BRACAU 27 BLOG'S

Onezise gave The Motion Graphic Designers a brief; to visualize the complexity of quant analysis and make it into a 20 sec introduction to a dutch documentary.

Business Management 2009 students Peter Hagander, Frida Öhrman, Rasmus Bjurström and Michaela Modig are currently finalizing a Final Project created for Barncancergalan (Childrens' cancer gala), taking place at Nalen in Stockholm on December 22nd.

The group has created a marketing campaign named "Perspective - 29 days", which combines digital and physical marketing with the aim to bring attention to the importance for all children to be able to be happy and playful - including those with cancer.

"Can you imagine going through childhood without hair?"

The campaign includes guerilla marketing; golden ribbons with messages, like the one above, have been placed all over Stockholm, web marketing such as users being able to connect to the campaign on Facebook (in Swedish), radio spots as well as commercial film which will air on Swedish TV8 during the weeks of December 8th and 15th.
The commercial film is made by Therese Larsson and Markus Gustafsson, both Digital Media 2010 Karlskrona students.


This week, the group can be found on Medborgarplatsen in Stockholm. Visitors can find out more about the purpose of the gala, as well as donate money directly to Barncancerfonden's (Swedish Childhood Cancer Foundation) research to cure children's cancer.

The group's work has already attracted attention, an interview can be heard 8.30 minutes into a P4 Blekinge broadcast here (in Swedish).

"It feels as though we, together with all the other contributors and distributors, have gotten a chance to really make a difference through this project", Project Manager Peter says.

Inspiration for us all!

Who better to ask than actual Hyper Island Creative Social Academy attendees? Clara Burguillo and Nobert "Nobs" Rieger attended the course earlier this month. This is what they had to say:

Where are you from?
Clara: I am Spanish but currently I am working in London.
Nobs: I am from Munich, Germany.

What do you do in your home country?
Clara: I am a junior graphic designer in a digital agency (I mostly work on web pages mostly, sometimes I do banners).
Nobs: I am working here for Plan.Net. I work in the sector of online advertisement. I am allowed to create really cool innovative online stuff: unexpected online ads, banners and websites full with ideas.

How did you find Hyper Island?
Nobs: My Creative Director told me to meet him in his office. Then he told me about the Master Class and Hyper Island.

What expectations did you have before arriving in Sweden?
Clara: To learn more about digital industry and get more confident in my work.
Nobs: One quote from Roger of course: "I can already now say that you will have long and intensive working hours from morning til evening." But I also thought of very creative tools to think out of the box, I thought about a program which probably will be extremely team player orientated. Furthermore I have to admit, that I also thought about having fun and parties with guys from all over the world. Fun I had a lot, party not really.

What is Hyper Island Social Academy about?
Clara: It is about mixing 12 people from different countries, shaking them and having a wonderful cocktail that you send back again. The taste is highly addictive!
Nobs: It is about global team play, about trusting each other. It is about solving problems you never thought that even could exist before. It is about changing perspective everybody is used to. It is about thinking out of the box, jump over the barriers in the head. It is about learning from each other and learning from mistakes (Roger and Åsa are no teachers, they only direct the way you go). It is about to be a psychologist in order to succeed most effective with/in a team. You need a team to make something really big and great.

Clara's group at 2 in the morning druing first group project. "I find it significant because even if everybody is really tired they listen carefully to others’ intervention, ready to get and give the best", Clara tells us.

How did the course change you?
Clara: I am better person (hehehehe). Well, I realized that I can be resourceful and get inspiration from everyone and everywhere. I also learnt to think big all the time: it is a good exercise for the brain!
Nobs: I learned a lot of things about myself, which I never could learn anywhere else. I had a chance, to see my reactions and behaviours in tasks from a new perspective. I had time to watch different personalities working together. I now know more about my psychological skills to push people, to motivate teammates and to bring my ability into projects - exactly at the right time. I even often catch me when I am reflecting about some projects. :)

What do you think the experience gained by the attendees being from different countries and cultures?
Clara: It helps to see different ways of working but also many things in common that make us feel "in the same boat": it unifies energies and strengthen motivation.
Nobs: There were insights into all types of agencies. There were a lot of different personalities and approaches. Because of a few guys from non-english-speaking countries the language barrier was not so high. It is a very valuable network we created all over the world. We all will keep in touch and will be able to collect experience in different countries much more easier.


