BRACAU 27 BLOG'S

Hyper Island has been around for almost 11 years now. Mattias Nyström from Crew 1, co-founder of Great Works is an example of an old school Hyper Island student still going strong:

As yours was the first ever Hyper Island Crew, how did you find out about school?
I was studying at the University at the time when a friend of mine saw an article in 'Ölands bladet'. Since I didn't really like studying at a University I jumped at the opportunity of trying out a new experimental education. 

What have you been doing since your graduation?
After Hyperisland I moved to London. I was there for 6 years working with a couple of agencies but unfortunately only one still exist - the OTHER media. The others either crashed during the .com years or have merged into larger networks.
Once back in Stockholm I met the guys I founded Great Works with. At the time I joined their production company - Speedway Digital Army. 

How many people co-founded Great Works?
We were 5 people that started Great Works in its current form. A sixth person joined as a partner and recently we joined a japanese network called TYO Group.

How many people currently work at Great Works - including your offices in Stockholm, Barcelona and NYC?
Around 50 people are employed. We are also always having a bunch of freelancers involved in every office. 

What knowledge from Hyper Island have you brought with you in your work life?
There is always a solution to a problem - Hyper Island fueled my curiosity to find that solution. 

In the "Why Hyper Island" film, your Barcelona based co-worker Kristian Lundquist says the following about Hyper Island students:
"I think they have a very interesting background in the network they come from. ... It seems all the crews still are in contact somehow" - what value is that to the students and you as an employer?
Hyper Island students seem to help each other when they have a problem to solve - be it finding a production team, solving a technical problem or recruiting someone for a job. It's a huge value.

Why does Great Works hire graduated Hyper Island students?
We try to hire the best talents wherever they are from and believe in a mix of backgrounds. However, some really good people are coming out of Hyper Island so having studied there is an excellent first filter in a hiring process. 

Any final words of advice to up and coming digital media industry talents?
Keep experimenting. Do what you can to push the world forward!


Thank you Mattias!

Photo source: www.emerce.nl

While searching the web for outside thoughts on Hyper Island, we stumbled over Netherlands based Lee Feldman, CCO of Blast Radius. Lee related his experience at the Vancouver Film School to Hyper Island and we were curious as to why:

When you list Hyper Island as similar to your education at Vancouver Film School, in what ways are you thinking they are?
- Experimental
- Collaborative
- Open-minded
- Empathetic
- Global
- Selective

If you would choose a couple of words to represent what you think Hyper Island is, what words would those be?
- Experimental
- Open-Minded

Based on your experience working in Japan, with Swedish IKEA and now in Netherlands, what learning experiences from different cultures do you value the most?
My personal and professional interests are around what common, shared values exist between cultures and conversely, the excitement of what makes us different. The theory is of the insider-outsider- that everyone today lives a contradiction of belonging but never fully belonging, as Groucho and Woody (famous insider-outsiders) once said, "I'll never belong to a club that would have me as a member."
I believe that most young (post-baby boomer) people are living this contradiction expressing their individuality AND being constantly connected- a beautiful contradiction! This also plays itself out on the global-local scales.
I was in the jungle in Cambodia and I see kids watching 50 Cent shtupping 5 women in a McMansion on MTV- hello Contradiction? What kinds of values does this create for the future? What are the advantages and disadvantages of the world we are creating? What are the opportunities and challenges?

Where do you find inspiration?
From science and science fiction, from urban planning and architecture, from the social sciences, processing art, machinima, and from the emerging areas of green-tech, sustainability, the slow movement, and nature. Bicycle design and culture and other human-powered systems are my real passions. Places like www.worldchanging.org provide a lot of the content and ideas that get me excited about life in the 21st century.

(5) If you were to tell the future - what new ways of marketing do you think will be big?
The mashup of social networks, analytics, location awareness, user generated services and data visualizations delivered on mobile devices = future

Any piece of advise for up and coming digital media designers/programmers/managers?
Figure out how to do number 5

Finally, we of course want to know more about Blast Radius. What can you tell us?
We are trying to do number 5 and we are only part way there. I believe we have all the ingredients, but need new examples, ways of thinking and doing, and people who represent a new mindset- the balance between logic and emotion- to help us change the world. Interested?


Thank you Lee!

Crew 11's Johan Gustafsson tells us about his August 2006 - March 2007 internship placement experience:

I just got back from my 7 month internship at Big Spaceship LLC. in New York City. At Big Spaceship I worked mostly with animations for broadcast/web, and realized that motion graphics was the thing that really got to me. The biggest project I've ever worked on, was creating an animated theme for New Years Eve at Times Square. I was also involved in several major projects such as: Ghost Rider, Hungrysuitcase.com, Krispy Kreme Doughnuts TV-spots and Grindhouse.

