Further Information

What is Bonís?

Bonís is a unique world created with art and imagination. The foundation of Bonís comes from the freedom that art offers, where the viewer is invited to dive into a world of sweetness where the nature of the world and reality is flexible. The possibilities are endless.

About the family

We are an icelandic and swiss family of 4 living in Mosfellsbær, Iceland. We have put a lot of emphasis on collaboration between all family members in everything we do. One of the things we have worked on together is the Bonís world. Everyone has contributed ideas and inspirations that have led to the realization of the images and recipes. We have brainstormed and sketched together, talked about all aspects of life, and from those conversations, the Bonís world has evolved. The "Bonís Dad" and initiator of the project is the graphic designer Sigurður Ó.L. Bragason. From a young age, he has always enjoyed baking, and one can find pictures of him as a child in the kitchen with a whisk and a spatula in hand. This passion has continued throughout his life. Another of his passion has been art, a passion he has pursued on the side for the past 25 years. In his twenties, he went to the United States to study art and graphic design. The theme in much of his artwork has often been sweet, combining these two passions of baking and art. The main characters of the Bonís worlds are clay sculptures based on the two Bonís children, Felix and Miriam; the "Bonís Mum" Nicole has contributed to the Bonís project by taking photographs of subjects in the images, as well as by trying out and optimizing the recipes in this book. In addition to the endless creativity of the Bonís family, part of the process of generating this book also included using artificial intelligence to come up with ideas for images.

How do we create the images?

Everyone in the family comes up with ideas and even sketches them. The images are created from photographs, clay sculptures, drawings, found objects. If the objects don't exist, they are created in 3D software and added to the images. We have also used artificial intelligence to come up with ideas for images.

How it all started

During Sigurður's paternity leave after the birth of Felix, the first child of the Bonís family, he decided to dedicate the baby's nap times to start developing the sweet world which eventually got the name "Bonís", a combination of the french word for sweets "Bonbon" and "Candís", an icelandic sweet. The starting point was a clay sculpture based on Felix's head when he was a 6 month old baby, and the first few images evolved around this first sculpture; 3 years later, after the birth of the second Bonís child, Miriam , Sigurður created the second clay sculpture, based on Miriam's head. Since then, Sigurður and the family have produced dozens of images, some of which were printed for a variety of exhibits; crowdfunded the production of 300 Bonís cups; and created a webstoreof Bonís-themed clothing and other items

What's ahead?

Since the theme of Bonís is sweetness, we decided to release a sweets recipe book. Skyr was chosen as the main ingredient because it is as Icelandic as food gets here. The book is for sweet lovers who want to see what can be made with Skyr. It will be approximately 70 pages with twenty cake and sweets recipes, as well as ten beverage recipes. All the recipes are decorated with pictures from the world of Bonís.