Did the course exceed your expectations?
Clara:I knew a little bit about Hyper Island's pedagogic system but I never expect that it could be so rewarding: I left physically worn out but emotionally full of energy.
Nobs: Yes. I didn't expect that so much psychology is necessary to be a good teamplayer. I did not know that a team can be so powerful. I expected hard working days but shorter ones. I was very surprised to learn without teachers. The whole thing was much bigger i could imagine before.

If you were to recommend the course to someone, what would you say?
Clara: Probably once in a lifetime opportunity.
Nobs: Take the big chance and give your best. It is not only a creativity course. It is a big life experience, it is a program to solve all kinds of problems and even chaos. It is a program to hold out and never give up. It is working as a team player and living as a person in relationship, it is about learning to give feedback, about motivation. It is about trusting each other and manage it TOGETHER.

Thank you Clara and Nobs!

Hyper Island recently completed Hyper Island Creative Social Academy, which took place in Karlskrona. We caught up with Hyper Island's Maria Eriksson to find out more on what the 5-day Master Class was about and what the attendees learned.

What was the Hyper Island Creative Social Academy about?
The course started on the 14th of October in Karlskrona, the participants may have expected a soft start - but that's not how we do it at Hyper Island and they were, I think, a little bit shocked after the first two days, it was late evenings and early mornings.
The course focused on digital and interactive development and also about group dynamics and self development.
One of the participants wrote this afterwards, I think it describes it quite well:
"Hyper Island with all of you wonderful guys switched the light on in another room surrounding mine so that I can see the glowing door crack. Now it's up to me to go to that door and open it."

Where were the attendees from?
They were from Denmark, Los Angeles, Seattle, New York, Los Angeles, Germany, Great Britain and Spain.

From an outsider's perspective, what do you think the attendees learned from each other?
I think they learned everything they learned from each other and themselves. What we do is to give the group tools to learn, there's no one there to tell them what's right and wrong, we're only there to guide them.

Why do you think Hyper Island Master Classes are so appreciated?
We do what we have done for 13 years: A mix of both the "soft stuff" and the "hard stuff", we have the most sought after digital media students in the world, and the feedback we get from the industry is that this is what matters. It's a five day course, but what you take with you from these days goes way beyond this short period of time, it's something you bring with you for life.

Tell me about the Master Class that is taking place in Stockholm right now:
It is an Hyper Island and Svenska Institutets collaboration, Young Leaders Visitors Program, is currently being held in Hyper Island's Stockholm premises. But I believe more information about the course and interviews with attendees will be posted on the blog soon.


For more information on the two Master Classes:
Hyper Island Creative Social Academy
Young Leaders Visitors Program

Thank you Maria!

Digital Media 2009 Karlskrona student Simone Magurno tells us how he ended up creating the cover for the latest issue of Cap&Design:

A few weeks ago, Johan Blomgren from Cap&Design contacted me through my Behance profile, asking me to collaborate with Cap&Design for the cover art of their next issue.
Issue #8 is a typography special and the Art Director briefed me with the following guidelines:
- 3D perspective lettering
- Technical feel to it
- Capture the feeling of making a font (they were having a feature article about the making of the typeface "Enighet" and I was supposed to use a specific glyph from the font)
- Use of color and freestyle elements on white background
- 2 days turnaround

The issue can be found in stores now!

On Friday this week - October 24th 2008 - the current Digital Media students from both Stockholm and Karlskrona are coming together for an exhibition to present the fruit of their labor in module "Experience Technology".
Up until the show, 21 project groups will have worked with 5 different types of technologies (one each) for three weeks, with the goal of coming up with a cutting edge digital experience using the most anticipated and upcoming technologies of today.