Case Studies, as seen in reel below:
Target - New Years Eve theme
Creating the main animations for the celebration of New Years Eve at Times Square, NYC. This project had a timespan of 3 weeks.
The six different themes Target wanted us to create were: Cheer, Dance, Peace, Play, Hope and Celebrate.
We animated every theme separate for three different billboards. Reuters, Nasdaq and Discover.

This was one of Big Spaceship's broadcast divsions first jobs. For me, as an intern, it felt great to be a part of something huge like this.
See a video of the result here!

Hungrysuitcase.com - Royal Caribbean
Hungrysuitcase.com is a site made for the travel agency Royal Caribbean. Everything is based on a talking suitcase named Sammy. He's in lead of the entire show, telling you where you should travel, by letting you pack your own suitcase full of interesting stuff. Thereby, generating wether you should go to Alaska, The Caribbean, Mexico, Hawaii or Europe. This was a huge project that took 4 months, and almost everybody at Big Spaceship pitched in.



At Big Spaceship I was treated like an employee and was handed real client work from day one. When you're given that kind of responsibility, it feels like you landed in the right place, you hit the spot, you're home.
I'm really happy with my internship, I came to a great place, and I've learnt a lot.
The Big Spaceship crew did a really good job making me feel like a part of the team, a valuable member. Big up to the crew!

The next step for me is to keep evolving within the fields of Motion Graphics. This is the fastest growing extension of computer graphics, and it gets bigger by the hour.


Best of luck to you Johan!

Hyper Island staff legend (yes, he is) Roger Sjögren is back after having been elsewhere since 2004. We wanted to catch up and introduce him to those of you who haven't had the pleasure of meeting him yet.

Roger, after having been away for 3 years you're back. Where have you been?
After I finished working at Hyper Island early 2004 I moved directly to the Middle East to project manage a United Nation conference about Palestinian refugee children. Since I really found it interesting and great living in the Middle East region I decided to stay there for a while working with different cooperation development projects and international aid projects!

What experiences from your time away do you bring with you back to Hyper Island?
I have been working in multicultural environments which I think has taught me a lot more about how to gain constructive dynamics bringing people together from different parts of the world. I have also gained much more knowledge and experiences of working with large scale projects. Since Hyper Island is in its really first kind of phase of expanding outside Karlskrona and to open up one of the programs for english speaking people I know my knowledge and experiences from the last three years will be useful! :)

How long have you been involved with Hyper Island?
I was kind of volunteering in the planning phase of Hyper Island during 1995 even before it became a limited company. So I would say from the very very beginning!

Do you have a favorite success story from Hyper Island?
Wow, this one is really difficult to answer I think, since there are so many stories I found being great successes! Of course a favorite is that more than the majority of graduated students have got work postions they are really satisfied and happy with and that more than 80% of the students already have jobs when they graduate! I would also put forward the unique pedagogical model, that has several times been internationally recognized, as probably the greatest success of Hyper Island!

What do you think Hyper Island students bring to the industry that it otherwise would be lacking?
I think Hyper Island students in general hold a broad understanding of the industry that they are suppose to work in and having this holistic view is quite a unique and valuable quality when it comes to visionary and strategical work. I would also put forward that the industry needs to get a greater understanding of group dynamics and working with the self insight of staff and its relation to creating a more effective, healthy and more profitable working environment! All students at Hyper Island are well trained and experienced in such issues!

If you were a student at Hyper Island, what part of the education would you look forward to most?
I would look forward to all the problem solving moments and to use my creativity and practise in being creative in all moments of the education! I also would love the different challenges there are to try out myself and my capacity and experiences by taking on different roles and tasks, especially the ones I am less skillful in, in order to get a strong learning experience!

If you could say one thing to potential applicants out there, what would it be?
Believe in your own ability and capacity!

Any life lessons you want to share?
Once upon a time I was quite a shy person and I am introvert by nature, but even so I did put myself in many different situations that were quite frustrating for me and also very challenging. But I decided that in order for me to learn I had do things, try out things and allow myself to potentially fail. This has created a learning part of me that I am so happy and satisfied with, and it is difficult to see myself today not acting according to it!


Thank you Roger!

Hyper Island and representatives from the digital media industry are currently planning the modules in preparation for fall 2007.

We want to tell you all about it... but you'll have to wait and see!

Since graduating from Hyper Island, Linda Gavin (Leow during the time at Hyper Island) has made choices that might be unconventional for a successful designer. Linda tells us more about what her life is like, running her own company, cunsulting and living in Berlin.

