established the game’s vibe, smashing together scratchy illustrations, bastardised public domain work and rule breaking graphic design to create one of the most inspirational, and copied, aesthetics of the past two decades. The game’s art and design managed to be at once both anarchic and yet established such a clearly defined look that anyone with even the most rudimentary graphic design software, or even just a photocopier and some marker pens, could try to emulate it. And moreover even when, as is the quite often the case, those efforts have come up short still produce something that is clearly MÖRK BORGian.

Of course Nohr’s one weird trick was that behind the madness was a whole lot of method. His CV includes plenty of work that clearly adheres to and respects the accepted rules of graphic design. Despite its unruly chaotic energy there was nothing haphazard about the decisions that went into MÖRK BORG’s graphic design and the same is true of his artwork, behind the scratchy, inky style that looks like the back of a death metal obsessed kids school book there’s clearly the hand of someone that knows how to draw.

All of which brings us to Art by Nohr, a lavish coffee table sized book compiling ‘drawings and doodles made between 2006 and 2003.’ As you’d hope from the subject matter it’s an absolute beast of a book, but also a thing of beauty. MÖRK BORG was just as notable for the effort that went into making it look good as the effort that went into making it look horrible. Pantone spot colours that popped off the page, shimmering metallic foils and ludicrously unnecessary UV reactive inks all went into it and they’re all recreated here, just four times the size.

As you’d expect the bulk of the book is given over to MÖRK BORG related work, and considering the game’s short life it's remarkable just how much of that there is. Since its launch Nohr has not just provided art for the game’s official supplements but provided covers and interior work for what appears to anyone and everyone who’s ever asked him to illustrate their third party zines. 

Beyond that though there’s work for other RPGs such as Chris McDowell’s Into The Odd, which focuses more on the manipulation and collage of existing images. There’s several underground zine covers and unsurprisingly Crust Punk album covers and Black Metal band style logos. Probably the most joyously unexpected is the spread of dog portraits, two of which are again recognisably by Nohr but done in a notably different style. We can only hope that the unfinished project they are from is one day seen to its conclusion.

It’s fair to say that there will be many who will remain forever immune to the charms of Nohr’s art but if you are a convert then you’ll want to make (a lot of) space on your shelves for this grisly yet gorgeous collection.

Art & Graphic Design: Johan Nohr
Publisher: Stockholm Kartell

This feature originally appeared in Wyrd Science Vol.1, Issue 6 (August '24)