The free exhibition is open to the public!
Address: Telefonvägen 30 on Telefonplan in Stockholm.
Opening hours: 16.00-19.00

More information can be found on the exhibition site: www.et08.com

Welcome!


Photo: Viveca Forsblom Ljungdahl, DM10STO

Hello Therese Larsson, current Digital Media student in Karlskrona.

How did you find Hyper Island?
I found it through a friend who had a brother who had attended Hyper Island. So it was a long way around, by word of mouth.

Why did you choose Hyper Island over other schools?
Because it was something different, and that I had heard it was not like a regular school with ordinary teachers and homework, but with seminars held by business professionals as well as different types of projects. Of course I wanted to try it.

What module are you working on now?
Experience technology, which has proven to be a rather demanding but fun module!

What have you learned so far?
I have evolved as an illustrator, but also been introduced to some new areas such as motion and tech. But I think I've grown more as a group member than anything else.

If someone asked you how you learn at the school, how would you explain it?
It's very difficult to explain, I think it has to be experienced in order to be fully understood. Sometimes I forget that we have co-workers, because most of the time the students rule the school. It's more like a workplace, or an internship, or why not a collective.
I think I would describe Hyper Island as a place where you seek out the information rather than get it served on a silver platter.

Thank you Therese!

Today Hyper Island Stockholm was visited by two young creatives from the Netherlands. We always enjoy having our future students and friends over to show you our premises and tell you more about what the school is about.
If you, too, have the possibility to visit us in Stockholm or in Karlskrona, get in touch and schedule a time to come over.

To visit Hyper Island in Stockholm and/or Karlskrona, please contact Regina Kjellberg.


Photos: Jonny von Wallström & Hampus Lideborg

Hi readers,

We are a mix of Swedish, Norwegian and Portuguese speaking students of Hyper Island, in the heart of Sweden, Karlskrona. At the moment we are working with a module called Experience Technology, where every group gets a technology to work on. Each group consists of four to five members and our group got an Arduino, which is an open source electronics prototyping platform.
Everyday has been a big challenge for us at Hyper Island, evolving ourselves in this amazing place by practicing learning how to learn. So far this journey has had some ups and downs, sometimes it feels frustrating due to our tight schedules, but when we succeed we feel great and proud of ourselves.
Today for instance we had some major problems on the developing side of our project, but we worked on it the whole day and that's why we are still sitting in school at 1 am. We can now breath and move on to the next challenges, because they will come.
Our main goal at the moment is to shine with our prototype at the exhibition in Stockholm in about two weeks. Because team building is a necessary tool to achieve effectiveness in a group we are constantly applying it to our method of working.


Frederico Phillips, Sebastian Rasch and Henrik Suryodono

After twelve years, Hyper Island is starting courses abroad. The two leading industry magazines, Dagens Media and Resumé, both report on Hyper Island's latest move.
- We already offer intensive courses and evening courses for professionals in Karlskrona and Stockholm. We have been getting requests for courses in the USA and England. Since we only have 14 employees we are starting on a small scale in England, Hyper Island CEO Mattias Hansson told Resumé.
When asked by Dagens Media, Hansson explained the goal of the venture:
– To establish us there in a couple of years.

Dagens Media also report on the coming seminar by the prestigious Gunn Report in Stockholm and Karlskrona. The seminar will be the first in a series of Hyper Island Sessions, where the industry can get insights into the future of digital media. The Gunn Report showcase the best advertising campaigns in the world.
- I just sent an e-mail to Donald Gunn and asked if he wanted to come and he thought it would be fun. I don't think this has been done in Sweden before, Mattias Hansson told Dagens Media.

Go to the official Hyper Island homepage for more information on how to attend the seminars on the 12th and 13th of March.

Hyper Island student Carin Nilsson writes about the latest module for the Digital Media Karlskrona 2009 class:

We are now in the beginning of the module Design Specialisation 1 which is being held by Gregory Henriques. This module contains about six assignments and a lot of tight deadlines. Every student in our design group have found themselves a mentor that will give feedback on everything we produce during this period of time and will also be interviewed about the role of a designer. The mentor could be an old student from Hyper Island or someone else from the business.