- Since my style is so particular, I have chosen to broaden the area I work in so that I can do fun things all the time. If I had chosen to do what most Hyper Island students do and worked my way up in a company, then jump from company to company doing the same thing, I would have never have ended up doing what I really want to do. This way I've been able to make packaging design, magazine covers, the Twitter logo, game covers for EA games, a Nike campaign and a promotion game pushing for cellphone Flash games for Adobe. Mostly I work with web projects, but I see design as design independent of which media it's for.

- I want to live a fun life and be able to spend a lot of time with my hobbies and want to work with fun projects. Therefore I've chosen to work by myself. It's important for me to work in a creative environment where I have full control of my life. When I step into an office the feeling of control and creativity disappears. The sterile environment and hierarchies makes me very unhappy. I want to live in my own bubble and have fun. If I didn't, my life would be meaningless.

- Eventually I'd like to move in to a studio where friends could gather and work on projects. I'm not interested in starting partnerships with anybody but would like to have friends around for more stimulation. Being able grab lunch, play console games together, grab a beer after work and dream about bigger, more fun projects with othes. Kind of like we did during my time at Hyper Island. I really miss that sometimes.

- Berlin is the perfect city for me. Time passes slower here and I feel that this is the only city where I can be myself. Everything is non-pretentious and there are an endless number of chill-out places to hang out at. The low pulse and the filthy charm makes the city inspiring for me. Things that's so important in Sweden like careers, an awesome flat and being fit, healthy and beautiful are of no importance in my Berlin. The life here is more about living the life to the fullest and be happy.

- I love my life, my job and my city and I know it's going to get even better with time. This is how it feels to be happy and I'm grateful that I get to experience it.
- One hobby, a side project of mine is running an online-shop FakeBlondie.com and I make doll clothtes for Asian doll collectors. It's very new so all I have so far are clothes for Blythe and tiny Bjd's, but I'll extend the line to MSD-sized dolls in a near future.
- I was asked to think of something to say to future students. I think you should embrace the feeling of your first weeks of the education and preserv that positive energy. That will take you far! Work hard and have fun while doing it!




Thank you Linda!

Erik Engström from Hyper Island's Crew 2 has lived and worked in the US since graduation. We wanted to know more:

- Immediately after graduation, I returned to San Francisco where I had spent 6 months as an intern at MetaDesign. After a brief periond at Icon Medialab SF I was contacted by a few former colleagues who had left MetaDesign to start their own company that was to be called Method. 

This was in the end of 98 and it was a very exiting time in San Francisco, the “internet bubble” was inflating rapidly and business was booming. It was the perfect moment to start a company and I had the opportunity to be apart of it from the beginning. 

My first day at work we were assembling office furniture and unpacking our fancy, shiny, blue and white G3s. We were subletting a corner of an office space and it started out with just the founders and myself. Within a few months there was close to 30 of us. I stayed at Method for six years and I'm very grateful for everything I got to experience and learn during my time there.

In 2005, I decided it was time to move on when I was offered a job at Apple Computers. This was a very interesting time as I had the chance to work in a few different groups with everything from Retail graphics and window displays to user interfaces design.

After many years of rather intense work as an employee I wanted to try working on my own on a freelance basis and have been doing for the last year and a half.

What made you choose New York?
Moving to New York was anything but a career move considering I was moving away from all my contacts and moving to a relatively small city in upstate New York where no one knew me and nothing much seems to be going on work wise. It was a gamble but it worked out and I have been fortunate enough to maintain a lot of contacts in SF and create new ones in NYC.

What did you learn during your time at Apple?
I'm not going to deny that giving up my long employment at Method put me out of my comfort zone to say the least, and one of the most valuable lessons I learned is that you are usually capable of more than you realize and big scary changes can turn out to be a lot more manageable then you had anticipated.
More specific to Apple, I learned some things about the effects of hierarchy structures and company culture.

In what way have you utilized what you learned at Hyper Island in your work life?
When I think back on my time at Hyper Island I don't think about learning specific skills or obtaining specific knowledge but rather learning what the occupation requires and how to function as a member of a team. So in that sense, what I learned has been very fundamental and I utilize it all the time.

Have you felt that being Swedish has helped your reputation as a designer?
In some small ways, yes. I sometimes feel like it gives you this credibility that you have done nothing personally to deserve.

What recommendations on how to keep up to date would you give to someone who wants to work with graphic design?
I'm really the wrong person to ask. I don't make any conscious efforts to keep up. You get influenced by everything you see and experience, design related or not.

What would you tell a potential student who's not sure if she/he want to apply to Hyper Island?
In my opinion, if you spend your time wisely at Hyper Island you will be well prepared to tackle what work life throws at you. So I would say – Do it.


Thank you Erik!