BRACAU 27 BLOG'S

Earlier this week, three former Hyper Island students won gold in Young Lions 2009 (Young Creatives Sweden)!

Congratulations for winning gold in the Print category!
Christian Egnell, Art Director at Ottoboni and Johan Gustafsson, Art Director at Jung von Matt, both former Hyper Island students in Crew 9 (Digital Media 2005).


How come you ended up working together?
- Because we are cool. No, awesome.

What's your favorite part of the assignment?
- The creative freedom, it allows you to make ideas that might not be 100% on strategy but the joy of making them shine through. And the fact that it’s lion in the name of the award. I want to be a lion.

Why do you think you won print, when your education is based mainly in the digital industry?
- It’s mainly idea based competition. So as long there is strong idea behind the solution the media doesn’t matter.
Hyper Island also teaches the value of good idea.

See their winning submission here!

Read about the winners and the jury's motivation in Dagens Media! (in Swedish)



Congratulations also to Joakim Norman, graduated Interactive Art Director 2008 student, and Martin Ericson, both at Lowe Brindfors, for winning gold in the Web category!

Why did you decide to submit work to this year's Young Lions?
– I guess the same reason as everyone else, trying to prove my worth. Being a hypernaut amongst traditional ad students makes it even more important to prove that I can hold my own in creativity and idea.

What was your favorite part of the assignment?
– My favorite part of the whole weekend was when Martin made a crack at the dinner table at Den Gamle och Sjön, a snobbish seafood restaurant, and I threw my hands up and then down in the air of laughter, accidentally pressing the end of my fork and launching a large chunk of spaghetti and crawfish at myself. Kind of like a pasta catapult. I had a bright shirt.


What's your web idea about?
The name of the idea, Goggle Maps, really explains it all. When you donate your glasses, you get a code that you can enter into Goggle Maps, our Google maps mashup, and it shows you where your glasses went and who’s wearing them now. Then you can browse around for other peoples donations etc. It’s so simple it’s almost stupid.

How do you think your education at Hyper Island helped you in developing ideas?
I think I received a very different perspective from most creatives in Sweden, nearly everyone being ex-Berghs students. Which helps me in being original, but also forces me to continue to educate myself. The knowledge they teach at Berghs is equally important to the ones we recieve at Hyper Island. And I need both.


How thrilled are you?
Extremely.

See their winning submission here

Read about the winners and the jury's motivation in Dagens Media! (in Swedish)

Graduated Hyper Island students Juho Parviainen (Crew 9) and Robert Lenne (Crew 7) work at innovation and design firm IDEO in London. Having lectured at Hyper Island previously, the two came back and held a workshop at the end of last year with Hyper Island's Interactive Art Director students.

Why did you decide to come back to lecture at Hyper Island again?
Hyper Island courses always have an interesting group of students with mix of different backgrounds and goals. This makes for an interesting and inspiring trip for us as well.

What do you see in the current students that inspires you?
We were especially impressed by the way students tackled one of the exercises (maximize profits selling mulled wine) in a mere day with the help of YouTube and social networking tools. This shows you can come up with a concept and prototype it in a real and tangible way very rapidly. We were also impressed by the presentations on Friday, which really showed the how students embraced the power of rapid prototyping through role playing and storytelling.

Juho Parviainen
Photo: Linda Gavin
What kind of competences is IDEO looking for right now?
We're always looking for talented people who share a passion for creating human centric products and services. IDEO often hires people rather than skills. What we mean by that is that we care at least as much about the cultural fit and personality as we do about the skills around a specific discipline. Projects at IDEO are heavy on collaboration and team work, so we naturally look for people who are good collaborators and good at sharing their skills with the rest of the community. We look for people who are passionate about something and have drive to get things done. For specific list of skill sets and disciplines that we're hiring it's best to look at IDEO website where we always post our openings.

What type of courses do you think will be needed to fulfill the competence needs of the future?
With technologies becoming easier to use and deploy they are losing the edge as a competitive advantage. It's not enough to have the most features anymore, it's about having the right features. Consumers are moving beyond spec sheets especially when it comes to consumer technology products. As products and brands are moving beyond just individual products to delivering broader user experiences a new kind of designers are needed: Designers with skills to understand people, learn fast, imagine, visualize and prototype variety of different touch points, ranging from in store experience to mobile applications. This requires a lot of collaboration between different disciplines. So the future needs versatile, empathic and collaborative designers who are not only great at what they do best, but also have understanding and empathy to go beyond their own comfort zone.

In terms of technology, are there any kinds of currently used languages you think we'll move away from? Or, are languages no longer part of it, but rather the thinking?
We don't often look for people who know a specific programming language or not. We look for good thinkers and tinkerers. What is important is to know about variety of technologies and to be able to understand their benefits and possibilities when it comes to design. Skill that is most useful is being able to adapt and learn new things alongside normal project work.

The part where actual programming languages such as Ajax or Action Scripting come to play is when we do prototyping. We often try to prototype products and services as early as possible and this is where skills in programming languages become useful. So even if we don't specifically hire based on those skills the more you can build the more versatile you can be. Good interaction prototypers at IDEO generally know many different prototyping tools (programming, producing video, storytelling, storyboarding etc), but are also quick at learning new ones. However, it is good to remember that programming something is often not to best way to prototype an experience. Often times it is more valuable to do a video, act it out, or even do paper prototype.