Our first assignment in this module was to choose a designer that was active between the years 1725-1990, I picked Alexey Brodovitch that was the art director of the fashion magazine Bazaar for 24 years. Yesterday we found out that we were going to design something in the spirit of the designer we had chosen. I did the cover for the childrens book James and the Giant Peach which was kind of tricky since Brodowitch was a designer with a very elegant style who used a lot of white space and black & white photos. But I found some illustrations that he have made that was much more splashy and I tried to get inspiration from those in my illustration but at the same time make usage of the white space and keep an elegant look just like he did.

Carin Nilsson

Check out Carins website.

The Digital Media program in Karlskrona has developed a nice website at Creatives Unlimited. Here is the teaser trailer for the site:



Check out the developments at Creatives Unlimited as the full site is revealed.

Elin Johansson, a Business Management student report on their latest module, concerning their final project:

Business Management 06 finished ten weeks of our final project. During these weeks the focus has been on creating innovative ideas, finding new concepts and carry through with them. We have used a lot of our knowledge from our first year in school.

Research, trend analysis, budgeting, marketing plan and SWOT are some examples of these things. While we have practiced what we have learned we also got a lot of new knowledge. We have searched for new information, referenced interesting books and met many inspiring people on our way to broaden our networks. For many of us these ten weeks have been the final piece in the puzzle. We have measured our strength and feel ready for what is to come.

We celebrated the end of the final project by having an exhibition where we wanted to inspire our guests with our projects. 800 square meters was filled with show cases of our work, interesting companies, speakers, lots of visitors and tons of food. We all stood there very proud of our projects. These ten weeks have been filled with hard work, ups and downs, confusion, frustration, happiness and funny moments. When walking around and looking at each others projects it felt so amazing how much you can do in just ten weeks.

A lot has happened since we started school one and a half year ago. Time has flown away and soon it is time for our last internship. We all feel a bit nervous but also very excited to take the final step into working life. You will find us in all kinds of positions, from project consultant to CEO assistant. We will be at all types of workplaces, from advertising agencies to telecom companies. We will be in big towns, small towns and other countries speaking Swedish, English, Norwegian and German.

What we all will have in common is our motivation to always make things better, not settling for "good enough", with a passion for leadership and eagerness to learn more.

Elin Johansson

In 2000, three Crew 4 students' Final Project named Project 40 brought 40 industry talents from the from all over the world together in Karlskrona. We caught up with Lisa Lindström, Maria Nohlström and Henrik Karlsson (all co-owners of Doberman) to find out more:

What was your goal with Project 40?
We wanted to explore the creative process in the new media industry and create a place for creative people from all over the world to meet. Was there something like the "perfect process"? This was seven years ago. The whole idea was actually like a huge live experiment.

How did you come up with the idea behind Project 40?
The three of us had decided that we wanted to do our final project at Hyper Island together. We were very ambitious and wanted the proof of concept part of the project to be something real, not just a prototype. So we brainstormed at Café Gitane (in New York) and ended up with three good ideas. Project 40 was the idea that we thought would be the most interesting. For both us and the industry at large.

What was the most difficult part of setting up the project?
Finding sponsors, co-ordinating all volunteers, delegates and speakers. And live up to our own expectations.

What was the most rewarding part of the project?
That people still remembers it. And that a lot of people who met at Project 40 still keep in contact. Some even work together!

What would you tell students to motivate them to do something similar?
You attend school for a few couple of years, make that time valuable. Create your own dream projects, no one else will do it for you. And if you would like to do something similar... prepare yourself for a lot of work!



We also wanted to find out more from some of the international guests of Project 40:


Mike Abbink, Currently freelance with experience from Method, Apple and Wolff Olins

Where were you working at the time?
Method

When you think back on Project 40, what do you remember most?
Very interested and focused students. Great group of lecturers. Great time at an early mid summer party.

Are you still in contact with people you met at Project 40?
Few. I am very close friends with Erik Engstöm. We also had 5 or 6 Hyper Island students work or intern at Method.

What did you think of Hyper Island after the visit?
Impressed with it. Loved Roger and David [Erixon, co founder of Hyper Island]. Came back for 2 other workshops (logo design).

What would you tell students to motivate them to do something similar?
Great way to bring people with ideas under one roof. Great dialog and a nice way to connect with peple in the industry all over the world.


Simon Waterfall, Poke

Where were you working at the time?
Deepend

When you think back on Project 40, what do you remember most?
Loads of fun, Tom Roope, Damien and myself jumping off the diving boards at 4 in the morning, the AIDS project almost causing a riot.

Are you still in contact with people you met at Project 40?
Yes loads.

What did you think of Hyper Island after the visit?
I still visit.

What would you tell students to motivate them to do something similar?
The people who organised it all have jobs.



Mat Mejia, Droppod

Where were you working at the time?
I was working for a huge interactive / online marketing agency called US Interactive that didn't make it through the dot com crash of 2001.

When you think back on Project 40, what do you remember most?
I have many fond memories of the trip mainly because it was my first time out of the US. The train ride from Stockholm across the beautiful green country into Karlskrona. The eerie feeling that we were all working out of a former prison in small rooms that were once prison cells. Eerie, but in a cool way. I felt like a fly on the wall in a place filled with extraordinary people from all over the world. It was definitely a culture shock.
 
Are you still in contact with people you met at Project 40?
I touch base now and then with a few people via email. While I was there a good friend of ours, Jens Karlsson, was going to school there. That was the first time I met him before I reeled him in to come work with us at DNA Studio. He looked like he was 12 then. hah

What did you think of Hyper Island after the visit?
I thought it was a really interesting place. I honestly think that its location and seclusion is a perfect place for young people to study. There isn't a lot of distractions around and I felt that the people there were really passionate about what they were doing.
 
What would you tell students to motivate them to do something similar?
Any event where students can be exposed to outside influences in the interest of learning new methodologies, processes, style and aesthetic, can only be a rewarding experience.


David Lai, Hello Design

Where were you working at the time?
I was working at Hello Design, which I co-founded in 1999 here in Los Angeles.

When you think back on Project 40, what do you remember most?
I remember after staying up most of the night seeing a few people take a dive into the lake next morning. To be honest, it was a fantastic experience. It was great meeting people from all over the world that had the same passion. We didn’t have any place to really go (it was a prison after all right?) which I think was good, so we all got to know each other quite well in those few days.  I also enjoyed the pickled herring and the beer in the basement.

Are you still in contact with people you met at Project 40?
Yes, I'm still in touch with quite a few people.

What did you think of Hyper Island after the visit?
I was impressed. It really made me wonder why we don't have new media schools like this in the U.S. I have a lot of respect for Hyper Island grads and would love to go back one day to visit.

What would you tell students to motivate them to do something similar?
I've been to a lot of conferences and I must say that Project 40 was one of the best I've been to. It was small but not too small and I think it was smart that you had to apply and be selected to attend, anyone there could have been a speaker! It was also great that we got to work together in teams and not just sit and listen to a bunch of people talking. I think it was this aspect of real collaboration and getting our hands dirty that made it so worthwhile with the right mix of interesting topics to keep us all excited throughout. If there was another Project 40, I'd go in a heart beat.



Adobe article about Project 40 can be read here!


Thank you Lisa, Maria, Henrikk, David Lai, Mat Mejia, Simon Waterfall and Mike Abbink!

Annie Leibovitz and Mario Testino were busy. We decided to take our own photos:

Häktet (The Prison)












Ångcentralen






Båtmanskasernen






Karlskrona

Photo: Hanna Lundgren, Crew 11

Marcin Warpechowski from webesteem art & design magazine visited Hyper Island Karlskrona in 2006 and wrote this article. We think it's great!