What recommendations do you have for the students?
Learn and experiment as much as you can. Don't try to do things the same way all the time. Put yourself in situations where you don't necessarily feel comfortable and try things you've never tried before, this is a great way to grow. Then, once you enter work life, don't forget to keep doing all this all the time.


Thank you, Juho and Robert!

Just—My—Type is a typography project of Jakob Nylund, graduated student from Hyper Island's Crew 9.
All typefaces are free to download and free to use and modify without any restrictions - we hear rumors about a greek version of the Twist font. We're curious to see what our readers can come up with.

The Extensis blog has described the project as "[breathing] some interesting life into type", while others say it's simply "mega hot".
Jakob will be adding new typefaces continuously, we're looking forward to seeing what comes next.



Update, April 30th 2009:
Check out the "Soraya" typeface used in Vasava's "The Room" project.

Mocoro is a new company based in Berlin, Germany. Founded in 2007 by Hugo Ahlberg ("Cricke" from Crew 9) and Eduard Prats. Mocoro has been way too busy to make a portfolio, but stay tuned: www.mocoro.com

For Cicatriz Clothing, Mocoro created a unique and memorable shopping experience, rewarded with a Favorite Website Award on June 1st 2007.
The fully integrated web shop is built in Flash, presenting their latest collection in a hectic/lo-fi/broken video interface. The collection is limited so hurry up and buy some slick clothes!

Crew 9's Philip Clevberger has together with friends designer Svante Danielsson and sound designer Nils Vaernö created the online game Pandaland.

Taking place on Nytorget, Café String, Carmen and Björns trädgård on Södermalm in Stockholm, your mission as indie pop girl Amanda Panda is to save Söder from the lizard brat boss who has kidnapped all your indie friends and replaces them with tanned upper-class brats from Östermalm.
Collect life-elixirs cigarettes, plastic glasses with beer, iPods and Swedish delicacy semlor to keep you energized along the way.

The game, which will be released in June 2007, is already getting a lot of attention in Swedish media.
Having been seen in Nöjesguiden, Stockholm City, Aftonbladet's Spelbloggen, Bon, Svenska Dagbladet, Dagens Nyheter, seen on TV4 and heard on SR Metropol, Pandalands designer Svante will be interviewed and a sneak peak of the game will be seen on Mycket Mer än Müsli on MTV on May 17th. Don't miss it!

Check out the Pandaland music on MySpace.

Sign up for the newsletter on Pandaland.se!

Acne Digital was kicked off officially in January 2007. Since then, the company has grown to nine people with aspirations to expand, both in terms of skilled people and projects.

It was started by three Hyper Island students from Crew 9, Desmond Arsan (Art Director), Markus Forsberg (Interactive Director) and Erik Winn (Art Director) together with project managers Lisa Stavenow and Max Ahlborn.
Desmond approached Acne AB with the idea of starting a web oriented company as he was freelancing at the former motion company, Erik and Markus were working at Fantasy Interactive at that time.

- We all got together and discussed the idea. We had been talking about doing our own thing for some time. As this great opportunity arised it became clear to us that it was the perfect time to grab it, says Markus.

They all worked abroad during their Hyper Island internships, Markus and Erik in London and Desmond in Los Angeles. Erik and Markus then moved back to Sweden to work and help business flower as senior designer and senior interactive at Fantasy Interactive. Desmond moved down to Barcelona to freelance for various companies.

- Acne Digital is a combination of a web production company and a free-standing web company working directly with clients, fulfilling their digital marketing needs with focus on top notch interactivity and design/art, says Erik.

With both excellent design and deep technical know-how they strive to take things a few steps further.
- Fusing graphical and interactive ideas from creative people with such different backgrounds as the people here at Acne Digital really gives us a chance to create unique things, says Markus.

Acne Digital is the youngest of four companies under the Acne collective that consists of Acne Creative, Acne Film, Acne Junior (a soft toy company) and Acne Jeans.
- Working so close to these other companies really expands the possibilities for us. Video is becoming more and more integrated with the web, having a film company sitting right next to us is just awesome, says Desmond.

So far, Acne Digital has worked with clients such as Volvo, McDonald's, SAS, Ving, Telenor, Systembolaget, Viking Line, Silja Line and Spirit Stores. They’ve mostly acted as web production company under agencies such as Forsman & Bodenfors and Garbergs but are no strangers to working directly with the client.

What about the experience they brought from their time at Hyper Island?
- The experience gained from working with real projects with the freedom to really explore and consider what you were doing has really proven to come in handy. Having full responsibility and a chance to own the project gave a lot of insight and in the end; confidence, says Markus.

- Working hard and not being scared of criticism or feedback.
Having a thought behind what you create and remember what you learned from previous projects.
The way you work in the teams at Hyper Island is a great preparation for what's waiting in the industry. Hyper Island also gives insight to the broadness of Digital Media - there are always new things to learn which spurs students to stay curious, says Erik.

- The door is open, just go right through it and if it's locked/closed; kick it in, says Desmond.

Thank you Acne Digital!